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?"

Comments

Centralized is good if content is legal

[jonesboy_damnit]

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

Asked and answered

[stratjakt]

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.

Re:Asked and answered

[joabj]

>No, because few people want to listen to indy music.

Hate to say it but there is something to be said for this. And for good reason.

Part of popular music's appeal is that it is, duh, enjoyed by a lot of people. That is the *primarily* purpose of the major labels, with their huge marketing budgets. They buy consensus along the lines of "Yes this is a song that we, the people, like."

This allows a sort of cultural bonding to take place over certain songs--the producers of "Garden State" can put Cold Play's "Don't Panic" in the begginning of that movie and we'll all understand its shared meaning. It becomes a generational thing.

Music companies buy consensus, and we all need that consensus to build a music community. (Whether we need this done in the way that music companies now do this is another matter entirely--I'd rather have 100 world music bands sell 100,000 copies each of their songs than Fleetwood Mac sell 10 million copies of their latest tired joint. But I digress).

I noticed this back in the early 90s when I was a reviewer for a heavy metal mag. We got *lots* of fantastic CDs in (Along with loads of dross) that, over time, became some of my favorite music. But I feela loss because no one today would know what a great band, say, Antic Hay, was. The music is just as good as what was popular, but something is lost nonetheless.

So Yay! for the major labels!

joab

Re:Asked and answered

[stratjakt]

Music is music...it doesn't matter where it comes from. If you like it, if it brings up an emotion in you...so be it. Who cares if Wayne Newton does it for you or Black Flag?

Your peers care. That's what I'm getting at. If your friends are into Black Flag, listening to Wayne Newton makes you an outsider.

They sell lifestyles. You can choose from goth, ska-punk, country redneck, hip-hopper, headbanger..

Many many people don't go to Best Buy and pick up CDs so much as they have songs they want to hear, but because it supposedly earns them "status" with their chosen crowd. Especially younger people seeking acceptance. You can't deny that this is true, Maslow hierarchy of needs... Psyche 101.

There are true music lovers out there, but they don't make up the mass markets.

Re:Asked and answered

[sgant]

I'll agree with you there about younger people seeking acceptance...but this is nothing new of course as I saw it all through the '70's. Hey, it's tough being a kid...in the past and now. Conform or be cast-out.

But you get older. Hip friends matter less and less and being part of a crowd matters less and less as that old devil time wears on.

Then the music that you most cherish happens to be the music you liked as a youth when you look back. Yes, I like new stuff coming out...but it usually has to brew for about a good 5 years before I start to enjoy it...because it brings back memories for me. Hard to explain really. But you get my drift.

Make it airborne, as in radio

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

it will die to its own popularity

[Agrippa]

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.

Re:The name

[Damek]

So why not just call it "No More Radio"? "Gnomoradio" is far from clear, especially for people who might never have heard of "Gnome" the destop environment.

It may be clever in context, but unless the goal was to create a new program so they could give it a clever name, they're really just undermining their own efforts.

Re:How long will this last?

[Greenisus]

Unless their primary goal is to protect their obsolete business model, but they wouldn't do that....

I think the RIAA is not really concerned about online communities like this one. Things like GarageBand.com have been around for a long time and the RIAA is not sweating it. Things like this make it easier for an RIAA label to sign a band. The band will be more professional, will already have some knowledge of marketing itself, and will have some sort of proven success to show that they can create a "buzz." Right now, all a major label can do is go to live shows and watch SoundScan reports for independents to look for talent (they don't open unsolicited demo tapes mailed to them for legal purposes). This is simply another venue for them to scout.

Re:How long will this last?

[tsg]

I think the RIAA is not really concerned about online communities like this one.

They will be if this becomes popular.

Things like this make it easier for an RIAA label to sign a band.

Things like this make it unnecessary for a band to sign with a label. And that's really the crux of the matter. The recording industries business model has been the creation/promotion of superstars and the selling of plastic disks. The plastic disks are no longer needed and sites like this make promotion available to bands without the help of the labels. While these sites will probably not produce superstars like the labels do, it will make it easier for musicians to make a living making music. They won't make as much as the superstars, but there will be more musicians doing it.