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MP3.com Removes "High-Bandwidth" Streams
mshiltonj writes "I noticed today that mp3.com no longer offers high-bandwidth streams for its genres or stations, although it looks like artists' playlists and individual songs are available in high bandwidth. mp3.com has lots and lots of free music that was free and legal to listen to online, and a good number of my "music bookmarks" were on mp3.com. I'll live (I've still got my favorite stream), but I don't think it's a good sign. Is streaming music doomed to die, not because of RIAA litigation, but because of expensive bandwidth costs?" I don't think bandwidth will be the determining cost - that's a price that has been falling and will continue to fall. But are things like iTunes store the future, or is it streaming?
Of course bandwidth has a cost and sometimes it's just too much for a site to bear. A popular service can be punished by it's bandwidth costs. How many times do we see/hear of a site going down due to the /. effect...and probably a lot of them are due to bandwidth caps rather than fancy content delivery systems hogging CPU/drive.
Of course it's not a problem if they have a *real* revenue stream for their service as they should then be able to *pay* for their bandwidth needs.
I just think it's a sign of the times.
I have recently been listening to Shoutcasts at work (of mostly live, allowed, recordings). The three major ones I listen to are at 128k. 1 of the shoutcasts boasts a # in the 100s at 128k. They also offer a bunch of live shows for shoutcast at 128k in addition to their random one.
I find that the server is CONSTANTLY having me rebuffer the stream making it increasingly difficult to listen to (I have a broadband connection at home and at work).
I switched to a shoutcast stream that has only 10-15 people at 128k and it seems to handle it much better.
Radio doesn't sound like 128k to me, what's the difference if MP3.com isn't offering that to it's listeners?
Couldn't something like bittorrent fill the gap?
You fool! You've given cheese to a lactose intolerant volcano god! Do you know what that means?
I'm sure it was either cut bandwidth...or people....or both.
With RIAA breathing down everyones backs, I'm sure it would take a small lawsuit to put these guys in the negative earnings.
Business.
Rob
But are things like iTunes store the future, or is it streaming?
There's this really weird mindset that seems to take hold in techie circles that there's only one given solution to an issue...that aside, why is only one of these going to be the future? Christ, AM/FM survived alongside records, cassettes, and CDs...why's the Internet going to be any different?
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I'll tell you why mp3.com is going down the pan - because there is just no point to it whatsoever. You can get most music from kazaa/p2p, and unsigned acts can host their own music and promote their own sites as free webspace is widely available.
I'm not actually trolling, this is the way I see it, and I would post under my username if my karma would allow it.
I used to be CTO of a now defunct online radio service in the UK (puremix.com), way back in 2000/2001 and worked at various radio stations before that.
We streamed 64K Real Audio and it sounded great. The secret to making it sound good is audio proecessing, just like an analog radio station does. I am not advocating New York style maximizing of loudness at all cost, but any signal needs some work.
That work is missing on most not only amateur, but also professional streams or it is done by very bad software solutions. Online music services are often created by people who love and know their music and are geeks. Few of them are actualy audio wizards. (Even at radio stations, engineers are often under valued because the "creative" people don't understand what's involved) The result is that even peak signals are below maximum modulation and missing (multiband) compression and limiting makes sure there is no consintancy in quality and loudness between songs, which brings out encoding articfacts much more. And that is a real shame.
That's not a useful comparison. That's like saying "Is Stop & Shop (a supermarket, for those of you outside the northeast) the future, or is it farmstands on the side of the road?".
They serve two different markets. Streaming is totally different from purchasing a song and burning it to CD. Also, I believe MP3.com did not cost money. So if you're talking in the short term, yes, for-profit business are the future compared to those losing money. However, comparing free streaming to the iTunes music store is like apples and oranges.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
In all fairness, this post is right. Radiohead's "kid a", "amnesiac" and most recently "hail the thief" were highly swopped on p2p networks. Still they hit number 1 INSTANTLY on release. Still they sell out tours all over the world. Bands/artists who bitch about p2p sharing dont have enough faith in their own ability. The bands who needs more coverage have a chance of getting it. The bands who dont get it anyways.
This touches a fundamental issue of RIAA and music economics.
Music distribution bandwidth definitely HAS a cost: Hardware to be set up, administration, electricity. Closing one's eyes on this is living somewhere in immaterial space and not realistic.
The music industry is supplying bandwidth in it's own way, they distribute CD's via shops and other distributors. Most of it's revenue goes to many people working in this industry, only little to the artists. Many people get paid.
What happens with P2P is that this distribution effort is shifted from one group of people and hardware (shops, their employées, etc.) to another (people doing this for themselves). Is one method better than the other? That's not the issue.
It's all about choice. After all, if I get the files on CD from a shop or via internet from peers, the end result is the same.
What is not the same is WHO benefits: employees of the music industry or employees of my infrastructure chain (PC manufacturers, electrical power companys, HD and CD-R suppliers).
And don't forget ourselves: we pay for our own infrastructure and runnings costs we use. In this respect, economically, there is a part which is a direct competition between some big monopolies and ourselves doint the very same work. Let's not forget that all these people need a living, too (just as we do).
Another thing which is not the same: Who selects the titles to be distributed. The music industry's music selection is mastered by certain people, and our own music selection is mastered by ourselves.
So finally all this boils down to who's in control. Will we stay slaves of other's decisions, or will we gain back control of our life's decisions and create the society we want?
Multicast. When providers start running multicast protocols between them, the whole streaming\bandwidth issue will lessen dramatically.
Take a huge step back from all this, and realize the big issue is that, here in America, there is now music that is illegal to listen to. Fucked up, isn't it? "I killed my family... what are you in for?"
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
MP3.com can't do that; their business model is presumably you seeing banner ads while there's some sort of network connection between you and them.
But that brings me to the part about streaming I never understood: Why the hell bother?
On one hand, you have "download, burn, play". Zero network bandwidth consumed. At 128, 10+ hours of music on a CD-R. Sounds like crap? Encode it at 320-stereo! Now you "only" have 5 hours per disc. Zero pay-per-use issues. Got a favorite disc that got scratched? As long as you have at least one copy of the music back on your hard drive (and you do back up your hard drive, don't you?), just burn it again. Got a favorite band whose website just went dark? No problem, you still have the MP3s they gave you.
On the other hand, you have "streaming". Think of an office with 50 users streaming 128k streams. We're talking metric buttloads of bandwidth burninated, and it all goes to /dev/null :) Sounds like crap? Tough! Take what your stream provider offers you! Pay-per-use - either in bandwidth, or in the fact that if you wanna hear a song again, you gotta beg the server to send it to you again, or in the fact that the server can insert ads - just like radio. Got a favorite streaming server and it goes down or cuts to 64k to save its bandwidth costs? You're... screwed! The best band in the whole universe's web page is now 404? You're... screwed!
Streaming gives you the worst of both worlds - the bandwidth wastage of P2P, with the DRMness of pay-per-view. Maybe I'm a Luddite around here, but when it comes to streaming, I Just Don't Get it.
Here's a quick little heads-up.
* Look at how parent Company Vivendi Universal is doing. Not well, right? They've lost billions and have made clear in the press that they are selling off parts of their business.
* Mp3.com was the red-headed stepchild that was being sued before being bought. Is it profitable? As with most Internet companies, Not Yet.
* Mp3.com, emusic, mp4.com and rollingstone.com are all the same group - vivendi. Who's going to get the axe? All of them? One of them? Who knows.
My thought is: they're losing money, maybe cut their staff, and they're just waiting to get bought by Apple, Disney, or Viacom.
If you have music works on Mp3.com, might wanna find a new place.
Anon
An even better way for mp3.com to save money would be to switch to the Ogg Vorbis format. That would have two advantages:
;)
1) better quality at the same bandwidth or equal quality at a lower bandwidth (therefore saving bandwidth costs without sacrificing any quality)
2) no longer having to pay royaltees for MP3 patents
On the other hand, it would be pretty bizarre (not to mention confusing for some people) if a site called 'mp3.com' only offered OGG files for download.
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
Your analogy sucks.
It has nothing to do with shoplifting. A more relevant analogy would be the magazine stand in a store, where you can read the magazine (or the relevant parts of it) on the spot instead of buying it.