Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mercora - New Radio P2P Network

Posted by Hemos on from the excellent-ideas dept.

jtids writes "The maker of P2P Client, Shareaza, is working on a new Radio P2P project called Mercora. This network gives users the ability legally webcast music to other users on the network. Users can also share images, send instant messages, and join groups where they can participate in forums and chatrooms. Although the program itself is still in beta, the project looks promising."

14 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Free webcast? by The+Hobo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I thought free internet died with the proverbial dot com fallout.. it will be interesting to see the sustainability of this project. This might also hurt online radio like shoutcast.

    --
    There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
  2. In other words... by spacefight · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Let your friends stream all their sound to you, rip it from the source, tear it apart and create a legal song archive. No, no profit here ;)

    1. Re:In other words... by millahtime · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Let your friends stream all their sound to you, rip it from the source, tear it apart and create a legal song archive. No, no profit here ;)

      If they are my friend why not give them a special ftp account or web access to do so. Or why not burn them to cd or dvd and give them that. Seems to much easier and they get the songs they want

      --
      Evolution or ID?
    2. Re:In other words... by toooldforthiscrap · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Have you tried stationripper??

  3. bandwidth vs quality? by Prince+Vegeta+SSJ4 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    How could a single user broadcast a radio with a typical cable/dsl connection?

    Would this basically suck up all of the upstream bandwidth, so that basically the quality would suck, or you have an audience of 4.

    1. Re:bandwidth vs quality? by TLSPRWR · · Score: 2, Interesting

      At one of the few Sonic Fan gaming communities, we have a bi-yearly week long 'E3'-esque expo (S.A.G.E., not currently in operation), online only. Along with that, we do radio broadcasting during that week. Typically, we only have like 2 or 3 computers with DSL or Cable streaming out the cast including the computer doing the webcast. With enough distribution (say, on a P2P network) you could keep the quality high, and have more than 4 listeners on the webcast (At most, we usually had 20, pretty low-key operation, but you'll see my point, keep reading).

      We had to set all that up ourselves, but with this program, it seems to (/could) do it automatically. As a listener ( IP 1.1.1.2) joins the Station (IP 1.1.1.1), they both become distributors of that station's broadcast. So, when the next few listeners come in, they're getting distribution from 1.1.1.1 and 1.1.1.2, plus they distribute that same signal themselves.

      Everyone listening through Mercora duplicates the signal and becomes a node to distribute the bandwidth load (or at least has the potential to be).

  4. Re:legally? by challahc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yeah it says it's ok to broadcast music ripped from cds, and downloaded legally from places like iTunes.

    Does anyone use this yet? I was wondering if you have the ability to mix songs and use a microphone to talk, or if its just like a playlist. I'm guessing it's the second option here, in which case this idea isn't really new. I remember using this to do the same type of thing with winamp.

    --
    01100010 01101001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101101 01100101
  5. legal ? go read the small print on your CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting


    All rights reserved of the producer and of the owner of the recorded work reserved. Unautorised Copying, Public performance, Broadcasting, Hiring or rental of this recording is prohibited

    APublic. (noun)

    1. The community or the people as a whole.
    2. A group of people sharing a common interest: the reading public.
    3. Admirers or followers, especially of a famous person. See Usage Note at collective noun.

    now IANAL but it seems pretty clear to me its illegal

  6. Excellent by thedillybar · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I listen to music (usually with Shoutcast) at work everyday. Some of the best stations I have found are often small and full during the day. I've always thought it would be nice if I could lend some extra bandwidth to keep the station going. The station itself should only stream to users who will re-broadcast the stream. And whoever will rebroadcast using the most bandwidth has the highest priority. If you can't rebroadcast, you simply end up somewhere farther down the food chain, but in the end more people get to listen.

    It seems like warez channels have been doing this forever. Once someone gets something, it spends a few days getting passed around all the high-bandwidth providers before it goes to the "public."

    I'm glad to see more legal, but free (as in beer) music available. But how long before someone writes a "MyTunes" (or something similar) that allows you to download music (illegally, I'd imagine), off of this service?

  7. and the difference to the RIAA is? by Bog+Standard · · Score: 1, Interesting

    So transmitting an MP3 for this legal, but transmitting an MP3 for sharing purposes is not? Even thought the contents of the data stream are the same? I can't really see how this is going to work. BS

    1. Re:and the difference to the RIAA is? by FrYGuY101 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Two ways, from what I can gather.

      First is that they plan on selling songs at 99 cents a pop, ala Napster and iTunes. Only they plan on doing it using network capacity, rather than having a big huge expensive central server, meaning while they charge the same, their costs are much less.

      Second, they plan on selling non-personal network information (average user listening habits, popular songs, etc) to the labels (They're being payed royalties, and paying right back for info on what the royalties are for... marketing research at its finest!).

      --
      "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."

      - Seneca
  8. radio broadcast by vmircea · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is definitely a promising idea, but it would get really complicated, I for one at home only have about 30kilobytes a second upload, which is barely enough to radio one song to one person, and would also severely lag me. This kind of thing would probably end up having the people with larger connections all serving the people with smaller pipes, and the people with smaller pipes not giving back (mostly because it is hard). And also, the media industries will probably jump on the legality of this because they don't like these kind of things... because noone will actually serve only music that they legally own, they will also serve music that they downloaded from kazaa and other variations, because not that many people use itunes compared to the people who get songs illegally.

  9. I rather doubt that... by Illissius · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...seeing as this is from the same guys who made Shareaza, which is the very likely the best P2P app out there right now. It's the first one where I didn't have to fight the program to get it to do what I wanted, it's rather user friendly, has undetectable amounts of bloat (by me, anyways), and installs a total of 0 third party programs (= spyware). And now version 2.0 is open source.
    So I'd be inclined to expect good things from them :).

    --
    Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
  10. The edna project. by Koatdus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/edna/

    Edna is a py script that will stream MP3 files over a network or the internet. It has a nice web front end and if you scan the cover art and drop it into the directory it will display in the web page. The main difference though is that there is no easy way to find your edna server on the internet ... you have to know where it is.

    At home I have ripped almost all of my and my kids CD's and can listen to them on any PC in the house. Streaming 2 or 3 songs at once doesn't seem to tax the network.

    One of my future projects is to put together a (silent) media room PC so that I will be able to pipe MP3's through my main stereo and play them on the speakers in the back yard. (Pool Party!) Right now I have to go inside every once in a while and feed new cd's into the changer.

    I can also listen to my entire collection at work, ether by opening up a port to my home network DMZ or by tunneling via SSH or VPN.

    It works pretty well. My DSL connection can stream a 128mb MP3 file ok. If I try to stream 2 files however at the same time my DSL line can not handle the upload without pauses. Downloading 2 streams at once though the DSL

    One of my co-workers set up an Edna server at home. Listening to 2 streams at once over his cable modem connection works just fine, no pausing.

    I also know someone who is putting together a wi-fi enabled system to go in his car. When that is done he will be able to park in his driveway and sync his MP3 collections between his car Edna server and his home Edna server. (hopefully he is reading up on iptables)

    --
    Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison