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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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...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)?
well you pay for cable TV right? No tangible product.. AND you have to have a TV. This wont work becuase you have to have broadband to use it really.. and $10 a month on top of 50 a month for broadband isn't worth it as long as there is still systems like Kazaa
Unless, of course, you want to put some tunes onto your iPod or Nomad and get the hell out of your house for a change.
"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....."
Well I guess this explains why Britain has never had any art or culture or scientific discoveries to speak of. Or France. Or Italy (what was all that Reneissance stuff anyway ?). The (Ancient) Greeks. The Egyptians. The Chinese. The Japanese. The Indian sub-continent. Many other countries I haven't got room to mention, or know little enough about. What heathens we've all been compared to the current cultural output from the USA.
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.
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?
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!
Wow, what a horrible post. I wish I had moderator so I could mod this down to troll.
1) AudioGalaxy didn't screw you over. They were shut down by the RIAA.
2) Audiogalaxy was among the simplest of simple programs to use. You installed it, the application was less then half a meg, and then you are online searching and downloading music from others. I don't understand how you conceive this as difficult.
3) Audiogalaxies service required a central database to function, much like napster. Audiogalaxy was better then napster, because they did more then just have a database of mp3s. They linked the mp3s together, so that each song was represented within a category, and then linked to places where you could buy the album, and forums about the artist, etc etc. This is not possible (IMO) with a distributed p2p client. That's why it's not been done yet. (I guess it's *possible* but it would be very very difficult to get any reliability out of such a network)
4) Any service that utilizes a centralized server, is going to have legal problems in the current climate, period. Not even your buzzword usage of 'open source' can get around this.
Bottom line, audiogalaxy was unique, and it's a shame it was lost. Probably the reason why it lasted so long, is because it obfuscated its usage statistics and didn't try to gain attention like Napster did.
Ever since Napster, P2P apps have allowed total n00bs who barely know how to use a browser to swap files.
Usenet, on the other hand, is something which is still mainly used by hard-core geeks, and is below the radar of nearly everybody.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
- 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.
I'm not sure what your point is, or how you got modded up. Other countries have copyright protection as well.
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
The difference is that in ancient time there was like 10 people on a houdred years that actually composed songs, wrote poetry, made plays for theatres and so on.
The number of people today involved in content creation is enormous.
Better yet, Usenet is organized by category of interest. Like garage? alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.garage. Punk? alt.binaries.punk. Usenet is a great resource for discovering new music from others who share your interests and tastes. I can't recall the last CD purchase I made that wasn't the result of a newsgroup download.