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Gnomoradio: Creative Commons Music Sharing
An anonymous reader writes "I just stumbled upon Gnomoradio, a file sharing jukebox based on Creative Commons licenses. This program looks like a garage band's dream come true! It recommends songs based on each user's ratings, and has the capability to share them. Announced less than a year ago, the program has already made a great deal of progress, as can be seen from these screenshots. I downloaded the Debian package, and aside from a few interface quirks, the program works flawlessly. Is this the future of digital music, or should we be looking for something less centralized?"
This seem to be based on the same concept as irate
This looks awesome, but how long before the RIAA starts feeding copyrighted music into the system and then gets it shut down? Things like this have to be their worst nightmare.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Just as mp3.com used to be a great resource for me to find bands, the bigger artists tried to get in on it, but would never allow songs for download. Especially with the widespread adoption of "legit" music stores, I doubt this will catch on outside of indie groups (which is where I will continue to get my music).
As per topic: it seems to me that centralization is a good thing when no copyright violations are taking place. It allows easy sorting/searching/etc. based on data that is easy to find (the central server) - I think this is a great thing for indy/garage/etc artists looking for another place to promote themselves.
-Matt
...yes, this does sound pretty cool. Maybe we'll finally be able to make it out of the garage!
Is this the future of digital music..?
No, because few people want to listen to indy music.
The future of digital music is giving the RIAA another buck, via Apple or Napster or whoever, to listen to your favorite songs in yet another proprietary format. One for your portable player, one for your PC, one for your car.
That's just the way it is, like it or not.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
What a coincidence - I've just teamed up with a friend a few weeks ago to make some electronic music. Right now we're in the getting gear/arranging things stage.
I can't believe it - we have a distribution channel already before we even have gotten a song finished!
I've known 3 bands in the past 4 or 5 years looking for exactly this type of thing. 2 of them ended up with websites that tried, unsuccessfully, to sell their music.
Thats the future, and it is here. Just because Uncle Tim and Aunt Martha buy iTunes for .99 a song, doesn't mean I can't still get all of my music free from eMule, BitTorrent, etc. The p2p community will always be a step ahead.
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
Perhaps the biggest stumbling block to wide-spread adoption - the name, "Gnomoradio". Come on guys, we can be a little more creative than that - not everything that is created for Gnome needs to use "Gnome" or a derivative there of in it's title.
Correct me if I'm wrong but nobody owns the works of Mozart. Now if all songs were incoded in Ogg format wouldn't it be feasible to create a legitamate radio station or stations based on Classical music that would be totally legal?
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
i have been looking for something like this for a long time! i have a hard time finding new music that i like..... this is the answer! only problem is that i dont think alot of garage bands would like to give out their music for free, even if it would get them free publicity....
I own a pump action golf ball cannon. I made it myself.
But really, I prefer http://www.magnatune.com/ . Its uses allow for free download of music and yet still promotes licensing music (paying the actual artist for thier creations) It is a perfect blend of free for public consumption, and paying musicians royalties.
Correct me if I'm wrong but nobody owns the works of Mozart.
You're right, however the works of Mozart need to be performed. And those performances are owned by the people who performed them.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The performers don't pay Mozart to "cover" his music, but the performances are copyrighted. You have to pay the symphony to play their cover of Mozart.
It's great as an "incubator". It can serve the same purpose as local gigs with small audience, which is still a major step in order to become mainstream.
Bands could publish here not complitely polished versions of their songs to test audience reaction and feedback.
However, the major breakthrough could be to get a P2P filesharing system "airborne/wireless" so that people could listen to the song with the same way as they do it now with FM radio.
It's still really the FM radio - beside MTV and clones - which gets an album moving or die.
We need OpenRadio...
http://irate.sourceforge.net/
Built with gcj and runs on any (popular) platform.
When I manage to be satisfied with material I have written and recorded I will share it on all of the sites. The idea is to get the songs out there and acquire as much feedback, both positive and negative, as possible.
I highly doubt the RIAA would even attempt to stop me from distibuting my own works. If they did I would have no problem holding fundraisers to cover the legal cost of lawsuit against them. Clearly, if the indies own the rights then they can distribute it any way they like.
We can't all be rich like U2, but at least we can all have the opportunity to be heard.
From my experience from being a programmer at MP3.com from 1999 until its sale to CNET in 2003, the independant artist community is one of the biggest bunch of cheating assholes I have ever witnessed. Not all, but enough independant artists will utilize any number of underhanded ways to boost their exposure on a network. I see nothing in this system that prevents what artists did at MP3.com - user ratings are a joke, because many artists will do anything possible to whore themselves out among their community to get a higher rating. What you will end up seeing is that if this get popular enough, it will become fully corrupted by crappy music being highly rated , which will then turn off the average user, and become yet another circle jerk for talentless artists and basically a waste of time for legitimate ones.
.agrippa.
Hmm, it looks nice, at least in theory, but I haven't gotten it to play anything yet. Every time I add my music directory, it slowly builds up to 100% CPU and then seems to crash. I have only 5000 or so files in that directory (and 3000 on another partition, but I haven't gotten the chance to try to add them yet.) That's not an absurd amount for a normal playlist to handle IMO.
Also it took me a while to see how to add a directory. You have to take te file-browser inside the directory to add it. Kind of counter intuitive.
Shame I can't get it to work, because it's a good idea. Especially if an Audioscrobbler plugin could be written. I'm kind of addicted to having my music listening stats at hand and being able to compare them with others.
"I Just Want You To Hurt Like I Do" - Randy Newman
It should be just the opposite: it should really act like, smell like a radio - driven by real user popularity and not payola lists.
"those performances are owned by the people who performed them."
Yes, but why? Most, at least, of the major classical orchestras in the USA are heavily subsidized by federal grants and other forms of funding for the arts. (And I'm only saying "most" because its possible a few privately formed ones like the NBC symphony may be exceptions for at least some of their performing years - EVERY orchestra that has a place name in its title is on the grant system.
Why didn't our tax dollars buy us any rights? WE paid for wider dessemination of great classical works, only to turn over the recorded forms of those works to holding companies which are expected to make a profit for the orchestras, and our only reward is to be told, "That lets the orchestra be more self sustaining, so the government doesn't have to tax you so much", and "No we don't have to justify how the money gets spent, we don't have to keep separate accounts for the practice sessions for a live performance and for a recording session, and we don't have to let the government negotiate our recording contracts to maximize taxpayer return."
Who is John Cabal?
It's nice that people are out there building platforms for artists to get their music out to the masses. But doesn't this just increase the signal to noise ratio? The problem with every artist-centric solution means that us music appreciators have to wade through bad tune after bad tune before we find a good one. I don't have much time to waste when i am looking for new music, but I enjoy new music more than anything. So for now, I am sticking to MP3 4U, mp3jackpot, and my other miscellaneous favorite mp3 blogs because all of these sites are built on the exchange of songs that at least one person has said are GOOD. The indie artist looking for exposure still wins, and I get to save my time.
"I quite like the name - 'No More Radio'"....
Seems like GnoMoRadio would be even better.
I hate to nitpick, but a lot of these orchestral performances are available, both live and free, by tuning into things like public radio or TV. At least that's true here in Minneapolis.
Beyond that, I agree 101% with you. When tax money is involved, the people ought to get something for their money other than the oportunity to buy tickets. What's tough here is that with CDs you do need to record, produce, press, and distribute the discs. A lot of classical CDs are dirt cheap, too. So I have to say that's probably not a big con there.
Ditto the problem with providing digital copies of the performances. Perhaps before long we'll find orchestras releasing archival files of their seasons' performances via bittorrent, but until then server space and bandwidth can be very expensive.
But to get back to my first point, if the performance is broadcast, nothing stops us from recording it. And probably the orchestra isn't going to be out suing the public for sharing copies of a performance they gave away for free over the air (but that's conjecture on my part). The key difference between commercial radio/TV and public radio/TV is the commercials. Public radio/TV won't take a "hit" because people are sharing the shows with the commercials removed... because there weren't any to begin with.
(just quick thoughts on the topic)
And in other news:
...and aside from my poor performance, I was a perfect employee...
...and aside from the 12 pack at the game, I haven't had a drink all night, officer...
...and aside from a few heroin binges, I'm totally drug free...
...and aside from the explosion, the shuttle mission was flawless...
Copyright is already supposed to secure this stuff for the public, through the mechanism commonly referred to as expiration.
So, uh, your point isn't totally defeated, just that we need to focus on a different problem.
not that I disagree with you, just pointing out how recordings of the performances are already secured for the public domain. ;)
Like what I said? You might like my music
Now we have gnomoradio, irate, and somewhere else they mention magnatune.
Forget the programs, we need the standards. Isn't that what we've been saying about the Web and file exchange.
These buggers all need to interoperate. I haven't looked in detail at all of them, but let's say that gnomoradio has hit the key points:
1: publish the music
2: publish the license - keep it legal
3: ratings feedback
I'd say we also need
4: option to send money/payment/exchange to the artist
We need standards, and let gnomoradio, irate, and magnatune all run on those standards. Then pick the one you like, that runs on your platform.
3 disparate systems splits the catalog, and it's going to be tough enough to reach critical mass, as it is.
Some sort of license check is necessary as a fundamental part of the infrastructure, to keep the ??AA of their backs.
Provisions to pay the artist are a good idea. I wonder if percentage-wise voluntary payment works better or worse than spam.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
WWOZ, the greatest station in the Universe. Sure, it's WMA, but it ain't N'awlins 'til it's at least a little broke.
--
make install -not war
Programs like this and Irate are getting closer to what I would like to see, but they are not there yet. I really would like to see a product that also did this...
Intelligently decides what to download, not based on preferences, but based on what you have in your current playlist (presumably all the commercial music you have when you start). Once they get enough users they can compare lists to predict what you would like based on your playlists and songs you've voted on.
The other thing that should happen is you should be able to download songs off the radio. This would also allow voting to be done automatically. If I hear a song I like, click a button and it gets saved permanently. If I don't like it, I click a button and I never listen to it again. If I do nothing it stays in radio rotation for sometime and eventually gets replaced.
Last, the software should use a P2P network for downloads to avoid the main server needing astronomical amounts of bandwidth.
So, what do you think? (Do any of the current programs do this, and I am not aware of it)?
(On a different note, one thing interesting about these virtual radio stations is they don't need an always on internet connection. You could conceivably make a portable device that you hook up periodically to download and update the radio cache. Once a portable device exists, mainstream acceptance is possible).
Perhaps this technology isn't the future of digital music, and maybe not even digital radio (although it certainly could be) -- but I believe it will play an important part in music discovery.
And it might not be iRate or Gnomeradio in particular, but the idea behind them.
Even when just applied to indie artists, I've found dozens of bands who are fantastic using iRate. In the process I've thrown out even more music that I didn't find enjoyable at all, but in a reasonably short time I was discovering music that would have taken me ages to find in any other way.
Could this be applied to mainstream music? I don't see why not. How far away is the technology that allows me to have a custom radio station in my car and at home. I streams music, I rate it and a profile is built for me that is compared against other listeners from around the world. Seems better to me than listening to the various radio stations play the same songs every day, occasionaly adding something new . . . maybe even something I enjoy listening to.
Chris. (And I do help with iRate development, so I'm somewhat biased.)
With Magnatune & e-gold, we have 4. (Others are welcome too! I'll click some e-gold to anyone who sends me an account number to show Slashdot users how it works.) What I like about Magnatune is the deal for artists is SO much better than the RIAA quintopoly's deal it's not even funny... It's my sincere hope that voluntary payment can work, but I need programmers' help to achieve this goal. Thanks.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
Ah'm on ah Gnohhhh-moh-ah-Radio, Ah Gnohhh-moh-ah-Radio!
Beer me...you know the drill.
What next, Sypholinux? Clamydebian?
I just submitted 3 of my songs (the rest are over 10 minutes...i don't want to kill my bandwidth). Rock on!
Because I make music for the joy of making music. Idealistic artists DO exist. We just know we won't/can't make a living off of it. That said, I already submitted 3 of my songs to this doohicky. Hopefully people like what I do. Give me a listen, my artist name is Eli and the Sporktastics. My stuff definitely ain't for everyone.
irate.sourceforge.net
I used it, but the GTK client was buggy as shit. However, I discovered quite a few good tunes once I got a working version installed. Clients for Win/Mac/Linux available.
Not trying to start a flame war here, but is there a Windows or Java version available? I'd love to have something like this on my desktop (I run Windows XP, sue me).
I tried a similar program recently for Windows, but it never seemed to queue more than one particular song (though others were listed).
"I downloaded the Debian package..."
That made me laugh, geekboy.
Until there's a win and mac app, you're not reaching music's main, mass audience: geeky subliterate teens and techno-illiterate college students.
It's not a nitpick, it's a perfectly valid point. I didn't mention that a lot of orchestras don't live down to the level that the law theoretically allows, but tend to treat citizens better. To be fair, I probably should, so thanks for the opportunity.
Another example of this is the BBC, which i have just learned evidently allows parts of the USA that fall under its geosyncronous sattelite over the british virgin islands broadcast range to decode the TV signal for non-commercial use even though those people don't pay a BBC liscence - As I understand it, it's something about the US donating the rocket that put that bird up as part of an international development effort, so it only seems fair.
I'm not so much worried that the orchestras, PRI, and so on will all go to a cut-throat don't trust the patrons (soon to be called consumers) model, as that the actual practice of law involved is something to live down to instead of up to.
Who is John Cabal?
They recently announced deals with Budweiser and Klipsch where the best-rated music is syndicated in the form of top-10 lists or (in the case of Budweiser) radio players. With the size of their music library (including the former MP3.com archive ) it is a good system already, whether for musicians or consumers. Definitely something to keep an eye on!