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Audiogalaxy Returns as Pay Service
Triv writes "I just got an email from Audiogalaxy explaining how they have come back from the dead as a subscription service, labelled as Rhapsody."
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p2p for free for me
Usenet has *much* better quality of music, complete albums, .nfo files, cover scans, and it's not hard to get a request posted.
Fucking pay services. Course, try explaining to some asshole coworker how to use GrabIt -- despite being easy as poop, they'll never get it.
to know the future of this sucker.
I got a 1600 on the SATs.
Here's a picture
Woo, come here Microsoft, I want to rent a new OS!
All I ever used from this is their "FTP search" (where I am is heavily firewalled, so this is my only way to get music). AG's ftp search has been down forever though. Does anybody know of a good alternative?
See subj
Haven't they learned anything? Subscription in this
form doesn't work as a businessmodel!
...for 8 days at least. I predict they'll see a massive drop-off in users then.
Does anyone see any future in subscription services, or will we stay in p2p anarchy for the rest of our days (or until the megacorporations take the networks down)?
So now they pay a royalty to the artists, they claim that you'll have access to 17,000+ songs/7,000+ artists guilt free for less than the cost of one CD per month. I'm not going near it with a ten foot pole, but I don't think that's a terrible way to go about the business of providing a p2p network.
Try not being an idiot. That usually works.
No it does not (at least their site says so, didn't check for myself)
"No viruses or adware" - quoted from their site
- mescaline - its the only way to fly -
they better hope they don't use MP3 streaming cause they're gonna find out real fast that its succeptible to stream ripping.
Even if the stream can't be ripped directly -- it's been said millions of times - if you can hear it, you can record it.
unzip; strip; touch; grep; mount; fsck; yes; more; fsck; umount; make clean; sleep
Hope this helps!
Seriously. Is such a paid, streaming content model really a viable solution? When Thomas Jefferson put the idea of intellectual property into the Constitution of the United States, he did so because he realized that information leaks; once people learn something, they can reuse that knowledge. If there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. Writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artists would not . So in the US Constitution, it says: The reason why this is important is spelled out in Jefferson's own writings: His assumptions are based on the fact that you can not control what people do with information that you give to them. If you hand someone a book, they can transcribe it. If you give someone a physical invention, they can disassemble it. But if you give them a new form of media, say, a song on a copy-protected CD, and they can no longer listen to it except on approved devices that they cannot copy from, why should the government provide the same protection to you? The record companies and movie studios want to have their cake and eat it too. They want traditional copyright protection, technological copyright protection, and a government guarantee of technological copyright protection. They want to deprive all those bearded Linux hippies their DeCSS, so they can't watch bootleg Buffy the Vanpire Slayer DVDs in their parents' basement. But if they have technological protection, then why should the government give them traditional protection? It was only there because information was hard to protect as property.
How far are we going to let the copyrighters go? We need to remind people that copyright, like most laws in the US, is a balance between two forces, and the scale should not be tipped too far to one side.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It's tangible enough if I always happen to want to listen to the music at a computer. This is, for most people, not the case. What I want to be able to do is download the music, so I can put it on my portable player, or, maybe even play it on one of my linux boxes (since this is a windows only program that would be out of the question).
Will I pay $10/month for an on-line music service, yes. In fact I already have done this, using emusic. And with that service I get mp3's that I can download, move around, and enjoy wherever I want. Hell, I'd probably pay up to $20/month if the quality of the music was good enough and diverse enough to make me want to keep coming back for more.
This will flop, just like all the other ones. The logic espoused by the record labels will be that they could make money on this sort of service if it wasn't for all those P2P pirates. In reality it is simply a matter of them not providing a quality service. I love that my privacy and freedom will get trampled because they can't make a quality service. My message to the RIAA: give us what we want, and we will pay for it. Don't give us what we want, and YOU will pay for it.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
-davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
I know being legal isn't a big point on Slashdot. But, with everyone on here whining for a legal way to get music electronically, this is one. It may not be the best, but it's the beginning of options.
Not everyone wants to steal, steal, steal....
So what's going to stop me from firing up Sound Forge, record from the wave device, encode to MP3, and add it to my MP3 directory?
If someone desperately wants a song, I'm sure they wouldn't mind taking a few extra minutes doing that.
I pay for cable to watch on my TV, which is where I watch television anyhow. On the other hand, with this service I'd be paying to listen to music on my computer which is not where I listen to it. I listen to music on my stereo system, or in my car, or on my portable when I go for a walk. I'm not about to pay money for a service that makes me listen to music in a way that is inconvenient to my life.
Is this worth $10/month over free Kazaa? Not in its current form. It's way worthwhile if I can actually download music in a non-proprietary protected format. Hell, it's worth $20/month. Why? Because with Kazaa and the like, I have to dig to find the music I want, it's not always in good quality, and it's never organized as an album. I will pay for that convenience, and I think a lot of people would. I also think most people would rather that the artists were getting money and would prefer to pay a little and insure that than just outright steal the stuff.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I guess these will be illegal pretty soon
This isn't audiogalaxy's work... This is an (old) service from listen.com, which has been in existence for at least 6-8 months (if not more, I don't remember).
:(
Since I never heard anything about listen.com buying audiogalaxy, it might just be audiogalaxy branding listen.com's service. (That's what speakeasy (my isp) does.)
It's really sad that audiogaxy isn't doing there own thing: their service was so cool
Maan
And as such, again you have a tangible product. Can you save the stream as a wav or mp3 ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
large archive, and if there's something i want and they don't have, they try to get it
i get to choose the quality: 64kpbs mono for a quick preview to cd-quality, with some bitrates in between
nice and/or usable (+quick) interface with working search function (ever tried searching for A on cddb or freedb?)
since they'll generate a user profile based on my downloads anyway, they could suggest other artists (like amazon)
pricing could (loosely) depend on traffic, so previews would be cheap or free and high-quality would still cost less than the cd
lyrics, links, booklets, etc.
i'm sure you can think of more...
If they would charge $0.25 per download and guarantee a fast connection and a good quality song, then I can see a pay service working. Most people can fork over 25 cents without thinking twice, it's a low enough amount of money. Any more than that though, and you start to think "is it worth this or do I just log onto kazaa?" With this new service, $10/month is about 40 downloads at 25 cents each. I never download that much music in a month, I don't think many people do. They need to rethink their business plan here.
The record companies need to realize that they have to charge near FREE prices in order for people to go for it. Because the other alternative is free. They also need suck it up and accept the fact that they probably won't make the billions they used to make. If they don't go with the times they are going to suffer.
Now I'm not talking about Audiogalaxy directly, I'm talking about the recording companies who set the high royalty fees. They are the ones that need to seriously look at what they are doing.
Don't fight technology, use it to your advantage. And use it wisely.
"Usenet has *much* better quality of music..."
How do you know this? Are you a subscriber to this new service or are you just trolling?
"Rhapsody is a subscription service that pays musicians, record labels, publishers, and songwriters for the music you listen to"
My guess is that it's safe to remove "musicians" and "songwriters" from that list, and just admit to the fact that 99.999% of your monthly $9.95 goes directly to "record labels" and "publishers". Which brings me to another point: Why the f#% should "publishers" get any money? Audiogalaxy/Rhapsody is doing all the publishing here....
Anyway, this kind of business model doesn't work. People still like to actually get to keep what they buy. I'm guessing on bankrupcy within 3 months....
Launch.com
'nuff said.
When I first heard of this service (listen.com, but branded through multiple vendors), I thought it would be another useless service with limited selection and absurd restrictions, but I was wrong.
I signed up for it a few days ago, after hearing about it on joelonsoftware.com and dont want to give it up now. I can just look up an artist, add everything they've ever performed to my playlist and start playing.
Its awesome being able to go through the billboard hits for the last decade and add all of the hits to my playlist and start feeling nostalgic.
Why dont you guys open your minds a little with this one.
"I just got an email from Audiogalaxy explaining how they have come back from the dead..."
Please, will someone do an exorcism to put them out of their misery quickly?
testing, please ignore
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
If you don't like breaking the law and/or to a certain degree see that music should be either bought by you or given to you by the author ( RIAA, DMCA[, ABCD and the rest of the alphabet soup] is way too restrictive and enforce silly laws that doesn't protect the artist ... ERROR! BUFFER OVERFLOW *** WARNING! CPU TEMPERATURE WAY TO HIGH ...) you should use a subscription service such as emusic which lets you download the music. Or you could by the actual records and rip them (which according to some copyright notice isn't legal, under no circumstances.)
Look a monkey!
Q: Is Rhapsody (aka Audiogalaxy) dead/dying?
A: Yes. Please see usenet for further mp3 needs.
(Yes, this is from Rhapsody. It's not goatse or anything like that.)
BTW, this service absolutely sucks. Yeah, it has nice quality, but it doesn't have any of the songs I used Audiogalaxy for, because they're too obscure for the recording industry to know about. ("Transfusion", anyone? "Zoomin' down the highway, doing 79...")
This is just a slightly-rebranded version of listen.com's Rhapsody, and the price is the same, so I don't see how this is likely to save AudioGalaxy.
Too bad, I was feeling like plundering anything I could during the free period...
Warning, I'm really pissed off.
Audiogalaxy Satellite(save for the eventual spyware)was one the most amazing things ever to happen on the internet. On the original service I was able to find new artists and sample their music in full before making a purchase decision. This included very indenpendant artists that I would have never heard on the radio and certainly aren't available on Rhapsody.
I was able to find all the tracks from the soundtrack to the movie Real Genius, which is one of my favourites. The soundtrack wasn't ever even released for purchase!
All in all I bought a large handfull of discs that I never would have before thanks to their service. Hell, some of the artists I would have never discovered had it not been for the "If you like this artist, try this one" feature. On Satellite, it seemed, no album/musician/track was too obscure to be found.
On the other hand, Rhapsody costs $10 a month. You can't download anything. It uses WMA for encoding. Music is only added as the central company adds it, which makes it very difficult for non mainstream music to compete. You can't share anything. None of this music(which you are paying for)can be downloaded to a portable mp3 player. Last I checked, Radiohead wasn't available as a listening option. I looked around in the David Bowie category and sauntered up to the Low album, which is a favorite of mine. It was missing half the tracks.
This is f*cking rediculous. I would have been quite happy if they could just revive Satellite with a subscription system, paying the artists as they go for downloads. It doesn't seem so farfetched to me anyway. Once again this situation gives the RIAA way too much power and leverage. And the modern brilliance of taking your independant record, releasing it on P2P, and watching your music propagate throughout the networks and into people's view is dead.
For $10 a month, go to a local record store that lets you listen to CDs, and check shit out for free. Then look for a used copy, and give the RIAA the hot and bothered middle finger.
I've used audiogalaxy ever since it's launch. It was my only source for music. I refuse to buy cd's, at least not the ones under RIAA labels. When they shut down, I was lost. I can't bring myself to using a P2P. The problem with them is that they make it too easy for anybody to use, making the networks crowded, unreliable, slow, etc. At least with AG, you had to have a certain degree of ftp knowledge etc., something that kept the teenie boppers off and the geeks in control. Now I find myself struggling to find music. Screw you AG, screw you.
I also have a question? What is to prevent somebody from releasing some open source software that is a clone of AG? Surely it is not complicated, basically a database with online addition capabilities, search functions, and a crawler. Legal implications? If there was an easy to use open source solution, the databases would be created faster than the legal process works, something that happened with p2p clients.
The great thing about the original Audiogalaxy was it was a great place to find hard-to-find music. I doubt all those people who were previously sharing 'underground' stuff are going to clamor to sign up so they can stream the latest Springsteen album.
The good
- large catalog
- good editorial content & categorization
- sound quality
- files start playing very quickly
The badMany of the "it sucks 'cause it's streaming" critics here don't get it. It's not about having a bunch of songs to download & collect as tangible property (that would be a product). This is a service, like a night in a hotel, a taxi ride, a massage, Netflix, cable TV, a DVD rental from blockbuster, renting an apartment. When you think about it, this model may make more sense, you don't really own copyrighted music when you buy a CD (if you think I'm wrong, try to copy & sell it to people). Since you no longer really need CDs to listen to it, why not move away from buying the music and start just listening to it, at no marginal cost.
The problem with this is that people like to collect music. It is a big source of their identity. They like the experience of choosing a piece of music to buy, and knowing it's always there.
There was a big short-sighted article on Salon a while ago about how great Netflix is, and how music services should be like this. The problem with the analogy is that DVDs are copy protected in such a way that most people don't even bother to try and that people only want to experience movies a few times, and always in the foreground. You can listen to good music over and over, and in the background while you work, drive, cook, whatever. People generally don't "steal" their netflix movies. People will "steal" any music they possibly can.
I've had fun with Rhapsody these last few weeks. I've discovered some new stuff and listened to some old stuff I haven't heard for a long time. But because people like to collect thier music, they can't make it possible for me to download, burn, and listen where I want to (the car, mostly). Someone could sign up (or do the free trial, even) download everything they could possibly want and then cancel their subscription. As a result, I'm probably not going to sign up.
Imagine a future where you have a low montly "media bill" that allows you to see what you want, when you want, listen to what you want, where you want and with no additional cost for the next thing. I would love it and actually want to pay for it. Would you?
But since I have the eyes of fellow Usenet users allow me to try again.
Bottom line: Anyone that has used Usenet knows it is supperior to P2P networks.
The only advantage that P2P networks enjoy over Usenet is the ability to find whatever you are looking for immediatly. With Usenet if you want something obscure you will probably not find it today. But the beauty of usenet is if you request it, and be patient it will be posted. And during that time you will find tons of stuff to peak your interest. And the audio quality is almost always supperior to P2P networks.
That being the case here is my question.
Why is it that the media says NOTHING of usenet?
I pick up the newspaper and P2P was invented by Satan himself. But usenet is not mentioned anywhere.
I am not complaining mind you. I have always just kinda shook my head whenever I read about the evils of P2P wondering this.
Once again... I'm willing to pay, but I have to GET something as good as I used to get.
There's no way that "Over 17,000 albums by over 7,000 top artists" is going to come close to the richness and variety we got from of individual fans trading their individual favorites.
I am now going to make a quick test on four items I obtained from the "real" Audiogalaxy a few months ago. This is an authentic test, I do not know yet what I am going to find. Bernard Cribbins, 'Ole in the Ground; Harry Champion, "I'm Enerey the Eighth;" Nervous Norvus, "Ape Call;" and the MIT Chorallaries, "We Are The Engineers."
Well, it seems you can't search for individual titles unless you actually join, but with great labor you can page through the artist list, and I find:
Bernard Cribbins: Nope.
Harry Champion: Nope.
Nervous Norvus: Nope.
The MIT Chorallaries: Nope.
Now, someone is saying "What kind of market is there for the MIT Chorallaries, for pete's sake?" Well, all I can say is, when Audiogalaxy was for real, _I_ wanted to hear them and _someone_ out there wanted to share them.
Without SHARING, all you're ever going to get is Britney Spears and Elvis Presley.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
that people actually LIVE in montana? I thought it was some sort of conspiricy...
(Montana it's made of... people!)
I used many different audio searches back in the day, including Audiogalaxy back when it was simply an FTP search engine; it used to scan networks for FTP servers, trying different usernames and passwords, and it was surprisingly successful. Then once they introduced the Satellite, Audiogalaxy stood out as the only place on the Internet where you could find obscure music. If I heard a song on SomaFM, by an artist I had never heard of, I could search for that artist on Audiogalaxy and download all their songs; it might take a week or two before the correct user signed on :D, but I'd eventually get the music. And if I liked it, I could go buy that artist's CD.
:D)
Now, Audiogalaxy has become a neo-Pressplay or Musicnet. It's a "filter-in" music search, except that it's only popular artists from the major labels represented there. I don't care about the streaming, or anything else; I'm just saddened that Audiogalaxy no longer offers the obscure music it was once famous for, and I can't even find out about that obscure music anymore because Soma FM is down.
AG, it seems, has sold out. Napster, obviously, sucks; FastTrack can hack your registry; the only realistic filesharing protocol left for Linux users is Gnutella, and it of course has scaling problems. As far as Linux users are concerned, then, the RIAA has certainly achieved its goal of blocking filesharing - but when they stop selling records, because nobody knows what to buy anymore, it shall be a problem. (You know, I almost wish that the Copyright Royalty Arbitration (CRAP) panel had required mandatory royalties for old-school radio, too - I'd just love to see the expression on the RIAA dudes' faces when their record sales drop 90%, because nobody knows what records to buy anymore.
TV, especially pay per view, is a pay-for-content-subscription model and it seems to work okay. Why is everyone so convinced it won't work for music?
I realize that I am in the minority here on Slashdot when it comes to my opinions about IP law, but there are some serious flaws in your logic. For example,
if they have technological protection, then why should the government give them traditional protection? It was only there because information was hard to protect as property.
By that reasoning, if I buy better locks and window bars for my house the police should no longer patrol around my house. The only reason they drive around my neighborhood is that it's so easy to break into houses and steal things, right?
Technological protection isn't intended to be a replacement for legal protection. The fact is that there is widespread, blatant disregard for the existing laws when it comes to copying intellectual property, and new digital technologies are making it easier and easier. And while new laws are in the pipeline it is unlikely that the U.S. government will provide additional enforcement. So companies that own the rights to digital music recordings (for example) want to find new ways to protect their property. They paid for the creation of the music, and they did that in order to be able to sell it and make a profit, and they want to be compensated when people use their property. This is true of both huge corporations and independent producers. And of software developers, movie producers, etc. etc. etc.
I have a lot of trouble understanding the current furor over all of this. It's as if the citizens of a city with a high crime rate are standing up and shouting "This isn't fair! We have been able to steal things for years and years without fear of being arrested, and now they are passing new laws and enforcing the old ones, and people are installing new security systems in their houses to keep us out! We have done it for so long that we now have a RIGHT to steal things!
I would love to see a poll taken about people's attitudes about this issue. I'd be willing to bet that there would be a direct, inverse correlation between 1) dislike for IP laws and technological copy protection and 2) the amount of creative work that a person has done. The more truly creative work that a person has produced in their lifetime, the more they would be in favor of strong copyright protection, both legal and technological.
And that would produce an indirect correlation with age. The younger the person, the less genuinely creative work they would have done and the more likely they would be to think that it is their "right" to make free copies of other people's creative work.
That, as far as I am concerned, is the "Unbelievable Crap".
Warning: Counsciousness streaming ahead:
OK, its running now. Things I'm wanting to listen to are actually in the library. (Loreena McKennit and great Big Sea.) Since I'm living in radio hell at the moment (3 radio stations: 2 country (bad country -- I like the good stuff), and one POP station that still plays Bon Jovi on a regular basis.), Net Radio and Live365 are/was my lifeline. But AudioGalaxy/Rhapsody is offering music I'd like to listen to. What is wrong with tossing them 10$ a month? I haven't decide to do this yet, but I may. We'll see what happens on the 16th. Will I still want to use the service? That is the big question. If so, I'll pay the price.
What would i like to see? I'd like to be able to take my playlist and "shuffle" it.
I'd like for the interface wot work better in 800x600.
Stop the presses: While looking at Rhapsody to accurately explain a small gripe, I found out how to shuffle the playlist. (Actions > Playlist > Shuffle. OR The shuffle button.)
Back to gripes...
The interface could be more eye appealing. yea I know, Totally subjective.
I also want a shuffle that works. It seems that It just plays right down the playlist...
Ok, that is enough stream of conscious. Back to work...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
- Good: Well, from the screenshots at AG's site, the interface looks well designed, though it does fill the entire screen in a manner
which is ill-suited for those who just want a music player. Like me. There better be a "compact" mode.
- Bad: From the list of available artists, I'd say they have a rather impressive collection for a RIAA-stomped file sharing service
making a comeback. Except of course we're now limited to a mere 300000 or so (probably fewer) tracks, and it's not possible to add your
own music to the mix anymore, download remixes, or download rare tracks that are hard to find elsewhere, legally or illegally - just the
stuff I used to use AG for.
- Good: They've got a free preview period. Which doesn't require you to give away CC details. I figure lots of people will sign up for
the preview only to dump it 2-20 hours later or when the preview runs out, whichever is sooner.
- Bad: It's no longer free. Well of course it's not, the users aren't providing the content anymore! Though $9.95/mo would be quite
nice provided the downloads were high-quality MP3 or OGG's - heck, even WMA's (wo DRM) would be preferable to the streaming shit they
currently offer. Which brings us right down to
...
- Bad: STREAMS! God, don't we all hate those things? Can't save them. Will definately require a special program to download and play, which means bugging down our systems with even more apps, probably loaded with DRM. Also, most of us aren't on connections that can handle a constant speed of 128-192kbps, especially not people living far away from the servers (which will be centralized, no doubt).
- Bad: No way to burn music to a CD (apart from analog copying - if I can hear it, I can record it) or otherwise get those streams to somewhere without an Internet connection. That thing alone renders the service utterly and completely useless to me as a music consumer. I believe I'm not alone in feeling that way.
- Bad: It's Windows only. No further explanation or comment req'd on that one
...
- Bad: It's only available in the US due to licensing restrictions. I mentioned above that not being able to carry stream music with rendered the service useless to me - well, since I live in Sweden, this "US only" thing kind of ruins it a little more.
Conclusion: This will crash and burn. It doesn't even try very hard to succeed, the people running AG know what it takes to please the crowds who want UNRESTRICTED, FREE FILE SHARING, not limited access to a closed library of songs from a relatively small selection of artists. This will fail, unless lots of people figure the music that's available is enough for them, and that they can live with the obvious drawbacks and restrictions - in the light that it is still quite possible and easy to get those very same tracks in MP3 or OGG format through any of the file sharing services still available and thriving. I might mention Gnutella, I might mention Direct Connect.Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
rhapsody is nothing new... this service was online like months ago.
Well I guess this explains why Britain has never had any art or culture or scientific discoveries to speak of ... Sorry - I know there is some good art, literature, music and science being made in the USA today. I'm just saying you're over-stating your point.
... But if you give them a new form of media, say, a song on a copy-protected CD, and they can no longer listen to it except on approved devices that they cannot copy from, why should the government provide the same protection to you?
I think you missed this part: His assumptions are based on the fact that you can not control what people do with information that you give to them
In other words, your sarcastic yammering is moot, had you read my entire post. Thanks for paying attention.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
So, why don't you go look a giFT horse in the mouth?
At this moment, there are 720 users on the giFT OpenFT network, sharing a total of 5.2 terabytes of files. Sure, it's not as much as Kazaa...but it works under Linux and MacOSX and Kazaa doesn't. And it's not as much as Gnutella...but it works at all and Gnutella often doesn't. And the more people use it, the more useful it becomes. (Yeah, you do have to get it from CVS, and update frequently, but the installation instruction page has tips for doing that and it's really quite easy.)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
$0.00/month or $0,000.00/year.
...before reading the comments here. I do agree that high quality streams in an open format (not Windoze specific, DRM maybe OK) to any number of convenient devices (computer, stereo, portable, car) would probably also earn my money. But anyway, here's my email:
;)
Hi,
Just wanted to let you know that I applaud your launch of the Rhapsody service but that it still falls short of what I'd need to see to subscribe. I'd be willing to pay more, say $24.95 a month or so with a 1-yr contract, for:
1) Cutting edge compression - high quality MP4s ideally, as MP3 really does not provide a good quality/size ratio in comparison and MP4 is not platform specific.
2) Full access to the files for offline use, burning, or transfer (*NO* restrictions).
3) Request lists, especially for classical music (I understand there are licensing issues but I'm fairly sure your audiophile clientele would be willing to pay more for a great selection of classical and jazz music, ie, not just "Mozart for Dummies" type stuff
The benefits for the customer (me) are obvious:
1) It would still be much easier to simply download tracks than to find compression software, type in the track information, and rip/compress the tracks myself.
2) Searching and sampling music would be much more convenient than at most stores.
3) My entire music library would be instantly accessible and more easily transferred to other media.
I hope that Rhapsody does well but I'll wait for a more flexible service, even if it costs more, before I give up the free services that work nearly as well (I miss the old Audio Galaxy, of course!).
Thanks for your time,
-Jeremy Black
Pittsburgh Symphony
In the car.
On the tram/train.
Family cabin (no phone, not even cell phone).
Jogging (riiight.. let's just say, outside).
And heaven forbid, what if the server or whatnot is down? DoS'ed? Or my ISP?
Sorry, but unless your life is confined to your WLAN coverage area, mp3 is extremely much more portable, reliable and supported. Tell me again the advantage?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A company independent of the RIAA should set up a large, powerful server farm, dedicated to serving high quality MP3 files. Not streams. If all of the major record labels and enough independent music producers decided to join, users could get all the free audio they want for a flat monthly rate, with no copy protection. People who get frustrated trying to find obscure music on Kazaa and WinMX would love it for sampling or even collecting music.
real networks has been offering a similar service for quite some time. it works quite well and provides album information and everything and it's library is similar in size. you get 100 downloads and 100 streams a month for $10. it's kind of cool though.m usic.html
http://www.realone.com/realone/services/
there is also that service from pressplay.
http://www.pressplay.com
then emusic.com has a good service too.
http://www.emusic.om/
Called "radio" and its "free".
Here in Washington DC, 89.3 WPFW is a Pacifica network radio, no commercials, fantastic Jazz, an its free.
If you support them, its about $50 a year, which works out to less than $5 a month, and you can tape it and burn it to whatever.
You tell me the better deal, sunshine.
I just tried OTH on Netscape 7 and it returned a message saying "Access to this port has been turned off for security reasons."
Now, I cannot find anywhere to switch it back on again. Hmmm... Suspicious what?
...except that with cable I can record the shows, whether its basic cable, HBO, or pay per view.
I have the tapes, I can watch them again, if I cancel cable I still have the tapes, I can loan the tapes to my friend.
With internet streaming music, I get to listen to music.
Just like RADIO except radio is Free.
Except with Radio, i get to tape the music and listen to it later, or loan it to my friends.
You really don't get it, do you?
I know that not having the actual MP3 is a strike against this service, but I thought to myself, "Self, give them 3 strikes", so that's what I aimed to do.
So I downloaded the software and created my free user account.
The first thing I did was to look at their catalog of music.
OH MY GOD! 223,000+ tracks?! You have GOT to be kidding me! Nope, they have over 17,000 albums, comprising over 223,000 tracks.
Then I thought, "Hrm... let's listen to something and see what kind of download speed I get, and if what I listen to has decent sound quality.".
So I did a search -- Van Halen -- and listened to a few songs.
The first thing that I noticed was that the song was downloading about 2x the speed that I was listening to it, and rapidly outrunning the little play bar. Cool.
The second thing that I noticed was that the sound was damned near CD quality! I'm listening to these songs in super high end Sennheiser head phones. I was expecting hissing, maybe some drop outs on the high end (Which is why I chose Van Halen -- Eddie loves his lead solos!), but none were to be found.
Then I looked for some Jazz stuff -- Sinatra, Cosby, Harry Connick Jr. -- all to be found and of excellent quality, immediately playable.
So then my mind turned to the "What don't I get with this service?" side of things.
One thing that stands out is that I can't burn a CD with my favorite tracks and play them in my car, because I don't have the MP3. Strike 1.
Anyone care to help me find a strike 2? So far, this is exactly what I said that I would pay for, minus the "having the MP3" part.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
The Fags - List
SEARCH PROHIBITED You cannot request this song due to copyright restrictions. Please try a different search.
I don't want streaming. I don't even want mp3s. I'm on a 56k, and that won't be changing until the cable/telco dolts get their acts together and cease having their ceo's getting slapped on the wrists and such.
Even if I had broadband, I don't want it.
You know what I want? I want a CD. I want to be able to rip music into the format that *I* want. I want to have a hard copy of my music in the event of hard drive failures/etc.
I want to pay $18 per disc, even.
Only I want $1 going for the disc and pressing costs, $1 going to the label, and $16 going to the artist.
No downloads, no mac client, no linux client, U.S. only. Seems I, with my PowerBook and iPod in Sweden, is totally out of luck. Too bad emusic's (which have all of the features I miss from Rhapsody) rips suck qualitywise.
-- Free speech is only free if your time is worth nothing.
The point of services like this isn't to provide you with more music.
Oh, I know you think it is, and I'll bet AudioGalaxy thinks it is.
But the point is to remove the viability of CD's. They don't want you to control any music. They want you to pay every time you hum a tune. They want you to pay for radio.
Who is "they"? Its the illegal cartel of record companies that control everything about the music business and have congress running scared so they'll pass laws that favor their interests.
Think about what's being provided here. Radio that can only be listened to in one spot. And you don't get to keep the songs to listen to. Nope. You've got to buy a subscription to listen to Mozart.
They think that's fair.
They'll learn that people won't stand for it.
Back when i used AG i was pleased I was able to find "hard to find" underground music that i could never have found in a store. Any suggestions on what the best service out there is?
If you use Cooledit, you can save the stream of sound coming through your soundcard directly to an mp3. However, its not going to be insanely high quality if you are streaming it, and then compressing that with mp3 will make it even worse.
If he tries & fails 11 more times, he can be a reverse Malda.
It may be streamed, but i can at least watch a show later. Or just keep it forever.
( at least till DRM takes control of our television 'experience'... )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Your real score was 500. Good job retard!
Problem is, most workplaces would rather have you bring your own CDs than waste bandwidth by streaming off the internet.
So.. in most places you can't take your CDs to work. The "anytime, anywhere" theory has just gone out the window.
Jefferson was *against* copyrights and patents. He thought them unnatural. He only left them in as a compromise.
James Madison was the person who viewed copyrights (and patents) as necessary.
Here's something to consider (from an article at MSNBC):
"While Jefferson acknowledged that a limited copyright could potentially encourage creativity, it had not been demonstrated. Therefore, Jefferson wrote, "the benefit of even limited monopolies is too doubtful, to be opposed to that of their general suppression." "
Read the article at this link: "http://www.msnbc.com/news/594462.asp"
If you go to Monticello, the curators will proudly tell you that Jefferson invented a new type of plow that became popular, but he never patented out of principle.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
So you're essentially paying $10 a month to listen to a glorified radio station? Hell, I could get satelite radio for around that much a month plus hardware. Goodbye AudioGalaxy... it was sweet while it lasted...
...is someone despartely needs a big tax writeoff. Pour your money into THIS hole! No me.
Neither XM nor Sirius carry the music I enjoy listening to. And also, I don't think they have a version I can just carry around with me on a walk :)
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Maybe I'm just not using a good P2P service, but my experiences have never been that straight forward. Do a search, hopefully find the song, then try to download it. Wait through several minutes of attempts to connect to a host, then eventually find one who is so swamped that they can only upload it to you at about 2K/sec. Then you get it downloaded and it turns out it's a crappy rip.
:)
Granted I'm describing a worst case scenario, but I figure it nicley contrasts your best case scenario
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
With a dialup modem, you get a mono channel at 20Kps - i.e. it tops out at 10K. Better than AM, but as good as mono FM, even. Now, I have a SOLID 53K connection. Why, oh, why, can they not have a compression that can deliver SOLID 20-20Khz stereo? They just don't get it. So, now I uninstall.
did you just helped me identify a bug in mozilla ? I just added the complete_cd group to mozilla and clicked download all headers. About 101K were listed and mozilla crashed after downloading about 89K. Even after restarting mozilla, if u click on the newsgroup Mozilla still crashes...
Is this a bug in Mozilla or what ? Heading to bugzilla
This is a certified offtopic post. Don't waste your kharma.!!
People living in glass house . . should change in the basement. -- vm
Who is going to use a pay service when they can get just as much out of a FREE P2P network like Gnutella?
My collection of cheesy 80's mp3 experienced a tremendous growth when Audiogalaxy was alive.
Now, to enlarge this collection - for scientific purpose only of course - I have to enter "index apache mp3 [keyword]" in Google. I could also use the young and mysterious
http://web.mediaseek.pl/
http://www.somebaudy.com
This service is of no use to me. The old free Audiogalaxy used to carry stuff like JPOP and HKPOP which the new pay Audiogalaxy no longer has available. I guess you could call it "value-subtracted."
However, I'll concede that most Americans have no interest in Asian pop music so I could see this rebranded Listen.com being moderately successful IF they did one little thing: Allowed the user to print out 10 coupons a month each for a dollar off one retail CD. If the user buys 10 CDs that month, then the service is essentially free. Meanwhile, product gets moved, consumers are profiled, everybody's happy.
Now ask yourself why coupons for CDs aren't already widespread the way they are for food, shampoo, even cars (in the form of cashback offers) and then remind me again how the RIAA isn't a price-fixing cartel which deserves to be broken up.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
This has the potential to turn into something really great. I plan to order a couple CDs through this even before it goes to a pay service if only to show my support and attract the artists / record companies. And yea, I plan to subscribe too. How else will the entertainment industry get the point that there are viable alternatives to their stone-age business model?
The whole point of music on the net in the first place (for me, at least) was to be able to listen to whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to. That's what hooked me on Napster. I don't mind paying for the ability to do that. And I can't wait for CD burning capabilities..
Anyone tested this out on wine yet? Is it REALLY windows-only?
Like, when ever you see any world music in top100 lists ? Never, unless its crossover like Bahamen or similar ..
yush
No download.
No "foreign" subscriptions.
No Mac OS X supports.
No thanks.
"I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
I don't know why I'm bothering, but as a programmer to another programmer (and yes, some of my code is sold, some has been free):
I think you are going to find only woe if you dwell on the people stealing your product. Why not just write good code, charge a reasonable price, and listen to the customers that pay. The ones that don't aren't worth the time it takes to curse them out. Or you could just focus on endless copy protection schemes and avoid producing anything at all for fear of it being stolen. Sounds fun.
How are you posting to Slashdot then? Moron...
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
They're history anyway.
labelled as Rhapsody
Otherwise knows as Rapesody
That's all fine and good but if it's streaming and I can't put it on a format playable in the car, then it's worth nothing to me. I can't play it on my living room stereo system either. Why don't these people get it? So, for $10 we get nothing at all.
This is nothing but a rebranded of listen.com's Rhapsody service. I am a subscriber to this service on listen.com and I love it. I sit at a computer 8+ hrs a day and this gives me an enormous catalog to listen to and customize. Yes, it's only streaming and no.. you can't burn. But for $10/mth I can listen to exactly what I want,during most of my waking hours, and easily discover new music. I can create custom playlists from music I already have in my CD collection w/o having to spend the time to burn all them. And the Rhapsody client is a great study in ease of use.
audio, video, ANY file type...
filtered searches, user library scans, etc...
free... so why should I care about AG?
Just curious...
I'm just looking at the radio stations avaliable, if you can call them that anyway. All they are is a set list of songs, if you don't like a song on the 'radio' you can skip it :)
Wish I could do that sometimes with real radio!
Chris
On the other hand, if you and your neighbours live on a busy throughfare and decide to prevent car thieves from stealing your parked cars by blocking the road with locked gates so no-one can get in or out without your say-so, then certainly the authorities should take an interest.
I agree that there are a number of people who think they should just be able to copy other people's work -- but that doesn't preclude people from having legitimate concerns about particular implementations of technological and legal copy protection, and how they impact on the honest citizen.
There are still honest citizens out there, after all. Is it right that they should be affected -- as they are with prevention of fair use rights, and the restrictions of the DMCA -- because of the crimes of others? Innocent until proven guilty, remember.
If a company came up with a technological form of copy protection that somehow restricted illegal copying of material without affecting the rights and abilities of the honest user, then I would be all in favour of it.
The problem is it's rather the other way round. So far, there's no technological fix that can't be got round (and, in the case of music, there never can be -- because there's always the 'audio hole') by a copyright violator. Instead, these 'protections' remove fair use rights from people who never wanted to violate the copyright -- an outcome that may benefit the companies, but doesn't benefit the general population.
If companies are neglecting their side of the social bargain copyright represents, should they receive all their benefits thereof from said bargain? It is at least an interesting question.
The music went, but I still have a myriad of other P2P sites. Having been downloading for many months, I have pretty much what I wanted now anyway. More would just be being greedy.
h p
I was still using AG frequently, as I found the discussion boards to be perfectly paced, with a good mix of people. A nice little community.
But....
Obviously AG are trying to conserve bandwidth now. Without the volume of people, they wont be getting the advertising revenue. So suddenly the people who contributed most to the boards found themselves getting banned for no apparent reason, and certainly with no explanation. Then, anyone with an operamail address was barred as a potential trouble maker. As someone who fell foul of whatever unexpressed rules were in place, I just opened a new ID each time, opening a new e-mail addy each time, the last time at hotmail.
Now there's just nothing there. When I go to AG or any of its sub sections, I get a blank screen and a message saying "Done" on my bottom bar.
So I'm wondering... "Is this just me? Have AG intercepted my PC's ID to ban me exclusively, or is this something that affects everyone?
If anyone else is getting in (or failing to get in, for that matter) I'd love to hear what you have to say.
Here's the link...
http://www.audiogalaxy.com/pages/messageBoard.p
I'm sitting listening to it here in Ireland. So surely not USA only?
In Social Democratic Sweden
On their site, they give instructions for connecting the computer to a stereo for listening to Rhapsody.
:-)
They all but tell you that all you need is a tape and a record button. Sure, it's not CD quality, but you can get that through some creative use of Soundforge...