TMBG Needs a New Dial-A-Song Machine

Ashileedo writes "Thought this was interesting. They Might Be Giants is down to their last Dial-A-Song machine, a Record-A-Call 675 circa 1983. For those who don't know, They Might Be Giants has a phone number you can call and listen to various recordings they've done" ...which is an American institution, in continual operation since the 1980s. (718)387-6962. "They're open to computer-based answering machines that can handle multiple files easily. Read more about it at theymightbegiants.com." They appeal to "the more technically minded fold out there -- if you know of any over the counter kick ass computer based answering machines that can handle multiple files easily, we're all ears!"

Comments

Re:Why help them, they haven't helped us?

[rjh]

TMBG is a great band. But, they have publically decried Napster and P2P in general. Why should we help them with something that is run 1980's technology?

1. They aren't anti-Napster, nor anti-P2P. What they are against is the dilution of their own online community. When people download TMBG MP3s from Napster, they miss out on the large online community of TMBG fans, which TMBG has put a lot of effort into building. TMBG has little problem with fans sharing songs; TMBG has a big problem with Napster building their online community at the cost of TMBG's online community.

2. Why should we help them out? Because we're geeks. Because we like fixing problems. Because we think that maybe, just maybe, the world would be a better place if things worked right. There's an old axiom about courtesy--you aren't courteous to other people because they're superior people, but because you are. The same applies to helping others.

dial-a-song costs

[john_heidemann]

You forgot the slogan of dial-a-song: "It's free if you call from work"

I've done this with vgetty.

[bmetz]

I've done a dial-in mp3 server with vgetty before. You typed in the first 4 digits of the band's name, then it used Viavoice Outloud to generate a band list, then you chose the right band, then it would tell you the available songs, then you chose a song, and then it streamed the mp3 out of the phone. It's very trivial to implement. It's a $10 voice modem off eBay, a spare pentium, and 2 hours installing vgetty and writing a 100-line perl script.

If anyone is serious about wanting to do it this way I can provide assistance: bmetz (@) yahoo.com