Napster Licenses "Acoustic Fingerprinting"

n8willis writes: "Well, it was probably only a matter of time, but Reuters reports that Napster has licensed an "acoustic fingerprinting" technology from someone called Relatable to insert into its filtering system. Boy, I just can't wait for the opportunity to pay Napster a monthly fee to share my music with other people. And have them censor me for my trouble, too."

Comments

Re:Opennap?

[Saige]

I don't have a problem admitting there are songs on my HD that are NOT from albums I own. Quite a few are, either from my own rips, or from downloads off of Napster before I found a good mp3 ripper. There are also plenty of remixes of songs, rarities, etc, that I either didn't even know existed, or that I don't know where to get. And sure, some are single songs that I don't want the entire album.

One of the advantages of Napster is that it allows spur-of-the-moment searches of artists that I wouldn't bother digging around for on the web. It allows me to search, say, for remakes of songs by a certain artist, without knowing who might have done them. And all sorts of other things that I could not possibly do by checking out artist web sites, or a store that lets me listen to the music first (though I don't know of any that do that anymore). I can tell you that without Napster, I wouldn't have accidentally discovered Kinnie Starr, and bought both her CD's from her independent label. I wouldn't have stumbled across Rachel Sage while doing a search on "Lilith Fair", and bought her three.

My music purchases have went up by maybe a factor of five since I found Napster. I am not exaggerating here, as you suggest I am. Because I don't listen to the radio that much, so don't get a lot of exposure to new stuff, and I don't care for most of what I do hear.

It took my SO and I two years to fill the last 50 slots in our 200-disc CD changer. That's with both of our purchases, gifts, etc. That was before Napster. Since then, maybe 6 months, we've bought at least that many more. With a list of 20-30 we still want to buy.

I know what I'm doing is technically illegal, and I know the reasons behind it being that way. I don't have a drop of guilt about it though because I'm getting more music I like, and they're getting more money from me.
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Name that tune

[Hilary Rosen]

Hey, this could help with the problem "What's the song that goes mmm-mmm-m-mmm?". Simply hum a few bars, take the acoustic fingerprint and query Napster's db for the artist, songwriter and song title.

It should also put an upper limit on creativity. If there are only 128 bits in the fingerprint then there are only 2^128 possible songs.
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