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KPIG is Back - By Subscription Only

Posted by michael on from the pay-to-play dept.

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.

2 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. The alternative? by PRickard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 ====

  2. Not RealAudio by orthogonal · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I'd pay $5/mo for KPIG.

    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?