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Are Formats What Napster Really Needs?
Adam Curry writes: "This article has taken me a combined 20 years of broadcast and computer experience to compile and I couldn't be more excited about the possibilities the Internet can bring now that we have witnessed the cultural change from the traditional broadcast models to the Peer to Peer networking model technologies such as Napster and Gnutella have shown us." Whether or not it convinces you that Gnutella needs formats, this piece also offers a bit of knowledge-in-passing about the music biz that may interest readers putting together audio streams at home or for friends.
Mr. Curry claims that "you may hear Madonna one time and Jennifer Lopez the next", but what if I wanted to listen to Madonna and got Lopez instead? I want to choose the songs I listen to; I don't want some impersonal AI with no inkling of my emotions to try to decide what I'll like.
The concept is that you will hear Madonna one time and Janis Light the next song. Who is Janis Light? I have no idea, but the DJ is betting that if you like Madonna, you'll like Janis Light.
If anything, Napster has the flaw of making people download the same few artists over and over again. Rather than having a DJ tie in similar artists by "feel" (like Nick Cave, the Cruxshadows, and Black 47, three compeletely different genres, but many of the same people like all three), Napster simply says: "Enter the artist you are searching for". Unless you know the artist, it dosen't help.
Now, having *said* this, Napster *does* have formats... you can view the listed shared files, and (aside from the people who download everything for the hell of it), you can guess that if you like 80% of a person's collection, you might like at least some of the remaining 20%.
Does Gnutella do anything like this?
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
It sounds draconian but it is the only way to have an orderly and useful file trading service. Think BBS. When you joined a BBS Back in The Day, you didn't just get full access to everything right away. You got perhaps a few minutes a week with limited downloads and no messaging. Then maybe if you where a good user, you would get chatting priviledges. And after that, perhaps file uploading priviledges. If you were a fuckup, your account was permanently revoked.
Regarding Gnutella's particular scalability problems, I'm afraid there may be no solution aside from a complete redesign.
For example, I could have a "vocal," "choral," "madrigal," "classical," "baroque," "religious," song, depending on what service I looked for information about it. Likewise, metal fans would be hard pressed to mark many albums or artists as "light rock" or "heavy metal." In the end, the individual reviewer is the sole judge of if a song matches a format. Often I find myself disagreeing with them.
This article has taken me a combined 20 years of broadcast and computer experience to compile
I don't doubt it. I tried running it through gcc and got more error messages than I can count.
--Shoeboy
I think Curry has gotten it right, but at the same time, I bemoan the loss of real, old-fashioned, free broadcasting.
I loved doing college radio, because every show was basically sharing songs and getting excited about music. Now that we have the net, we have the ability for a LOT of people to share songs with us.
But more likely to evolve is some sort of XML-based jug of songs with other stuff mixed in. (But not NEWS, Curry; when we want news we go to the news channels. Does anyone else get irritated that, when a news channel has "traffic on the 2s", you know that you have to wait as long as nine minutes - an eternity for our supposedly-connected age.)
What's missing is a human touch. I don't want a channel that programs ballads every 25 minutes. I want a human, who programs ballads because s/he feels like shit, who programs love songs because s/he's in love. I want someone who appreciates the same key changes I do.
Before radio was taken over by big business, it did nothing less than spark a cultural revolution. Now radio is a soundtrack to a bad movie. Maybe the *real* reason that Napster et al have become so popular is because our ESTHETIC/ARTISTIC NEEDS are not being met by the corporate world.
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A lot of people don't seem to realize that he's not proposing created-by-the-industry-and-forced-down-your-throa t formats. He's saying that now it's feasible to create-your-own format.
In fact, it's already been done, although not for peer-to-peer stuff. Check out www.launch.com (I think.) Unfortunately, last I checked, it was Winblows-only. (Windows Media Audio for their codec.), but if you occasionally boot to Windows, launch.com is a good example of a broadcast version of what he's talking about. Basically, you pop in a list of radio stations and genres that you like. Then launch.com starts broadcasting music. If you think a song totally sucks, you tell the system never to play that song again. The system will remember that, and the chances of a similar song playing will be reduced. Rate a song high, and the system will try to increase the chances of similar songs being played.
Unfortunately, it takes an hour or two of learning before it starts putting out mostly good music. (I think my rather varied music taste confused it... Not fine-grained enough...) Note: This is an hour or two of time, even skipping songs that suck.
Check it out, play with it, and think how much cooler it would be if it had a Napster-sized music collection, including all the nifty esoteric stuff that Napster has and launch.com does not.
Another similar approach - Go to mp3.com. Go to the site of an artist you like. (Assuming that you know of an artist or two there that you like.) Then check out the "other artists we like" links.
BTW, if you like the Rocket Arena 3 soundtrack, most of those artists are on mp3.com. If you liked the stuff from Silent Warrior, Upbeat Depression, or Masada, there's a lot more good stuff on their pages.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Mr. Curry claims that "you may hear Madonna one time and Jennifer Lopez the next", but what if I wanted to listen to Madonna and got Lopez instead? I want to choose the songs I listen to; I don't want some impersonal AI with no inkling of my emotions to try to decide what I'll like. Curry says that this would be "my radio station", but I don't want a radio station -- I want a collection of my favorite songs that I can sort through at will.
The whole concept behind the digital music revolution has been to empower consumers to be able to listen to the music they want, whenever they want to -- and not just be forcefed the Britney Spears / Blink-182 / Metallica / Moby drivel that record label fat cats want you to pay for. How can you expect a system like the one Mr. Curry proposes not to be abused? Napster is already under substantial pressure from the recording industry to stop distributing free music-on-demand.
Implementing "formats" in Napster might finally make Shawn Fanning and Jon Johansen rich, but it would be a huge step backwards for the digital music revolution. Let's not turn MP3s files into "My Radio Station" -- let's keep them in the independent state they should be in.