MP3.com's Beam-It

Mutok pointed us to MP3.com's new Beat It program. It is of course windows only which means I've never tested it, and functionally it works almost exactly like a collection of Perl scripts Nate and I hacked out a year ago to serve our personal collection of MP3s. Basically, the software checks if you have a CD, and it tracks your collection. Then you use the software to track playlists and play your MP3s. There are a lot of interesting legal problems here, and the potential for abuse is high. But dangit if this isn't the future of music, I'm gonna be cranky. Now can I please have a Linux port?

Comments

Mp3 Anytime - Anywhere for Linux Users

[szyzyg]

Oddly enough I posted this story last week but Slashdot ignored it..... Perhaps because I pointed out that the whole site is an exact carbon copy (check some of the html and layouts) of Myplay.com.

Myplay have been offering an online storage system like this for free for the last 4 months and they don't force you to use their technology, or limit you to streaming only.

So - for all you Unix users who don't want to cart a CD selection back and forth here's an online music HOWTO

(1) Get CD Paraoia or cdda2wav
(2) get LAME
( You can also get GRIP - that's a fancy GUI system that uses GTK - nice and easy)
(3) Extract your favourte CD audio to .wav files
(4) encode .wav files to .mp3 files using LAME
(5) Delete the .wav files

then....
(6) Get XMMS
(7) Listen to your funky mp3's


Now for the anytime/anywhere part....
(8) go to Myplay.com
(9) Get an account (they're free)
(10) upload your chosen tracks
(11) Listen to them wherever you go


okokok but there's more

If you want to show off your music taste you can assemble your favourite tracks into public playlists which anybody can listen to - so it's like creating a radio show. (they use icecast for this BTW)

Plus they've also got a few free tracks, both from themselves and from affiliates like emusic.com....


SO.... my.mp3.com is not Innovative... it's a copy.

So - why isn't myplay in the related links box?

Re:Not another NAPSTER

[Stavr0]

it actually checks to see if you own the cd

I C. How shall I hack thee, let me count the ways
- Sniff packets, then fudge up a client
- Repository of track/length sector aka CDDB
- Fake CDaudio driver that returns above info.
- Forge packets for upload to MP3.com

Yet another ill-conceived attempt at enforcing the unenforceable.
---

What's the difference between this and radio?

[The Babushka]

Ok, here's a thought... What's the difference between this and an all-request radio station? Answer: You *own* the CDs already (at least in theory).

Think about it. If there were a request radio station, and you were the only listener, is there a law preventing them from playing whatever you request? So what's to stop MP3.com from just streaming to you personally *ANY* music you choose to listen to? (Regardless album ownership.) It's theoretically no different than request radio.

Yeah, we can *record* a media stream, but I can also record songs off the radio. What's the difference? Just because this is more customized? Because it's on the Internet? Big whoop -- every real life radio station tries to do this exactly: play songs I want to hear. It just so happens that online they can do it to perfection through mass customization.

I don't think MP3.com has gone far enough! I shouldn't need the CD to listen to music - I should be able to listen to ANYTHING they have available.

Waste of bandwidth

[ucblockhead]

This seems like a huge waste of bandwidth to me.

Twenty CDs and a backpack has a higher bandwidth then I have at work...

(Or maybe it is just this new 20 gig HD I got here at work. I've been copying CDs to it for a week now. I have almost a hundred here. Why would I want to download each time I listen when I can just save them to the HD? This seems better than wasting company bandwidth each time I get the urge for NIN.)

Why, oh why is everyone pushing all this connectivity stuff when the thing that is improving the least in most computer systems is the bandwidth? You can get a 27 gig drive for $200 now. That just cries out for new applications, but all these companies can come up with is new ways to send too much information through tiny little holes. I don't want my music to skip just because I'm downloading a new Quake patch.

New app: cheap motherboard+large hard drive+good sound card->awesome stereo.

There *will* be a linux port

[Thomas A. Anderson]

I emailed them the day it came out, and asked them about a linux port. I got an email back from an engineer saying they are working on it as fast as they can. Then I got an email from some suit saying "thanks for the email, blah, blah, blah" that didn't even address my question. A good friend of mine wqorks for mp3.com, and he says that almost everyone there sues linux, and a linux version is definatly coming. Another question, off topic, how come I submitted this story last week and it was rejected? Sure, it's not a great slasjdot story, but now the news is 1 week late making it even less interesting. Just my 2 cents.

BeamIT Packets Unencrypted

[Noke]

I did some Packet Snffing of the BeamIT client-to-MP3.com last night and determined that the CD info sent to MP3.com is not encrypted, making it quite easy to proxy-spoof mp3.com into thinking you own CDs that you do not.

The data on the CD sent seems to go a track-at-a-time and isn't the conventional format that you send CD data to CDDB. Instead, it seems to focus on the sector start and end positions for each track and some additional information.

Nontheless, I suspect that unless MP3.com reworks their protocol to use encryption, it will jsut be a matter of time before someone fully reverse-engineers the protocoll and "Beams" hundreds of CD's that they do not own. I wonder what the recording industry will think of that?