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Shawn Fanning's New Venture
prostoalex writes "We've read about Justin Frankel, but what are the other heroes of the MP3 revolution up to? News.com.com.com tells the story of Shawn Fanning's new company. SnoCap (which changed its name from Open Copyright Database) is currently developing file-sharing mechanisms that would allow the music industry to earn money."
2004-01-23 13:00:57 Justin Frankel Actually Quits Nullsoft (articles,music) (rejected)
/finger justin@landoleet.org
Hmmm....
Justin recently announced that he has resigned from AOL and Nullsoft:
/home/deadbeef - - - - Shell: /usr/local/bin/tcsh
.plan, but I might find myself updating the .plan of justin@blorp.com.
Trying landoleet.org
Attempting to finger justin@landoleet.org -
Login: justin - - - - - - - - - - Name: Justin
Directory:
Never logged in.
New mail received Thu Oct 9 15:07 2003 (PDT)
- - Unread since Mon Mar 10 12:28 2003 (PST)
Mail forwarded to: justin@blorp.com
Plan:
Jan 22, 2004
Well, it took a bit longer than I (or likely anybody else expected), but after four and a half years, I've resigned from my position at AOL. Yay/sigh/etc.
This will likely be the last time I update this
peace out.
eof
-
End of finger session
Fortunately, this won't really result in a loss of quality with future Winamp versions. their two main coders, "Francis and Christophe," Will be taking over most of the development. From what I've heard, they did most of the work with Winamp 5. And as most of those who've taken the time to really check out Winamp 5... It really whips the llama's ass.
He wrote a program in VB that was what it was because he couldn't implement anything more complex.
The Napster client was written using C++ using win32 calls. It was never written in VB. Ever. Granted it was more C with classes than C++, but it certainly wasn't VB.
You have to pretty naive to think that without Napster the RIAA would have simply ignored other systems that enable copyright infringement. Especially a system like bittorrent that with a central server component. Remember that Scour (which predated Napster) was sued, Aimster was sued, etc. It is just Napster received far more press than anyone else.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
For most people, the old school P2P model works because they already paid for the bandwidth (ISP fees), they own the computer and, they don't mind waiting for the content. It didn't "cost" them anything, so let it ride. Sean is apparently not as smart as everyone thinks. This makes no sense. Napster worked because it was "free" and it was the only option at the time. Now there are many many other options, and they are vastly superior to napster, they offer other content as well (video, boosk, software, etc.), and lets be honest, Napster was a trivially simple setup: client -> server. This is a real P2P system like gnutella, kazaa, etc.. Sean invented the mainframe, someone else invented the PC of the P2P world. His ideas are ancient history and he hasn't had a new idea since then. Frankly, all he did was create a central directory for DCC IRC transfers. Neat, useful, revolutionary, but its ancient history now. There are much better options and he seems stuck in the past.
Regardless, SnoCap appears to lack the key ingredient that is needed: value. People have to see that there is a point to using it, more content, faster D/ls, quality, time not wasted, money, etc. Given the unlikeliness that Sean can convince an industry made up of technophobes with petty beefs towards him, long memories, and a history of not caring about either the artist or the consumer, SnoCaps chances of working out a good deal for all parties are slim. These are not people that play well with others, let alone their enemies: Napster founders and executives. The whole P2P revolution the recording industry believes cost them a ton of money, and is continuing to hurt them. Why on Earth would the recording industry trust someone that they believe cost them billions?
This SnoCap thing is ridiculous. You couldn't ask for a bigger joke. The users won't trust Sean because he's "sold out", he wants to build DRM on top of P2P, and the entertainment industry can't stand him or the people involved with him. Its absurd. If I didn't know any better, I would wonder if this was some big fake story for what the company is really doing. But seeing who invesnted in it, I'm not suprised. These are the same people that thought poring money into Napster, without anything close to a business model was going to net them billions. Yeah, so how is that working out for them now? Thought so.
Move along folks. This is ysterdays news. This is the the sad story of a dot-bomb crew trying to relive their glory days in the most absurd and attention grabing way possible. The industry might throw them a bone, but they have nothing to add to the current mix. iTunes and others are already doing this, and without all the mess. Its cheap, its easy, and if you don't want to even pay a few cents for your tunes, you can still get them from Kazaa, eMule and so on. Nothing to see here at all, except a sad sad attempt to try and re-invent Napster.
Python
I hate to feed a troll and be off topic, but it annoys me that people see no reason for record companies. The music industry goes through piles and piles of utter crap to pick one crappy band that might make it to radio. They're an amazing shit filter, the public does NOT want to be inundated with unfiltered bands.
A recording company will help the artists develop their style. I don't mean make overs, they'll hook them up with a producer who will make the band sound like they know how to play so they can have a decent album. The record company will also split the bill for (a) hiring the producer who will make them sound decent, (b) hiring the engineers and renting the space for them to record (usually $50/hr for the room itself, and it takes months to record), (c) produce the actual CDs, market said CDs, make posters, buy ad space in magazines, try to get interviews with the band.
A recording company will also help get the band into venues, which are usually all run by one person in an area and are really hard to get into (the bigger venues, smallers clubs are run independently, sometimes).
Like I said, the whole music industry is a tremendous crap filter. Before a band gets on the radio it has to jump through so many flaming hoops that most don't make it, thankfully. I speak from experience, having been in bands and done much label work. Do I think things should stay this way? No f-ing way, there must be a better way to do it... and I'm out there trying things.
What about MEEPT?!?!
A lot of the hip musicians aren't paying $50/hr to record anymore, they're recording on laptops in home studios, or even on the road. Some of them don't need a producer to make them sound like they can play, because they can actually play. We don't need to produce CDs, now that technology has made it kinda silly to ship bits around on plastic disks.
Getting into good venues? Probably still a market for a good agent, but that doesn't mean you have to sign your copyrights over to a monopolistic cartel.
And filtering? Well, there's Magnatune, a label that takes about 10 percent of bands who apply, handles all sales, gives half the money to the artists, and lets the artists keep the copyright. I'm streaming some pretty cool music from them as I type this. Plenty of room for non-evil labels...for now anyway. Collaborative filtering is a pretty active research area. Plain old word of mouth works pretty well on the Internet, too.