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My.MP3.com releases Beam-it Beta for Linux
kurowski writes "My.MP3.com has released a Linux port of its Beam-it software. It relies on a closed-source library, but the (command-line) Beam-it front end comes with source and is GPLed. Way cool! (By the way it acutally works, too.) " We've been playing around with something similar in our office for a while - it's a lot of fun to have.
Beam-It is software that reads the ID of audio CDs when you insert them in the drive and checks to see if that CD is present in MP3.Com's database. If it is, the tracks on that CD are added to your personal My.Mp3.Com account so you can listen to them in streaming MP3 and RealAudio format -- no file transfer is required, so you can "beam" a CD instantly. About 8 out of 10 CDs I own were known to Beam-It, so now I can listen to them anywhere through a Web browser.
Another feature I tried out is Instant Listening. If you buy a CD from a company participating with Mp3.Com, it is added to My.Mp3.Com the moment you purchase it. Instant Listening is a great excuse to buy an album over the Net -- there's nothing like receiving instant gratification while shopping in your pajamas.
The only downside to Instant Listening is that the MP3.Com partner I purchased from, Jungle Jeff, took 10 days to send the CD.
Instead of suing MP3.Com, the RIAA should be looking at how My.MP3.Com facilitates impulse purchasing at online music stores. The recording industry already has a monopoly on the artists most people want to hear. They can reap even more rapacious profits on CDs sold electronically without the overhead of distribution, packaging, store promotion, and other brick and mortar costs.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
I was wondering how long it was going to take for MP3.com to do this -- given the fact that the Linux community tends towards a more zealous and open defense of the manner in which Beam-It approaches the issue of ownership of information, it really behooves them to support the OS.
Also, I'm amazed at what a bunch of bad-asses they're being. Lawuit filed, they didn't run and hide, they ramped up their advertising and encouraged people to sign up their friends. Sure, this is good for their business, but I'd like to believe that it also shows some sense of the politics of turning people onto the issues of ownership that this all raises.
Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but there seems to be a real understanding of the fact that their business is predicated on certain assumptions about who owns the music, and how they ought to be able to use it, that are pretty progressive.
god is just pretend.
beamit -e userid -p mypass ; eject
It's a lot easier than ripping a stack of CD's, that's for sure. As to what it does... you can download some of the source and have a look. There is a binary-only shared library, no code for that, but the beam-it user program, says:
It appears that usually "beaming" works really quickly, and occasionally it's really slow with lots of net activity. I wondered if it's doing some kind of distributed cd ripping activity when it finds an unidentified CD. But maybe cdparanoia is just working hard on one sector of my scratchy CD's.
A quick look at the shared library shows some interesting things
nm
/usr/lib/libmsp.so: no symbols
strings
...
msppGetAttributeValue
msppEncryptMD5
MD5Init
MD5Update
MD5Final
...
Software has expired, please update
...
Never have I seen so much whining! A company puts its butt on the line, going up against the RIAA to provide this service. They provide huge amounts of bandwidth to accomodate full quality streaming (128kb/44KHz). Then they release a Linux client.
And what do we hear? "Hey, they want my email address-- I won't use anything that requires an email address" "They released it under the GPL but kept a library closed-- I won't touch it!" And last but not least, "How can we crack it so we can pirate all these CDs?!"
People, for once in your life stop looking a gift horse in the mouth and appreciate what someone has made available for you.
I may be somewhat off course here, but it sounds to me like this would be an excellent opportunity for someone like myself to get back all of CD's that I've lost in the past due to scratches.
Essentially, as long as my CD's (which was of course bought legally) contents track is intact, I can add it to my database on mp3.com, and then capture the stream being sent to my harddrive, and voila, I have the mp3's. If I want, I can then just uncompress and write the files to my CD Burner.
I'll definately have to give this a shot.
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms