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.
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.
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
To mp3 streams from the UK...
CARP Isnt going to collect a dime from them.
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?
Anyway, the issue is not that they're back so much as THIS IS WHAT THEY HAD TO DO to be back. Be suitably offended.
Lastly WE are not against anything. Remember that. You do not speak for me.
Lack of creativity is no excuse for not having a
And that is why the RIAA makes the rules, and you and I we live by them. For they have stood united against us, while we stand divided, to fall.
As Benjamin Franklin once said, "We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang seperately."
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
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 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
They do. The Real client works decently. Check out this link on imaclinux.net for info on how to install it. The information might be a little stale but the links on the page are still good and should get you what you want.
Now click here for a better radio station to listen to, KGO
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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.