Slashdot Mirror
KPIG is Back - By Subscription Only
We've noted before that KPIG, one of the oldest internet broadcasters, was one of many to shut down their netcasts after the recent CARP ruling on copyright royalties. Well, they're back, but 128kbit mp3 streams have been replaced with with lower-quality Real streams, and free has been replaced with subscription-only. Gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.
http://www.launch.com
They've got a shitload of stations, and on top of that, you can make their own.
Modding this off-topic is about as useful as pissing in the shower.
Is this a good thing? I never really cared for streaming services much, and I've pretty much always despised realanything. For me, I'd rather have all the media (mainly, mp3) on my HD or accessible over my network, or on CD/tape, whatever.
The RealAudio stream will vary from 32kbps to 64kbps; the old webcast offered a wider choice of formats and bitrates, up to a 128kbps MP3 stream. - So not only has the quality gone down, the cost has gone up!
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Anyone remember the episode where they had a station mascot... the Carp (WKRP WCARP?) and the rival station was WPIG and they had a pig mascot?
Wierd!
Sig missing. Reward.
Remember, we're against all this homogenous crap on radio stations. Now who wants to _PAY_for it? The best agreement is to go directly to artists and ask if they can use, roalty-free songs, like ones found at mp3.com .
Fuck CARP and the RIAA.
Baby if you've ever wondered,
Wondered what ever became of me.
I'm living on the air in Cinncinati,
Cinncinati WKRP.
Got time and tired of packing
And unpacking.
Town to town
Up and down the dial.
Maybe you and me were never meant to be,
But baby think of me once in a while.
I'm at WKRP in Cinncinati.
Real would provide a client for Linux PPC. And then Macromedia would provide a client so I can view all the Kewl advertising.
Shockwave and REAL especially fun for Non-Intel Linux runners...
If the RIAA charges broadcasters more per listener than the advertisers will pay per listener (this is their end goal, afterall) then this is the only choice left for Internet radio. We can pay for a subscription that allows the small broadcasters to survive, or listen to free stations that play mostly terrible music nobody has ever heard of before. That's just how the world works now - write your senators and representative to change it, otherwise be prepared to pay up.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
KPIG? CARP? Heh. So is Andy Mavis going to be the general manager?
*wonders if anybody'll understand the reference*
"Derp de derp."
IMHO radio sucks every which way. I have yet to find a decent radio station that plays not only what I want to hear, when I want to hear it, but w/o commercials.
.02
I am so sick of having to rummage through the channels to find something decent. I don't want talk, I don't want teeny-bopper garbage, and I certainly don't want to hear 80s (they're dead, let them die peacefully).
Just my worthless
soon we're going to be telling stories of the 'good ole days' of the internet. why, i remember when there wasn't that much regulation, and you could do whatever you wanted for free!...that kinda stuff
as the years go on, it just gets more and more frustrating, and there's less and less to do. its a sad sad day when a station that used to stream 128kbit mp3s is forced by the legislature to reduce their quality and charge a subscription.
the only good thing in this is that at least one station was able to come back at all.
on that note: fuck the riaa and the mpaa.
To mp3 streams from the UK...
CARP Isnt going to collect a dime from them.
hey I piss in the shower all the time.
does anyone know how this CARP ruling affects individuals who host shoutcast streams?, i used to listen to low-fi shoutcast a lot before i got broadband and switched to videos, but i just went to the winamp site (3 is out!!) and they still have shoutcast listings
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
But not via RealAudio. Real sucks for so many reasons, allow me to list a few:
It likes to spy on users' listening habits
To prevent the spying, one has to tour through several configuration screen, and sub-screens, and buttons that open sub-sub-screens, making sure to select the right options, options which are described so ambiguously as to make me believe that all of this foofarah is designed to make it too onerous to prevent spying, while still claiming the option(s) are there.
Even after all this, even with all privacy options set correctly, you can't stop it from phoning hone once a month anyway.
It loads slowly.
Its interface is obstrusive, clunky and counter-intuitive, the better to provide ad space. (Compare this to winamp's ability to add skins and maximize or minimize different parts of the app.)
Its codecs appear to be inferior to free codecs, like Lame; its sound quality certainly is.
In short, RealAudio is just too slow, ugly, and nosey for me to run it. No mater how compelling the content.
The only thing in Real's favor is that it hired Andrei Alexandrescu, the C++ template guru.
Offer me KPIG at $5/mo via winamp, and I'm in.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Realplayer is evil..
Anybody notice how hard it is to find the link to download the free version of the player on their site?
I'm never going to achieve Nirvana with my Karma
If you really care about Internet radio and wish to see it remain free, check out the Internet Radio Fairness Act.
Quoted from Voice of Webcasters (VOW):
"Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA), George Nethercutt (R-WA) and Rick Boucher (D-VA) have stepped up to protect small businesses from being unfairly forced out of business by the performance copyright royalties recently affirmed by the Librarian of Congress. They have introduced a bill in the US House of Representatives (HR 5285) that would SAVE INTERNET RADIO (click here to view a copy of this important legislation). In protecting Internet radio, it will help ensure that artists will have a chance to receive fair compensation for their work and that webcasters will have a chance to survive and grow to provide artists with a place to promote their music."
VOW also has a page where you can send a fax to Congress about this legislation.
They're just run off some 10 year olds box in some ass end part of the world like antartica .. The CARP stuff doesnt apply to them for the most part.. They're not actual "for-profit" stations. It's just someones remix of tunes played over and over in Siberia.
Wouldn't it be more cost effective to be using mp3 or ogg vorbis streams than real?
...is my girlfriend getting songs off of Gnutella or Kazaa and sending them to me. It's cheaper than subscription services and much better than regular radio because if I don't like a song, I can delete it. Simple and cheap.
"I think you guys with quotes in your signatures should go have an original thought." -- Dan Miller
KPig Just Plain suck Listen to KFog!!!
KFOG 104.5/97.7 - World Class Rock: Welcome! to Real AAA Radio at it best. Even Better their webcast is STILL FREE!
Listen now at
http://www.kfog.com
Why are people clinging on to these old codecs when new and free ones are emerging? Yes, I am thinking about Ogg Vorbis.
=-kiOwA-> EOF
They are donation based, commercial free, and are also up against CARP, but seem to be hangin' in there.
The official billing for this streaming station is "eclectic intelligent rock" which pretty much fits my listening needs. I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to listen to music - it's not pissed anyone off in my office, so far ;-)). Oh, and support them if you can - they are the future, IMHO.
db
Cig:
ôô
Damn! Looks like I gotta move to the Santa Cruz area if I want to listen to the Pig. Oh well, at least rent is cheap. I can just live in my van down by the river with all the other hippies.
KPIG is a breath of fresh air. It is located in Freedom, CA. It has always had a great mix of classic rock, contemporary country, and a mix of blues, bluegrass, and just plain fresh music you would be unlikely to hear anywhere else.
They are a true pioneer in Internet radio and it saddens me that they have been forced into this.
What's really sad is that they are using RealPlayer. What a piece of crap spyware, I don't bother using it.
At least I can still just tune my FM radio to 107 (onik) 5 to get my fix of TRUE PORK. Some of us should make a hog call to the station, to comment, and send a letter to our legislators, as this is one of the best example's of True Americana getting out to the people of the world.
I may be bad with names, but I'll never forget your IP address
Actually, I go to school at UCSC, and living on campus is $866 a MONTH! So I went off campus and guess what, I am paying $800 a month! Bah. Anyways there are no hippies by the beach, they are all downtown...with the rest of the dirt-children. Move there if you'd like, but the town council blares classical music to keep vagrants off the street. LOL. Only in SC.
Compared to the fees required by the CARP, the cost of bandwith for the 128kbit/s MP3 stream is quite small. If they are going to use a subscription modell, they should try to make everything that else as pleasant as possible. Why not give the user the choice which format he wants to use ? 128kbit MP3, 128kbit OGG and 192kbit MP3 would be a selection of possible formats.
Changing to a subscription modell and changing to RealAudio is a step in the wrong direction. Nobody is going to pay for something that is much worser than the free version that existed before. DRM isn't required by CARP, they just seem to be silly.
Jan
If it is going to be subscription only, will it work with the free Realplayers, or will it require the paid for RealOne? Other subscription sites (eg Bigbrother) only work with the paid for RealOne which is only available for Windows.
DISCLAIMER: I work for Real.
:)
That being said, here's my view from the trenches:
1) IMHO 64K Real8 sounds better than 128K MP3. 32K is actually pretty close. Just my opinion. (It's a hell of a lot better than WMA, but who reading this listens to anything via WMA?
2) One of the big reasons for stations to switch to a lower bitrate Real stream than MP3 is to save $$ on bandwidth, which is a killer. 64K MP3 sucks. 64K Real isn't bad at all, even if you prefer 128K MP3. Still isn't enough to offset the cost. Question for y'all: would you rather have an offer like $9.95 / mo for 128MP3 vs $5.95 / mo for 64 Real? 'cuz I'll give the feedback to the folks who can actually make it happen. The new Helix thing we're doing is actually having some internal effect, and we're trying to surface some other codecs to make the product better.
3) The sad little truth is that most of the folks out there making content don't have a real business model --- it costs them more to make content than people are willing to spend. The internet advertising model is a complete train wreck, and it's worse for radio. Royalty issue aside, local advertiser, who make up the bulk of a radio station's cash, don't like paying for extra exposure to random folks on the Internet, as they don't live locally and thus won't be buying locally.
So what Real is trying to do is package enough of it at a price point that people are willing to spend. That's it. This lets folks like KPIG can actually support themselves for their webcast, and folks like yourselves don't have to subscribe or pledge or whatever to a ton of random sites you listen to off and on.
-e
The days of JJJ playing indie demos has long gone too.
Why not try SER, RRR, PBS, RTR or 2RRR (note, 2RRR's not streamed)
I notice that you're a fellow Curtin student, you might want to check out 100.1 fm I could never pick it up at home (joondalup) but could occasionally from curtin campus.
Well, at least is IS a business plan. I won't pay for low quality though, and that includes 128 kbps of anything.
Since this is /. I just thought I'd plug scenemusic.net -- they mostly play oldskewl MODs/XMs/S3Ms but they've also got a lot of newer format (ie: more modern tech) songs as well. All 100% license free.. it rocks.
That vorbis ogg audio is, in one short little itty-bitty word, bad. It is to me. Check out the xiph phoks test/compare pages and if you can't see how bad ogg is, consider yourself lucky, in so far as you can't hear worth anything. mp3, generally at 192, or VBR -q 0 if you like, 160 minimum, and sometimes, but only rarely, even 80 kbps stereo works well, but ogg? Been there, left after a short time. It's just not very good to those that demand more realism.
Techno and 'electronica' sucks ass.
Thank you.
DISCLAIMER: I work for Real.
:)
;)
:), and (b) you get to bitch at us and we actually have to listen. It's been pretty helpful so far in getting a lot of stuff fixed.
:)
(figured two sep posts would be easier than one long-winded one
Re: adware: RealPlayer is, next to AOL, the most obnoxious ad experience I've ever seen. And I, and many of my colleagues, have told our execs that. At company meetings. And there's some acknowledgement of that; we reduced the streaming ad frequency down to once per 5 minutes last week. That being said, our ad sales group still managed to get tons of cash from Verizon and whomever sells FreeMem Pro (go figure). So we "monetize the free player experience."
My advice, in all seriousness: buy a subscription. By paying us for a service, this means (a) it's ad-free (and thus pretty useable
Re: spyware: it is, but we're crappy at spying. Legal is also pretty good about making sure we don't keep what we shouldn't. I know it's annoying, but as per above, creating a service that goes through Real (and thus potentially creates a log entry) is often the fastest way to get something to market. My advice: again, buy a subscription. Then ya get to bitch.
PS - you probably may also want to stop using Credit Cards... VISA / MC are much better spies than we are. They sell your purchases to whomever wants 'em. Which means when you want to launch a direct mail campaign to sell your cool subscription service and need names and addresses of people who have purchased similar content before, guess where you get the names and addresses from? Lovely, ain't it?
-e
Their only option was to align with a big player like Real...who could afford the CARP stuff. Only the big players will be left standing....this is the way that the RIAA wants things and we all know that we (they?) have the best government that money can BUY! It's sad to see the 'net prostituted like they're doing to it. It had real promise as everyman's nirvana, but big business in concert with the politicians they've bought and paid for are ruining it. In many ways the early 2000 era U.S. government is worse then the late 1900's government of the Soviet Union. At least the soviets knew that their govt. was corrupt. The U.S. citizens still believe the bullshit that's being told them.
Ok, so I think this is a big deal, but in the immortal words of George Costanza, "the worlds are colliding!"
I get (or...got?) kpig from where I live, since it's broadcast from Watsonville. It covers most of the Monterey Peninsula and Santa Cruz and a bit towards San Jose and possibly Salinas. The CTO of my ISP has a kpig bumper sticker. I thought we used to host their site, it must be another radio station in town. They're being hosted in Santa Cruz.
KPIG has great music of the country/folk variety with a 90's twist. And in place of real comercials they had hilarious parodies and songs. It was stuff I could listen to, my dad could listen to, and my grandfather could listen to. Pretty impressive. Songs with lyrics like "I thought she's gonna steal my heart, she only stole my double-wide" and "When....exactly....did we...become white trash?"
After 10pm they had the "dirty boogie"; songs you wouldn't want any young virgin ears to hear but they were pretty damn funny/explicit (www.dirtyboogie.com). I belive the station is 107 oink 5, as the DJ's called it.
The point is, it wasn't your average radio station. Many people were upset when they went off the air, and the same thing happened to KAZU, broadcasting from Pacific Grove. They had great eclectic music on there. Now it's just NPR...
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
"He's back! In Hog form!" ...ok, for those of you who have listened to kpig, this is exatly the type of bad pun they'd...ah fuck it
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
..are so called 'drunk stations', last for few hours, have the best jokes/talks, and usually funny stuff in general, and top that with classic boozing rock.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Realism?? You are talking about codecs that make major asumptions about what people can/cannot hear and then cut out sound based on those assumptions. If you wanted realism you'd do what all true audiophiles do, see the band live or get a bloody phonograph.
is not a priority so why bother...
it is an information, communation, office productivity, number cruncher, and sometimes graphics editor...
the music & video is just a fringe benefit...
Born stupid, yes, like everyone, but what's your excuse for still being stupid?
There's always peercast, its looking really good recently, runs on windows and linux, supports Ogg Vorbis and has a ton of free radio stations out there, growing daily.
check it out, who needs all this paid subscriber rubbish.
WFMU has a 128kb MP3 stream in addition to real radio waves and is free. How they do it? They rely on donations from their listeners and hold a biannual record fair, where they sell some of their records. They get most of their donations from their annual on-air fund-raising marathon. They have gotten along this way for pretty long. Others should follow them.
I've just started messing around with Shoutcast streaming at home (into my Rio Receiver -- very nice!), and am amazed at the quality of independent stations out there. Like the bumper sticker on RadioParadise's monitor says, "Corporate Radio Sucks." I'd forgotten what it *could* be like.
That said, I'm honestly a little reluctant to make donations to any of these, for fear they'll just have to close up in October, anyway. But I've been wondering about two possible ways out, beyond requiring a subscription.
1) Can internet broadcasters join up with the Public Broadcasting System? They're already complying with the no-commercial ideals of PBS, and many are already accepting listener support via PayPal and such. What would it take to get some kind of formal support from PBS, in the form of grant dollars, legal support, technical advice, etc.? PBS has TV and Radio stations, maybe it's time they had an Internet arm, as well.
2) From what I understand, the most exorbitant fees are levied against internet-only broadcasters. Established radio stations (broadcasting via electromagnetic waves, insted of ethernet pulses) are exempt, or at least get to pay much lower fees. With the FCC trying to establish low-power radio stations (at one point, I'm not sure whether it's been quashed by ClearChannel or not), could stations like RadioParadise or KPIG simply apply for a low-power license, somewhere (not necessarily where their studio is), and use that as justification for lower rates?
Maybe they could combine the two?
Other ideas:
* Subsidies from big internet companies. Maybe AOL, Cox, AT&T, COVAD, etc. could pony up some money to help pay the fees, since, after all, the existence of quality streams will only get more people interested in broadband services.
* Tiered subscription models. Maybe lower rates for free streams, subsidized by people subscribing for higher bitrates? I figure if you're listening 4 hours a day, 15 songs per hour, it comes out to only $12 a month, or so.
Maybe we need plugins for WinAmp (or JReceiver or whatever) to give users a monthly report of how much they've listened, and to suggest a donation amount consistent with that usage. I know that if I can be shown that I've listened to $30 worth of internet radio in the last, say, 3 months, that I'd have no problem making a donation in that amount.
Are there any actual Internet streamers out there who can comment, on these questions or the overall story?
Not only that, but now its a lesser quality than when it was free? Its like when Everquest raised the system requirements for the game (while reducing performance), and then raised subscription rates.
Ok, not really, but that sucked too.
WXYC Chapel Hill, the first radio station to broadcast on the Internet, is still online, though struggling. Their broadcasts are only RealPlayer, but they're free, and the quality of the G2 stream is adequate. WXYC is pretty much the most diverse and interesting Internet radio stream out there.
Gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.
Agreed. And what we gotta do is get rid of the stupid CARP, overturn the unconstitutional DMCA and start making the RIAA our bitch.
KPIG is a pretty good station and it's nice to see they're streaming again, but to me, the sacrifices (shitty quality, REAL streams and the subscription -- at least it's commercial free) seem like too much was given away to please the RIAA. I hope this is only a short-term solution while their lawyers are busy trying to overturn the CARP/DMCA rulings. But I won't hold my breath.
e
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
For me, listening to radio (like many things) is about control. In radio's case, however, it is about relinquishing that control. There is something freeing about allowing someone else to plot the creative journey that I find very important in my own design process. I guess it just allows me to free up some bandwidth and not have to worry about what I am going to listen to next. My two favorites are http://www.radioio.org which now is asking for donations and my local http://www.radio1190.org. The former plays a diverse mix of progressive music and the latter plays a VERY diverse range of College radio. Both have multiple format and bandwidth options and are pretty reliable. Resistance is futile...
The line between terrorist and patriot depends on which side of the molatov cocktail you are on.
The world's first FM Stereo rock station (1976) has had a pig as its mascot since inception.
The original 1967 bumper sticker had "Sweetmeat" wearing sunglasses and headphones, with a "hand rolled cigarette" in his mouth.
Real Rock Radio
They also opened the "Real Rock Cafe" and was sued by the Hard Rock Cafe, who lost. KSKE was Real Rock Radio YEARS before the bozos that started the "Hard Food Cafe" got going.
1967, not 1976
If basic cable in your area costs $80
Basic cable television service probably doesn't cost that much. dacarr talked abour $40-$80, and in some areas, cable modem service does cost that much, at least in part because some local cable monopolies will offer cable modem service only to basic cable television subscribers.
you should move.
That would cost even more, to the tune of $200,000. Give the poor fellow 30 years to pay it off with interest, and it still costs at least $600 a month.
Will I retire or break 10K?
but.... I like jews!
With the FCC trying to establish low-power radio stations (at one point, I'm not sure whether it's been quashed by ClearChannel or not)
Low-power FM radio is dead, but I cannot state conclusively as to whether Clear Channel Communications was responsible. Applications for low-power FM radio must be filed within a five-day window. The FCC hasn't opened any such windows in over a year and doesn't plan to open any more windows for filing low-power FM radio license applications in the foreseeable future.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Radio Paradise is related to KPIG and is a decent alternative to my lousy local radio stations. I read about them in Linux Journal. They use the same open source program to control and web-cast the station as KPIG. MP3 stream is available too. http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5725 www.radioparadise.com
The Internet Radio Fairness Act has been introduced in the House of Representatives. It's very important to send a fax message to your congressmembers to let them know how you stand on this issue. Click here to send a fax now.
http://www.voiceofwebcasters.org/smallwebfax.htm
Note: you don't need a fax machine - it is all done through the link above...
Well I dunno if they were just testing the waters or what. But as i'm writing this i'm listening to them via winamp @ 128kb/s as found on their Listen page on their site.
They started in 1967, not 1976.
1976 was the last time they updated their playlist.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
I figure it would be very popular with the slashdot croud....
...is that the mascot for WKRP in Cincinnati was the carp, and their major rival radio station was WPIG.
PRAISE THE LARD PIGGIES!
There are only two realistic ways to get what you want to hear, when you want to hear it, without commercials: Streaming audio services where you pay per song you hear which pays the costs of having all the music available you want to hear. Your home entertainment system where you purchase the music and play it yourself. Commercials are a necessary evil. Think public broadcasting pledge drives and subscription services if you don't believe me. Most people would rather put up with commercials than fork out money from their own pocket directly. There has to be some way to cover the expenses of purchasing all the music that is likely to be desired by listeners, paying the per-play copyright fee, and maintaining all the equipment involved in broadcasting to listeners. I would agree that I don't want to listen to talk radio. I could live without teeny-bopper tunes, but I do enjoy some of the 80's music. I also enjoy techno, trance, and electronica -- which are considered by some to be too repetitive and noisy. You and I are each unique individuals with unique tastes. No commercial radio station could comply with both our tastes simultaneously. So we suffer with the compromise that exists.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Is there any reason this needs to be a PDF? Is formatting really more important than the words and accessibility?
mplayer can supposedly use Real's codec binaries. Haven't tried it myself, though, since getting ahold of Real's codec binaries involved so many hoops to jump through.
Rant Radio has been free for a very long time and will continue to be. Industrial music (VNV Nation, Berzerker, etc), with permission from the record companies to be able to rebroadcast for free. I don't see why others can't seem to figure out that it's completely possible to survive without going to a crappy medium like Real and having to charge subscription rates.
"Full sources for linux currently runs to about 200kB compressed" --Linus Torvalds 31-Jan-1992
WFHB in Bloomington Indiana was being multicast on the Mbone in May of 1994. One of the earliest live music performances on the internet took place via WFHB in June of 1994, documented in a Bloomington Arts magazine, the Ryder.
I know - I did it. The sfotware used is called VAT (Visual Audio Tool) from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (and others) I ran a patch cord from our lab's radio receiver to an SGI IRIS 4D30 (called nano.cica.indiana.edu) and onto the Mbone. The live broadcast had listeners from as far away as Melbourne Australia, which the band thought was really cool.
As far as I know the first live music on the internet was also via the Mbone. A band called "Severe Tire Damage" did regular multicasts from Digital's facility at Xerox/Palo Alto Resarch Center. At least that is what the regular "Radio Free VAT" people (mostly geeks from Argonne labs patching their CD players into their SPARCstations or SGI INDY workstations. Radio Free VAT was programmed by people anywhere in the world on a sign up basis - if you wanted to play some music for a while you could easily get a slot
.
In some sense the guys at Argonne have claim to the first internet radio stations.
The Mbone tools are still available for download. I have no idea if people are still regularly multicasting their music picks, but it is very easy to do.
- for releasing a version of software for linux the OS that made possible for me to "be" here in the last 3 or so years;
:-)
:-)
- for making it free (though you probably thought about the little revenues you'd get in case you charged for it);
- for doing a reasonable job and being the only widely available format for some time (Quicktime hasn't natively happened yet, mpg is ok but less frequent, wma - hah, yeah, right);
- for not being Microsoft...
- for not being like Microsoft...
Finally, I hope you -- and everyone that struggles to make a living -- manage to find a way to make it... Ads seems to work for Opera, I hope you guys find a way, too.