Music Download Service Targets Linux Desktops

An anonymous reader writes "According to DesktopLinux.com, a new music download service was launched recently by theKompany.com that, unlike iTunes and Napster, targets Linux desktops. Mindawn is claimed to provide CD-quality song files and 'virtually no' digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, offer full previews of the entire songs, and provide downloads in a variety of formats." There's also an interview with the founder.

Comments

The Good and the Bad.

[h4rm0ny]

The good stuff is all in the story - a music download service that provides Ogg format music without DRM and a Linux client.

The bad stuff is that there doesn't seem to be much support for big name music. It'll come, and it will only come through sites like this leading the way. But for now, it looks like I still have to get most of my music from iTunes.

On the plus side, things like this do help little known independent bands sell to a much larger audience. And a lot of these bands are really good. The major labels take ages to notice something good. Especially if it's original. We'll start seeing bands become successful through sites like this soon, and when they do and they keep 75% of the profits, that'll be it for the music industry as they know it.

Mighty oaks, and all that...

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[bigberk]

Sounds cool, reminds me of Warp Records' Bleep site. Of course, that's only for music under their label (lots of really good electronica). What amazed me is Warp Records knows how to properly encode audio, they actually use lame w/VBR and some tweaks to make excellent MP3s (I have bought a few albums there).

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[nkh]

I may be different but I don't really want famous artists. I want to be able to discover new stuff. The problem is: I have to download their closed-source player in order to listen to previews and demos. I wished there was something more like Magnatune, or a 30 seconds low-quality mp3 version for example.

OTOH they don't believe a CD copied to a friend is a lost sale, they think it's one future customer! They deserve respect for that.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they focus on progressive and creative music. I would prefer to see a number of different online music stores with their own tastes, rather than a single store that treats the music like a generic product.

The superstore mentality of itunes has always bugged me a little, but then again, I like finding little record shops down back streets. :)

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[daern]

...It'll come...

Don't hold your breath. It's pretty unlikely to come because:

a) Contrary to what you hear on /. there simply aren't enough Linux desktop users out there to make developing and marketing such a service commercially viable at this time
and
b) The music industry has put *way* too much effort into DRM protected music to say "hey, let's let someone sell non-DRM music 'cos those crazy Linux guys won't share it with their mates, will they?"

Nothing personal you understand, but that's business (at least for them). I don't agree with it myself either, but that's the score today :-(

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[jskiff]

The good stuff is all in the story - a music download service that provides Ogg format music without DRM and a Linux client. The bad stuff is that there doesn't seem to be much support for big name music. It'll come, and it will only come through sites like this leading the way.

No, it won't. Most big name artists...check that, most big name labels won't come anywhere near this with its limited DRM. I can't say I agree with it, but money talks and $DEITY knows that the big 5 are all about money.

I would like to think as you do that bands will skip the middleman and go right to publishing their music online, but that wouldn't just be a radical shift for the music industry...it'd basically be blowing it up and starting it all over again. The promotion machine that is the music industry is what bands need to try to make money, not the selling outlet.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

The bad stuff is that there doesn't seem to be much support for big name music.

So? Screw big name music. Personally i can live without even the choice of Britney Spears.

Indie music for an Indie OS.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[h4rm0ny]

I would like to think as you do that bands will skip the middleman and go right to publishing their music online, but that wouldn't just be a radical shift for the music industry...it'd basically be blowing it up and starting it all over again. The promotion machine that is the music industry is what bands need to try to make money, not the selling outlet.

First off, I'd better explain the logic behind my conclusion:

There are a lot of good bands out there. That's obvious because big labels have to get them from somewhere. But they are as you say, promotion machines - they don't want to just sell a band's music for the sake of it, they want to maximise profits and that's usually just a case of pumping up a few artists as high as they can rather than signing a broad range of quality music. What I'm getting at is that there are quality artists who haven't been signed, who wait around a long time to get signed. They now have an alternative. Some of these quality artists will be around on services like this and like Magnatune. They may want to get signed by a big label, but who would wait even just a year in the hopes that it would happen when you don't lose anything by selling this way (you can always stop) and you can get more exposure through it, make some money through it and finally, use it as a flag to wave to the big labels to say that you're worth promoting.

These artists will get publicity one way or another. Gigs and touring will have an effect, increasing uptake of broadcasting over the Internet will have ever increasing effects. If a band is sufficiently good, then everyone who likes their music promotes it to their friends and that will have an effect. Club DJs will have an effect with relevant genres. It will only take one or two bands to achieve success through these sort of outlets to really shake things up. And it will only take one or two because they will make such money out of owning themselves, that two things will happen. Firstly, somebody will fill that niche market of selling promotion in various forms. After all, you get agents for other forms of creative work (acting, writing, comedy). Secondly, established and semi-established artists will look at it and say, "I want 75%!" Hell, they might just do it for creative control once they've done their contracted albums for the label. These people don't need the leg-up that the big labels promise to newcomers.

I think it is definitely coming. The only thing that would stop it would be if it really were less profitable for bands to do it this way than to sell their DRM'd music through the labels. That's a seperate argument, but I'd be relatively happy to make it.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to think as you do that bands will skip the middleman and go right to publishing their music online, but that wouldn't just be a radical shift for the music industry...it'd basically be blowing it up and starting it all over again. The promotion machine that is the music industry is what bands need to try to make money, not the selling outlet.

the industry is the promotion machine that is needed to squeeze most artists out of the picture almost entirely, while making outrageous amounts of money on a few.
one
two
three

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[zulux]

The music industry has put *way* too much effort into DRM protected music

Agreed! There's a fat chance of finding The Counting Crows or REM on this service (or services like them)....

but...maby the next good band may be found here.

Who knows!

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[MrHanky]

Exactly. Slashdot covered Bleep here, but I'd completely forgotten about it until this story came up. Anyway, Bleep seems to have grown quite a bit, selling albums and songs from other big electronica labels like Ninja Tune, Mego (Kevin Drumm's Sheer Hellish Miasma is the best album ever!), Domino (Franz Ferdinand seems to be popular now, but that's not electronica), One Little Indian (Bjork) and more.

It's far from the biggest store on the net, but OTOH, it's extremely cool, if you're into that sort of music. And: no DRM, high quality, and standard mp3s that work on all relevant players. I think I need to buy something from them now.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[CrackedButter]

Just thought i would pip in and say thanks for the link for bleep.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[yoder]

I do not want famous artists either. That is what I loved most about Napster back in the day. I had some of the most obscure music I could ever have hoped to find. When I found something I really liked, I researched them and tracked down their CDs and I knew I had something that not everyone and their sister were listening to. Swedish Goth, Bangladeshi trance, African pop, Russian folk.

Now Magnatune and a very few others are out there, but no way to search huge inventories like the real Napster did. P2P has been castrated and the good obscure stuff is all hidden away again, waiting for the next Napster.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[sloanster]

Contrary to what you hear on /. there simply aren't enough Linux desktop users out there to make developing and marketing such a service commercially viable

Actually we hear that sort of thing constantly on slashdot - LOL, slashdot is a tech gossip site, not a linux site per se, and most slashdotters are just microsoft windows users who have heard of linux, and that comes through pretty clearly in comments like yours.

Linux market share is estimated by some to be in the same neighborhood as mac market share, and has excellent potential for growth. It's nothing to sneeze at, and no clear thinking businessman ought to say "no, I don't want this 3% of the market, I'm doing well enough already"

You do make a good point about DRM though, and that needs to be addressed, but with the convicted monopolist refusing to license the current windoze media player codecs to any linux-friendly app vendor, we're at a bit of an impasse there.

Hopefully this sort of dirty dealing will come to light and put the kibosh on any further discussion of windows media player as a "standard". There is a right way to do DRM, one that doesn't invlove handing the world on a silver platter to an crooked monopolist who will then use their patented "standard" as a weapon to exclude competion from the marketplace.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[AstroDrabb]

a) Contrary to what you hear on /. there simply aren't enough Linux desktop users out there to make developing and marketing such a service commercially viable at this time

Did you read the story? There is a _native_ client for MS Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (thanks to the great QT library). So this service has the _potential_ to reach every user out there.

The only thing they need now is to get more "mainstream" music. The teeny-bopper crap that most of us /.ers don't care about, but the masses seem to.

It may be hard to to convince the big three labels to let their content out with the only DRM being limited to the previewing of the song. However, maybe the big labels will wake up soon and realize that all of their DRM efforts have failed and have not stopped or even hindered piracy (arrggh).

However, there is the chance of the "next big artist" to put their stuff up on a site like this. It is pretty good artist-wise with 75% of profits going to the artist.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

There IS a bad side to this, more than you think. Music download services have created a new middleman: The service providers. Once it becomes successfull, well, the RIAA won't exist, but what about the Music Download Service Providers of America?

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[evilviper]

a music download service that provides Ogg format music without DRM

Haha. Yeah, that's new... No other music download services (like allofmp3.com) have EVER had that bright idea before.

The bad stuff is that there doesn't seem to be much support for big name music.

Actually, that "bad stuff", is the only "good stuff" in the story... A music download service that allows any (independent) artists to sign-up.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[jskiff]

It will only take one or two bands to achieve success through these sort of outlets to really shake things up.

I certainly hope so. There's a lot of good bands out there that aren't getting their due from "the man" and as such aren't getting heard by many folks.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[drew]

Contrary to what you hear on /.(or in this case what the /.headline might lead you to believe) this service doesn't only work on Linux.

It supports linux- it also supports windows and mac users. So there are plenty of users out there to make developing and marketing such a service commercially viable at this time.

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[daern]

You do make a good point about DRM though, and that needs to be addressed, but with the convicted monopolist refusing to license the current windoze media player codecs to any linux-friendly app vendor, we're at a bit of an impasse there.

Yup, I think it is far more likely that we will see DRM codecs being ported to other platforms than we will see non-DRM music download sites which are supported my the industry masses.

I suppose the reason the market likes Microsoft is that it is a single platform to support for and requries the least possible effort on their part to reach 90%+ of the market. If I was investing in the development of a new site, I'd make sure that this was the market I covered first and look to the emergin markets _only_ is the mainstream one proved lucrative enough.

Common business sense really...

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[legirons]

Of course, we'll be happy to support anything from theKom...

what, no previews?!?

Re:The Good and the Bad.

[TiggsPanther]

Yeah. First time I heard about them (original Slashdot article) and I immediately puchased some Aphex Twin and Black Dog from them. Enjoyed the music (still do) and was glad that I was able to actually legitimately buy it. I've said that I'm willing to pay for DRM-free digital music and enjoyed the chance to actually put my money where my mouth was.

Haven't used it since but as their catalogue seems to have increased then I think I'll be using them again. The more sites that do this the better things will get. Plus if they're willing to sell DRM-free standard MP3 files then I'm willing to give their music a try.

eMusic already supports Linux

[eMartin]

eMusic offers MP3 downloads and also offers a Linux version of their download manager (if you choose to use it).

Re:eMusic already supports Linux

[Spruce Moose]

The problem is that it TOTALLY SUCKS. I quit eMusic as the download manager was binary only and crashed out constantly against recent versions of glibc - LD_PRELOAD tricks were required just to get it to work. I won't even get started about the usability of the download manager - uggh. So very many bugs.

The "support" people basically said they weren't interested in doing anything about it and perhaps I should take my business elsewhere so I did.

Oh yeah this was before they put a limit on the number of tracks/albums you could download per month so I probably wouldn't sign up again even if their Linux download manager actually worked. It's a pity as they did have some great old jazz recordings amongst their collection.

Re:eMusic already supports Linux

[eMartin]

The download manager is once again optional. You can just download from the site now. The only advantages with the download manager are filename options and one click full album downloads.

And although the subscription still gets you a limited number of songs, you can now pay for additional downloads. 10 for $5, 25 for $10, or 50 for $15. The "booster packs" carry over (they don't expire when your monthly limit resets).

I almost cancelled my account when they added the download limits, but I'm happy I kept it now. If you like the music they have, it's still the best deal around for legal downloads.

Re:eMusic already supports Linux

[gameboyhippo]

Both eMusic and theKopany don't have the kind of music I like to listen to. I like groups such as Disciple, Pillar, etc... Is there any Linux music download shop that has a good selection of Christian Rock music?

Re:eMusic already supports Linux

[chundo]

Yeah, the download manager is a complete pain in the ass. When I upgraded my distro, no amount of tweaking could get it to work again.

If you don't need a user interface though, and want it to Just Work, I wrote a replacement download manager replacement in Perl. Just set it to handle all .emp files in your browser. It will use your existing download manager configuration for file/directory naming, download directory, etc.

Music to my ears.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, that's great...free music...too bad the songs suck...No one listens to that crap. I'll stick to downloaded music illegally...A good terabyte a month... 3 cable

Screw the MPAA and the RIAA and the BSA and anyone else....mwahahhaha

where I stopped reading

[levl289]

While many of the 1,000 or so tracks now featured on the service...

You could literally have the best and most rights friendly (whose?) service on the planet, but if all you have is one thousand songs, and no deals with recognizable record companys, or artists (it'll never happen with their TOS), why should I care?

Really, this isn't a troll, but this just strikes me as being along the same lines as the truckloads of audio players that play a bjillion formats, but don't actually offer anything that I want.

Re:where I stopped reading

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound awfully bitter about them not selling Britney Spears music...

Re:where I stopped reading

[Mmm coffee]

All great journeys begin with a single step. While a thousand songs may not seem like much now, the fact that such a service exists shows how far "we" have come.

A music purchasing service that focuses on cross platform compatibility, no DRM, and gives 50-75% of each sale to the artist? While they have "only" a thousand songs, this shows great potential.

According to the article....

[rolfwind]

According to the article, it should be available to Linux, Mac, and Windowns desktops..... not just Linux. Offers non-lossy FLAC and Ogg compression as well as lossy formats.

But a complete Ogg "CD" still costs 6.99 and FLAC costs 8.99

Sounds like a OK deal overall (figuring no DRM) but right now it specializes in Progressive Rock.... but hopefully the selection will get broader, just like Ebay started out with just Pez dispensers.

Re:According to the article....

[Lumpy]

you forgot one important thing.

absolutely no music that anyone would want to buy.

until they sign a deal with BMI and ASCAP for their libraries of music to sell they are nothing more than a repeat of the other 20 online DRM free music sites.

Magnatune has 900 times the music than they do and they still are not even known by 1% of music listeners.

Neat idea, great service, too bad they have nothing to sell but extremely obscure and unknown.

Maybe if they team up with places like IUMA.org and try to get the artists there to list with them they MIGHT have a chance.

Re:According to the article....

[AvantLegion]

>> but right now it specializes in Progressive Rock.

And bad prog too. Salem Hill? The Red Masque? Ouch.

One Word!

[Dacmot]

AWESOME!

Re:One Word!

[Poulpy]

For the record, "Awesome" is not an acronym, therefore shouldn't be capitalised.

Needs content if I am going to use 'em

[boringgit]

I'd love to support them.

Trouble is, I want to buy Franz Ferdinand, not Fred and the Freaks....

Much as I admire the attempt, I can't see major labels sacrificing their precious DRM.

Remember when iTunes came out - none of us could beleive how strict it was - quite how inconvenient it would be to use. Nowadays iTunes is the friendly face of DRM...

I'd just buy a damn CD if they weren't protecting them as well... I just want to listen on my Linux PC and iPod why do they make it so difficult?

Re:Needs content if I am going to use 'em

[Simon Lyngshede]

Yep, if we could just get the music on REAL CDs... but NO.

Oh and it wouldn't hurt if they would lower the price to around half of what they currently cost.

Re:Needs content if I am going to use 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

My parent's comment is how current CDs are protected and how music is over-priced, and he gets modded "Troll"... on Slashdot?!

Re:Needs content if I am going to use 'em

[Flamesplash]

I've often thought that you should just copy a friends CD then send the artist directly $10-$15.

Major record labels will never support this

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was one of the reasons why it took so long to get legal music download sites selling music by the record industry labels - the major players were worried about piracy.

How long it is before someone shares all their legally downloaded ogg files on a p2p network, after all?

Re:Major record labels will never support this

[WindBourne]

It has never really been about music being freely traded. These attacks on p2p is purely a way to stop minor labels from growing and up and coming musicians from doing it on their own. If the cost of production approachs zero, then musicians will not need labels. As it is, the major labels are making as much money as ever before.

Re:Major record labels will never support this

[shark72]

" It has never really been about music being freely traded. These attacks on p2p is purely a way to stop minor labels from growing and up and coming musicians from doing it on their own."

I think that's too much of a generalization. I've met owners of indie labels who are anti-piracy. If a major loses 10% of their business to piracy, it's just a few layoffs or salary freezes here and there. If you run an indie label, you're paying yourself $20,000 a year, and your income drops 10% due to piracy, it might mean firing one of the six people who work for you, somebody whom you know very well. And from what I've read on the web sites of the various indie record label trade groups, their goal is to have better representation on iTunes, not Kazaa.

Either way, there are tons of outlets on the web for unsigned bands and small labels to get the their stuff out. The traffic of pirated MP3s on the P2P networks tends to mirror the sales in stores. Most people who use Kazaa are there for the latest Eminem or Usher, not some unsigned garage deathcore band from Wisconsin.

"If the cost of production approachs zero, then musicians will not need labels. As it is, the major labels are making as much money as ever before."

Slashdotters have been saying, in effect, "the big labels are history once all the bands discover that the mighty power of the Internet is all they need" for five years now. Meanwhile, companies like Magnatune (which many Slashdotters see as the right way to sell music online) are struggling, while iTunes just hit its 200 millionth download, Universal has launched a digital only label, and Apple and the record companies are having the last laugh. Slashdotters often claim that the record companies just don't get this whole Internet thing, but it seems to me that they get it just fine. Perhaps all it will take is another five years for the Internet to put the record labels out of business, but before that will happen, somebody will need to tell the record labels to stop using the Internet to their advantage.

While many bands who can't get, or don't want a recording contract have used the Internet as a promotional and distribution vehicle, finding success is much, much more than getting the cost of production to zero. The Internet and the P2P will not:

• pay for your studio time, or pay for the gear for you to build your own studio
• pay for an engineer who can make you sound good
• pay for session musicians
• pay for the cost of encoding your music and going through the hurdles of getting it onto iTMS
• send a copy of your song to every radio station in the country, and follow up with phone calls to pester them to play your track
• make the phone calls and pay the costs necessary for your tour
• pay to get you featured on the home page of Amazon.com and the download sites

Meanwhile, a record label will.

The Internet is great, but it's not the universal panacea.

Never Good Enough

[RAMMS EIN]

Unfortunately, it won't be good enough for most Linux types?

Why? It won't be gratis, open-source, and have all the songs they want. And don't say that this is an impossible combination; piracy can deliver just that.

The *AA are right to be frigtened of the 'net.

Re:Never Good Enough

[Simon Lyngshede]

I don't think the gratis element is a problem, Linux users will pay for music. The problem is getting the songs, Mindawn is a nice idea, but others have tried it already, they need to deliever the same music as iTunes to survive.

Where are the moderators?

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy has been modded interesting? I can't believe it! Contracts are signed with artist (not famous at the moment) and they can charge the customer less by reducing their cost of production to zero, lowering the amount they get while increasing the %age of the artist. Why would they buy one CD for each song sold? Are you really that stupid?

Unsustainable

[DogDude]

I have no idea what this company's business plan looks like, but anybody with even a modicum of common sense knows that there's virtually no way possible to grow this thing into a usable service if your customer base is that tiny. We're talking HOME LINUX users. Realistically, that's a customer base that's in the 5 figures, low 6 figures, tops. Out of those, even if they get 50% of the market, it's going to be very tough. But that current customer base is mainly made up of geeks screaming "free! free! free!" who are very able to find free music. So not only is their potential customer base tiny, but the customer base that does exist is not one that is likely to purchase music.

This one is a no brainer. It's just a matter of time before they run out of cash.

Re:Unsustainable

[Skinkie]

I was really surpriced to see this site with the same target as I was investaging. Flac/Vorbis/MP3 database with ISRC. The concept of lossless is not new, but getting on demand-licences for the populair songs is.

Over here in The Netherlands some DRM based download sites pop-up these day, I hope there will be a DRM-free and lossless initiative for Apple prices.

Re:Unsustainable

[belmolis]

You've been misled by the phrase "targets Linux". According to the article, they're ready for Linux, MS Windows, and Mac OS. That's pretty much the whole market.

Re:Unsustainable

[MrDomino]

Because as we all know, it's virtually impossible to run Linux software on any other systems.

Re:Unsustainable

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I highly suspect it ...

Re:Unsustainable

[bwy]

I thought I heard that theKompany was in bad financial shape a while back. Seems like I read where they had developers who hadn't been paid in a while, that kind of thing (hopefully I'm wrong.) They make a decent line of software for the Zaurus, which is how I came to know about them.

Re:Unsustainable

[evilviper]

there's virtually no way possible to grow this thing into a usable service if your customer base is that tiny.

I'm sure we all remember how the iPod and iTunes failed miserably, because their customer-base (Mac users) was so small.

They tried to expand their market with Windows compatibility, but by then it was too late, and Apple went out of business...

Re:Unsustainable

[The OPTiCIAN]

Where they could do good business is in the field of classical music. There are lots of talented musicians around playing high quality classical music that's way out of copyright. As yet there's no easy way to

And it's seriously hard to get classical music through online services without through the nose (particularly if you want an ogg format).

I've been trying to get a version of Mendelssohn's Octet from various file share systems for weeks (not continuously - but every time I do bittorrent stuff or log on to eMule I look for it search for it). Can't find it anywhere - and it's one of this great composer's finest works.

Re:Where do they get the music?

[bairy]

From the interview:
It's also really amazing what artists can do at home now. A guy with a synthesizer and a sequencer can create his own music that sounds really good, upload it and sell it.
I would assume that's where some comes from

While many of the 1,000 or so tracks now featured on the service are progressive rock artists and labels -- including content from his own label
Some more from there.

And the rest I would guess are the same as how radio works... but one original and pay the record company every time you sell a copy (play the track)

This brought to you by the letter...

[ThePatrioticFuck]

My god people, there are other letters in the alphabet besides 'K'! Use them!

Re:This brought to you by the letter...

[Anonymous Coward]

My god people, there are other letters in the alphabet besides 'K'! Use them!

ok.

Re:This brought to you by the letter...

[Anonymous Coward]

LIAR! I learned my kkk's in school.

Like this: kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

Re:This brought to you by the letter...

[filterchild]

You mean like 'E'?

Enlightenment,
Edje,
Evas,
Ecore,
Euphoria,
Entrance...

Re:This brought to you by the letter...

[Anonymous Coward]

The others are just not as kewl.

I'd love to meet the investors ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... I have some rare dihydrogen-monoxide to sell.

I can imagine the sales pitch:

"I've got this brilliant idea -- creating yet another music download service to compete with those chumps who know nothing of the consumer space: Apple, Real, and Wal-Mart. Our hook? We write for a platform that has less than 5% penetration on desktops worldwide. We'll make tons of money because we won't add DRM, which they hate, so they'll pay us even though they could easily copy our music for free."

I haven't run a Linux desktop actively in > 2 years, but from what I've read it hasn't changed -- my #1 music service on Linux then was LimeWire.

Let's face it -- Linux / OS is touted as cheaper software, people get irate every time MS says that MS software is cheaper in TCO because Linux is "free" (no one assumes donating $$$ to your favorite project), and then we pretend that music with no DRM will be paid for out of generosity.

Since I know this will be followed by 50 "I'll pay for it", let me state -- the Slashdot is the farthest thing in the world from the norm.

ITunes at provides itunes-specific content and a great UX, Wal-Mart lets you buy your music online from the same place you buy your CDs (not me -- we're talking percentages). What new innovation does this provide other than "me too"?

Re:1st..

[Anonymous Coward]

How stupid can you get.. Here goes.

You missed fp by 11 mins, you're waaaay down on the page and you forgot to tick anonymous which all kinda makes me wonder why you bothered smacking refresh just so you could embaress yourself

It's already been done...

[EaTiN cOfFeE bEaNs]

It seems to me that the idea of targeting desktop Linux users is a marketing ploy to a niche market.

However, you can already use a service like this. It's called AllOfMp3. You choose the format (MP3, WMA, OGG Vorbis, MPEG-4 AAC, MPC) and the bitrate (even lossless), and you're charged a penny per meg (well, 2 pennies per meg after Jan. 15).

Re:It's already been done...

[pammon]

If you're using AllOfMp3, you might as well be pirating the songs for all the money that the artists receive. Presumably, Mindawn receives the artists' permissions to sell their music.

Re:It's already been done...

[Anonymous Coward]

Allofmp3 is very likely to be illegal in most european countries. Try suprnova.org and keep your money, artists get nothing from your russian site.

Re:It's already been done...

[pyite]

artists get nothing from your russian site.

Because they get so much from the RIAA.

Re:It's already been done...

[Ethelred Unraed]

Presumably, Mindawn receives the artists' permissions to sell their music.

Of course. That is one of the ideas behind Mindawn -- providing an easy way for artists to sell their music online. You might think of it as CaféPress for musicians.

From Mindawn Artists' FAQ:

It costs you as an artist just $50 per year to have your account, with as many albums and tracks as you want. You don't even have to print CDs -- just put some of those new songs you're working on up for sale online. You don't even have to even work around the concept of an "album" if you don't want to. Just create your account and load your content -- you can be 'live' within 30 minutes of opening your account.

[...] We have two royalty models:

75% for electronic content exclusive to Mindawn. However, you can change at any time to the second model:

55% for non-exclusive electronic content

That means you get either 55% or 75% of the total price -- far better for artists than most record labels or iTMS.

And the /. article is rather misleading. The client is for Linux AND Windows AND Mac OS X. Also, the client is only for previewing songs -- you can buy via the website, ergo technically it's platform-independent. Mindawn isn't "targeting Linux" -- it supports Linux alongside other OSes.

(FWIW I know about the service because I did the graphics and eye candy for the site and software.)

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:It's already been done...

[generic-man]

When you buy a CD from a band, the RIAA gives the band a few dollars out of the purchase price.

When you buy a CD from allofmp3.com, the band gets nothing from the RIAA or its Russian counterpart.

If you're going to buy from allofmp3.com, just buy KaZaA Plus already. We already know allofmp3.com's customers don't care about the artists getting any money, yet they enjoy paying money for music they could otherwise download for free.

Re:It's already been done...

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't get from the RIAA either but: This russian site is ILLEGAL and you have to PAY for it (when you could still do something illegal for free with Suprnova). Thanks moron.

Re:It's already been done...

[Anonymous Coward]

This way people can download and not live in fear of getting sued, and who cares about the 'artists' anyway? If they're any good they all end up with mansions and swimming pools in LA anyway, they make all their money from touring, this just means they maybe have to do an extra show somewhere once every 10 years to make up for the money they lose (about 0.3 cents?) from you not downloading via iTunes or something.

Re:It's already been done...

[EaTiN cOfFeE bEaNs]

Why the fuck would I want to get KaZaA Plus? The network is shit, I'd be more likely to get persecuted, I don't know where my music is coming from, and with AllOfMP3, I know where my music is coming from (a dedicated server in Russia), and it's extremely easy to use.

Re:It's already been done...

[generic-man]

How is Kazaa Plus different from the free, ad-supported version of Kazaa?

Exclusive features include:

No Ads - no banners or annoying pop-ups while you search.

Should you have a problem installing the application Kazaa Plus offers 24 Hour Customer Support by email.

'Search More' up to 15 times depending on your Participation Level. This means you can access up to 3,000 results per search.

Enjoy faster automatic downloads as a result of multiple sources increasing from 8 to 40 sources.

Customize your homepage within Kazaa Plus 'Web' view.

Adjust your scan frequency for My Kazaa and control how often your shared files are scanned.

Limit uploads from your 'My Shared Folder' according to other users Participation.

Other great features of the latest version of Kazaa Plus (v2.6.6) include:

Multiple simultaneous searches - searching is now much faster because you can run up to 24 concurrent searches.

Multiple search results tabs - display each search you perform in a new window.

'Quick' and 'Advanced' search tabs - the search view within Kazaa allows both quick and advanced searches. Use the advanced search to obtain more accurate results in less time.

Search Agent - Searching for a file? Get Search Agent on the case to perform repeated searches every 30 minutes over a 24 hour period.

Web search - use the Kazaa Media Desktop interface to search the web.

Improved built-in virus protection: BullGuard P2P software is specially designed to quarantine and delete dangerous files from other P2P users.

Channels - Kazaa includes Search and Browse Channels. Channels are websites specially designed for viewing within Kazaa, giving you direct access to downloads and information.

Peer Points Manager provided by Altnet - Collect Altnet Peer Points by sharing Gold Icon Files. Altnet Points are redeemable for sponsored downloads and chances to win prizes.

Shared playlists- Create unique shared playlists and search for other KMD users playlists

Media Player image handling- View images and play audio and video files within the built-in Media Player in 'Theater' view.

Magnet Links - Magnet links allow web sites to link directly to files that can be downloaded with P2P technology. This can result in significant savings in online distribution and hosting costs.

Kapsules- Kazaa v2.6.2 introduces the concept of Kapsules - custom digital packaging of multi-file collections. For example, a Kapsule may include music, exclusive footage of live performance, lyrics and images - all of the same band or artist.

Re:1st..

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

You have the reactions of a civil servant
who's excited about a new form, my friend.

A boon for indie artists?

[northcat]

Many of us have been waiting for something like this, but its almost certain that no major record label will agree to this. This might be a good thing for indie artists and upcoming artists.

Re:Where do they get the music?

[Anonymous Coward]

It reminds me of this Dilbert joke:

(phone ringing)
- Hi, do you remember this fax I sent you an hour ago?
- Yes, what do you want?
- Can you fax it back to me, I need it now!

Nice selection... NOT

[sokoban]

Okay, I listen to a lot of independent and new music, but I've never heard of ANY of their top 10 tracks. I'm sorry, but this doesn't beat the iTMS in my book. No recognizable artists on their front page or promoting the site from what I can see. Come on, this isn't the only music store that supports linux. Yet another lame ass front-page story on /.

Re:Nice selection... NOT

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because if you haven't heard it on MTV, it's obviously crap.

Re:1st..

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially if you look at his posting history: he has a lot of "4/5 Interesting". This is the dark side of the human soul I say!

Also Magnatune?

[graibeard]

The service appears to be similar to what Magnatune offers. Magnatune is a record label that signs artists and offers an honest preview. Files are available for purchase in various formats, mp3, wav, ogg, vbr and also (from memory) flac. You can download one format or all, it's your choice.

I've tried the service, downloaded the formats I wanted and there is no catch to it.
While the selection on Magnatune may be considered limited it should improve with time.

What do they have to offer?

[Decimal Dave]

I have a lot of respect for what they are trying to do with Mindawn, but what advantage do they have over other non-drm download services? For example, Magnatune has a larger selection, about a dozen different formats and bit rates available, and you can volunteer to pay more or less for an album based on how much you think it's worth. I can't even buy a track off Mindawn and put it on my MP3 player without reencoding it. What's the point of non-DRMed music if you can't get it in a popular format?

Re:What do they have to offer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us make sure we buy an mp3 player that also supports ogg. =)

Re:What do they have to offer?

[LibrePensador]

The point is that mp3 is a patented format and that Mindawn has decided to send a signal to the music industry and to potential customers.

There are so many people who often say if there as a service that offered ogg vorbis at reasonable rates, I'd be there in a heartbeat.Well, it's here and you can even sample the songs before you buy.

I hate whiners, and gloom and doom people. Give these guys a chance. They are trying to do the right thing!

Other DRM-free music sites

[Anonymous Coward]

Audio Lunchbox

Magnatune

Also worth noting: RIAA Radar

The Company?

[mefus]

Isn't that what they call... the CIA?

Re:The Company?

[tepples]

True, "cía" is short for "compañía" (company) in Spanish. In French you get this.

Re:The Company?

[Anonymous Coward]

100% not what he was referring to.

Re:The Company?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called disinformation.

Just ordered my first album

[superfebs]

This is what I was waiting for. This is the right way to do it. So, buddy out there, let's support the project if you want to see it grow. I'm downloading right now my first album, in FLAC format: it's "Creatures", by "Frogg Cafe'".
No, I have no idea about who frog cafe' are and what I'm downloading now. But I like Jazz :). 75MB downloaded 'till now. I'll post again when I'll have listened MY new music. What a beautiful thing, I can bring the files to my friend's house and let they hear it! Oh, by the way, which FLAC player do you suggest under Windows XP?

Re:Just ordered my first album

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Winamp to play FLAC files in XP. MPEG Audio Collection works as well.

Re:Just ordered my first album

[superfebs]

Duh, self reply, and the download is not finished yet. Two notes:
1) I just discovered that there was the chanche to listen to a preview before buying. Duh.
2) I found the website of that band, ""frogg cafè". What the damn hell, they show up *ten*, I mean, *ten* different ways to buy their music, and mindawn is not in the list. What could that mean?
I will let you know if that "creatures" album is worth the money!

Re:Just ordered my first album

[nkh]

I have no idea about who frog cafe' are and what I'm downloading now. But I like Jazz :)

This is EXACTLY the kind of attitude I expect from intelligent people: discover new stuff, don't wait for others to tell you what to listen to. If no one listens to an artist because he's not famous now, how can he become famous one day?
superfebs, I applaud you...

Re:Just ordered my first album

[superfebs]

Great. Now pull eight dollars out from your credit card and do the same :-)

Re:Just ordered my first album

[jeremyp]

I hate to add to your woes, but you've got the accent on the e the wrong way around. Café is how it should be.

Re:Just ordered my first album

[TheRaven64]

I would, but I'm still waiting for you to tell me if it's any good...

Re:Just ordered my first album

[nkh]

That's what I just did! ;)

(but don't forget http://www.magnatune.com/, they have the widest range of music IMHO)

Re:Just ordered my first album

[superfebs]

This is a very pre-alpha impression :) since I just finished to listen the first and the second track. I liked the first, the second is way to kitch for my taste. They in some way remember me Dream Teather. Hey, this is definitely *not* Jazz!

Anyhow. You can download the free (uh, I don't know it's license yet, but I know you don't have to pay for it) player and browser from the site, and listen to the samples with your hears before buying. Full samples, with a "free trial from mindawn.com" voice watermark in it. At least, that's what the FAQ says. Cannot recheck it, since slashdot effects are overwhelming the site now.

Re:Just ordered my first album

[Anonymous Coward]

actually I don't see any slashdot effect, the site is still very responsive. If you are in to Dream Theater, you should try Frameshift, that is a really amazing project that vocalist James LaBrie did last year that will knock your socks off. Frogg Cafe use to be a Zappa cover band and you can still hear some of those Zappa influences, I certainly don't hear the DT influences, but everyone hears things their own way.

Re:Just ordered my first album

[AnalogDog]

Don't hold your breath to listen to the tunes under linux. The gave us an rpm and a tarball based on Debian, and for those of us running a different distro, we are soaked. And the tarball is not really a tarball, its just a tar file of the executables, and the stuff they are looking for. I sent them a note to give us a real tarball, or real rpms, but not that junk. Rob

Re:Just ordered my first album

[superfebs]

Hey, magnatune.com is even better! (and it has a name I can remember...). More choiche, you can choose the price, and it seems there is no limit to the trial listenings. Why there isn't more noise around that?

Re:Looks like an okay service...

[ljaguar]

WTF? how did this get modded up? right there on the page:

"...offer full previews of the entire songs..."

not to mention even iTunes Music Store has 30 second clips of every song. And it's not lame like first 30 seconds or random clip of middle of nowhere - the 30 seconds are chosen manually to be the representative sound of the song.

So parent is very mistaken. nevermind RTFA, RTF summary.

Mindawn is Doomed

[0x0000]

Did Mindawn/theKompany not pay any attention to what happened to to mp3.com?

About the time mp3.com started to make money they were purchased by an RIAA member mega-corp. They were embraced, and extended - assimilated and unltimately destroyed both as an outlet for artists and as a corporate entity.

The music industry will not tolerate un-affiliated (independant) success any more than the political industry will. If an independant shows signs of gaining traction with the public - of getting a following - that independant will purchased by one of the RIAA mega-corps and shut down. If they don't gain a following, they'll simply go bankrupt and shut down.

Either way, no non-RIAA company can compete in the industry, and no dissenting (unsigned) artist stands a (statisticly significant) chance of success. That's why what the insdustry is doing is called "racketeering" and that's why the music industry as we know it must be destroyed before Capitalism (competition) can have an effect...

You can't win if you're playing with their ball and by their rules.

Re:Mindawn is Doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

mp3.com was bought out and "shut down" because they chose to be bought out. Who says Mindawn has to be bought out?

Re:Mindawn is Doomed

[jonbryce]

But Michael Robertson did make some money out of it, and that, at the end of the day, is what business is about.

Re:Mindawn is Doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

Robertson got about $400 Million out of it. Hardly a bad thing as far as he was concerned.

Re:Mindawn is Doomed

[0x0000]

that, at the end of the day, is what business is about.

What, Michael Robertson making money? C'mon. Grow up. Take a look at the Big Picture...

Re:Mindawn is Doomed

[legirons]

"Did Mindawn/theKompany not pay any attention to what happened to to mp3.com?"

Well obviously they did. My memory of MP3.com was that they did a shitload of record-selling, and made the purchase of music palatable to many people who would rather blockade a record store than buy things from it.

They sold to people who thought £17 ($35?) per CD was too much. They sold to people who'd never heard of the bands they played before. They sold to people who developed new tastes in music, as they could preview anything, from home, and keep it as an MP3 file. And they continued to sell stuff.

Like you said, they were making money, despite the frightening amount of IT spending, the oracle database licenses, the "internet boom" spending, the allowing free downloads, the lack of DRM, the absolute trust in their customers. If people didn't want to pay MP3.com for a CD, they could simply download it. Yet we still did buy CDs from them, time after time...

I just wish more people would learn the lessons from MP3.com.

Re:Mindawn is Doomed

[0x0000]

Huh?

I just wish more people would learn the lessons from MP3.com

Actually, I was referring more to the "what happened to part" than to the MP3.com business model. MP3.com was destroyed by the "music industry" leaving thousands of independant artists without an outlet, and millions of consumers without recourse against the RIAA. I'm wondering what is going to stop RIAA from taking similar action against Midawn?

Re:Mindawn is Doomed

[legirons]

"Actually, I was referring more to the "what happened to part" than to the MP3.com business model. MP3.com was destroyed by the "music industry"

But is that true, verifiable, and significant? I often hear claims that MP3.com was killed, and I've no doubt that there were lots of people with the money and desire to do so. However, I'm not convinced.

"[MP3.com] was shut down on 2 December 2003 after being purchased by CNET"

Even being cynical and suspicious (which I am, definitely), that looks like CNET just paid them a lot of money to go away. And I don't recall there being anything fundamentally wrong with the business before they shut down either. OK, a few legal problems with "My.MP3.com", but that was a side-issue anyway, totally irrelevant to their main business.

Who knows, maybe it just needs someone with a longer attention-span than Michael Robertson. Again, nothing personal, it's not something I could do, but you have to wonder if that massive market is still there, waiting for someone to reopen the shop.

Re:Mindawn is Doomed

[0x0000]

But is that true, verifiable, and significant?

I guess that depend on how closely you want to look. If you look only at the CNET puchase, you won't verify much. If you go back a little further you will find that CNET purchased mp3.com from Viacom. Ask how Viacom got it.

Even being cynical and suspicious (which I am, definitely)

I'm sorry, but if you didn't even bother to check who CNET got it from, and where they got it, and who owns CNET, you just don't fit my definition of either cynical or suspicious. Well, cynical, maybe, since cynicism seems to be the opposite of the pre-cursor state to suspicion: curiosity.

Fwiw, it has been my observation that cynicism and suspicion don't typically go together on the same topic. A person will usually be either cynical or suspicious, but not both, on any given subject. I am suspicious about things concerning which I am *not* cynical - and I am suspicious about them because I'm curious, not because I'm cynical ....

Anyway. You might consider asking "Why did CNET want mp3.com to go away?"

I don't recall there being anything fundamentally wrong with the business before they shut down

Afaik the business did quite well up until the RIAA judgement against them. I believe it was that judgement that enabled Viacom (the RIAA by proxy) to buy mp3.com, at which point the company was on a downhill slide, since Viacom immediately began pushing RIAA-signed material thru the mp3.com portal. I believe that it is at that point that customers began to lose interest.

I'm still curious about why Robertson decided to allow the placement of RIAA material on the site (my.mp3.com). I know there was demand for it, but it is the one move that killed the business which could have survived - even thrived - without it.

I suspect he may have simply thought that what he was doing was within the Law (it was, according to my understanding of Copyrights, but I've never been bribed by the RIAA to say that it wasn't, as presumably the courts were) and that the RIAA would not spend as much as they did just to remove a bunch of independant artists from the market.

Or they (the RIAA) may have outright lied to him about it in order to get him into a position where they could move against mp3.com. Either way, I think if RIAA-owned material had not been introduced, then mp3.com would be doing better than ever right now, and the artists using it would be competing seriously for "airtime" on radio and tv. I think the RIAA realized that - that they would be in a serious financial hurt within 10 years unless mp3.com went away - and they moved to neutralize the threat to their monopoly.

"virtually" of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

meaning "not really"...

Fuck them.

Inside Out

[PuppiesOnAcid]

If Mindawn wants to keep their emphasis in progressive rock, all they have to do is strike a deal with Inside Out Records, and they'll have access to at least 85% of prog rock bands.

interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like the application is written in Qt and SDL, so it works on all 3 platforms. I looked inside the mac app and found these:

libvorbisfile.3.dylib
libvorbisenc.2.dylib
lib vorbis.0.dylib
libSDL_sound-1.0.1.dylib
libSDL-1 .2.0.dylib
libqt-mt.3.dylib
libFLAC.6.dylib
lib ogg.0.dylib

It is currently going through every single file on my computer looking for media files before I can do anything though. I don't see how this will catch on with major labels without DRM but this could be quite nice for indies.

Re:interesting...

[klevin]

What I'd like is a version of the software that I can actually run on my system. Binaries only, and only Debian and Fedora at that. MY home system is neither of the above (started out as RH 9), and binary won't run on it. Ah, well, I'm too broke to be buying music right now anyway. Would have been nice to listen to a couple of the samples, though.

Re:interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try looking at the download page. The offer a generic RPM or tarball, and it only requires that you download an additional support package (rpm or tgz) to run. It seems to be working fine on my Mandrake 10.0 system.

Re:Looks like an okay service...

[Anonymous Coward]

So where the hell are these previews? I also couldn't find them (I am not the grandparent poster). They keep them hidden pretty well I guess. Is it web page "mystery meat" that you have to move your mouse over every square mm to be able to locate?

Codec & Flexor

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone where I can download "Time has changed"?

TIA

Re:Codec & Flexor

[Anonymous Coward]

Nevermind. Just found it. God bless Yahoo.

"Mindawn"

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind, v. i. : to give attention or heed; to obey; as, the dog minds well.

awn, n : slender bristlelike appendage found on the bracts of grasses

So clearly the name of this service means: watch out for grass!

I think it's a marijuana reference?

I'd like to read *that* business plan. . .

[Sialagogue]

Launching with a thousand tracks of music, full-length previews, and a Linux client. . .

I certainly support them, will try it, and would like to give them a big hug, but I sure wouldn't let them run my company if I had children to feed.

Re:Looks like an okay service...

[Eggplant62]

I went to the site. I looked at a couple pages full of song. NO WHERE could I find a link where I could listen to a snippet of any of the music I viewed. Could you lend a hand and provide some urls, if you can, please?

as a distributor I can tell you there are LOTS!

[linuxbaby]

We are one of the distributors of all the digital music for these companies. (iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, etc.)

Really only the big guys are using DRM. There are lots of other smaller independent digital retailers selling music with no DRM at all. We send them the albums in FLAC, MP3, or OGG format.

Check out this list of companies that we distribute to. There's a link to each, and all of them have (or will have) the entire CD Baby Digital Distribution catalog of 30,000 albums (350,000 songs).

If you IPO, you'll get bought

[tepples]

MP3.com was a public company (MPPP) at the time. Public companies are subject to a hostile takeover by a company holding a majority (always) or even a plurality (sometimes) of the stock.

Re:If you IPO, you'll get bought

[belg4mit]

Which is why you never float that much common stock.
It is not a fait accompli.

Re:Looks like an okay service...

[Ethelred Unraed]

1. Click on Download at the top of any page on the site.

2. Download the Mindawn Player for the platform of your choice.

3. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Ethelred

Seems like you can't please some people at all...

[ngunton]

I see a lot of comments along the lines of "there's not enough selection", "it'll never work as a business model", "Can't do it without the major labels", et cetera ad nauseam.

I guess I am just starting to get rather irritated with the sense of spoiled entitlement that many in the "open source" linux world seem to have these days. They expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter, free, or else it must be crap and doomed to failure.

Whenever we hear about the latest shenanigans by the RIAA or MPAA, we hear a chorus of shrieks and wails bemoaning the fact that there are no "fair" music services out there that are unencumbered by the DRM mess.

Well, here we are: A guy actually stepped up and started something that seems to provide a very reasonable service: Songs you can download without any restrictions on subsequent use, for a very reasonable fee. And (this is what kills me) he even caters directly to Linux users. But still we hear a chorus of complaints. There isn't enough selection? He just started for crying out loud! Give him a chance to build the thing. I've often wondered myself why someone couldn't do just this sort of thing for the independent artists, just a really straightforward service that charges reasonable fees, doesn't try to screw the customer and rewards the artists. Here it is! He's trying to do it.

Here's an idea: Be grateful, try it, give him feedback, help him make it work. This is what you've been waiting for.

I don't know, sometimes I read Slashdot these days and all I see is people who want everything handed to them on a silver platter. They want everything for free, and if it isn't Open Source then it must be spawn of the devil. Unless, that is, it's Google.

I say, good luck to this guy, he's trying to do something that seems to be very worthwhile.

Just my opinion.

Unsustainable? Not hardly

[Ethelred Unraed]

The Mindawn Player runs on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows, and is really only needed for previewing songs (you can also buy via the website). Thus all three major platforms are fully supported.

The other point is that yes, the number of tracks available is small. But Mindawn is actively looking for new and independent artists -- think of the site as a kind of CaféPress for music geeks, though of course some big-name artists (such as James LaBrie from DreamTheater) are coming soon.

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:Unsustainable? Not hardly

[Anonymous Coward]

"though of course some big-name artists (such as James LaBrie [mindawn.com] from DreamTheater) are coming soon."

Who the fuck is that? That is what you call a big name? Please.

Re:Unsustainable? Not hardly

[Unknown Lamer]

Dream Theater is one of the most popular Progressive Rock bands currently making music.

James LaBrie is the singer.

Their albums tend to at least go gold and their tours (they tour at least twice a year and I'm talking huge tours headlining or co-headlining with people like Yes and Queensrÿche) sell out quickly.

Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't make them popular. Have you ever heard of a little band called Nightwish? Their last album went platinum in Finland in about a week...(they've only toured North America once and that was earlier this year and the US screwed up the issuing of their work visas so they had to cancel the show near me...grrr).

Re:Unsustainable? Not hardly

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't make them popular

I meant to say not popular. It was early and I didn't preview.

Checks in the mail!

[Fished]

Anonymous Coward, Your check is in the mail - thank you for supporting the Evil Empire (tm). Incidentally, in the future you should make up some more supporting details. For example, you should talk about how you've gone through 3 high-quality hard-drives to find the source of the lag, and have positively determined the problem to be in the Linux kernel. Also, you should up the specs a bit. No one is surprised any more when an 800 mhz machine is slow. However, make sure that you don't do so much specifying that someone could actually reproduce your claim. With warm regards, Santa (p.s. Nice touch in the question-begging department. Why any would chose to use linux over other "faster, cheaper, more stable systems"! We laughed out loud at that one!)

Re:Checks in the mail!

[Anonymous Coward]

>No one is surprised any more when an 800 mhz machine is slow.

Sure. And why am I not suprised to find that Win98SE run perfectly fine on my Thinkpad 760XL? (that's a 166MMX with 64MB and 4GB, btw).

As for all the testing you suggested, that only proves my point about Linux-heads who think everyone thinker around with their machines. NORMAL people only want to USE their computer, not learn how to tweak it for weeks before it can finally run the OS.

Re:Checks in the mail!

[Mathiasdm]

Oh, God, stop acting ridiculous. Yesterday, I installed Slackware. It runs fine, and boots faster than Windows 98 on the same computer. Copying files goes faster than with Windows 98, the desktop (Fluxbox) is very responsive. What more could one want?

Re:Checks in the mail!

[Fished]

Dear troll,

The point was that you were comparing apples and oranges. You made no attempt whatsoever to determine whether the problem lay with Linux or with the hardware, and you didn't even address the (very real) possibility that you were using something ridiculous (like, say, Ygddrasil linux) or very old (like, say, Ygddrasil linux). So, please don't be surprised when no one takes you very seriously.

Love and kisses,
Santa

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to add you to my friends list, but you're already there! Seeing as I am your only fan, I don't think posting anonymously will help me much :)

OGG = lossy

[boffy_b]

OGG is lossy, FLAC is lossless.

Re:OGG = lossy

[Enry]

Vorbis is lossy. OGG is a container format that can have Vorbis or FLAC as codecs. So a .ogg file can contain a FLAC-formatted song and thus be non-lossy.

Re:OGG = lossy

[Ianoo]

Just for the record, "Ogg" is not an acronym, therefore shouldn't be capitalised.

Re:Looks like an okay service...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but I STILL can't find a way to preview songs, even in the client. Please, tell us where you found this and how to get there... unless you really didn't know what you were talking about in the first place? ;)

Franz Ferdinand

[Anonymous Coward]

Franz Ferdinand's record label (Domino) are signed to Warp Records' online music store Bleep, so their album and all their singles are available there. Bleep sells MP3s (encoded using LAME alt-preset standard) - so NO DRM WHATSOEVER. Also, you can listen to 30 second extracts of every song for free (albeit at a considerably lower quality - ~90kbps).

Click here for the label, then click the album cover image.

Bleep also has Bjork's record label One Little Indian, all of Warp's own back catalogue (Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, etc.) and a host of other independent labels.

The FAQ states "We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals - DRM is easily circumvented and just puts obstacles in the way of enjoying music."

Re:Looks like an okay service...

[lightningrod220]

That's part of the reason all of my music in my library is 30 seconds or less.

OGG format?

[aristotle-dude]

Too bad it has problems like pre-echo artifacts http://www.google.com/search?q=OGG+echo+artifacts& ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 and is not supported by most portable music players.

This place has worse selection than even http://www.emusic.com/.

Re:OGG format?

[hondo77]

So get the FLAC versions and convert it to whatever you want.

Re:OGG format?

[MrDomino]

Ogg (and mp3, and any other lossy format) is of course not going to produce sound data identical to the original input--that's why they're called lossy formats. For daily listening, however, Vorbis is great--indeed, by many accounts, better in terms of both quality and space than mp3. If you absolutely abhor it, though, then you can always elect to buy your music in FLAC format and do whatever you want with it. Really, I'm not seeing any grounds for your complaint; this looks like a great service, and I'm definitely looking forward to giving it a shot.

As a musician I think it's time to..

[Anonymous Coward]

REJOICE!!!! This is what we been waiting for! We, the musicians who use Linux have already got Ardour - a pro level DAW (digital audio workstation) solution and now the consumers who use Linux get this! This is great! Bloody fuckin' great! Time to rejoice everyone!

well known artists?

[SilentT]

Well that sounds great, but this isn't like iTunes at all. Searches for well known artists wilco, radiohead, the strokes, and the white stripes all failed to turn up any results. After browsing the alternative rock section, it appears all they offer is music by musicians from small labels.

Re:well known artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, come on. You have got to understand that this is a start. Eventually you will get all the mainstream artists as well.

Re:Looks like an okay service...

[hondo77]

You have to go to the OGG version of the album to preview songs (in the client). The FLAC version of the album doesn't have the demo link. Lame, I know, but that's how it works.

Re:Looks like an okay service...

[Ethelred Unraed]

You have to register and log in first, as mentioned on the FAQ.

Cheers,

Ethelred

Well, for the record,

[Anonymous Coward]

After downloading almost several gigs of music from www.allofmp3.com, I have never let one song go on P2P. Why? Because after allofmp3.com, P2P sucks and I don't use it anymore. While I would agree in theory that it only takes one person to do so, if a US-legal allofmp3.com were created, P2P would be limited to ... downloading movies. :)

Seriously, though, a good fair price, format of your choice, and no DRM would be the P2P killer. If only the record labels could figure this out.

AnonEmouse the Pirate
who think my Russian commarads kick ass

Check out LempiJoe

[Anonymous Coward]

A well known Linux musician from Finland.

Re:Seems like you can't please some people at all.

[YrWrstNtmr]

I've often wondered myself why someone couldn't do just this sort of thing for the independent artists, just a really straightforward service that charges reasonable fees, doesn't try to screw the customer and rewards the artists.

emusic.com, before they got bought out. And still, but to a lesser degree.

Re:Why Linux though?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gah, I shouldn't feed the trolls.

"Cheaper" systems? Arguments about TCO studies aside, I can legally download linux gratis, no charge.

"Faster" systems? Your situation sounds like a combination of problems, but the most likely thing is that you have DMA disabled for your hard drive. hdparm -d1 /dev/hda may very well take care of that problem for you (or, depending on your system, you may need to do something a little more involved with the kernel).

"More stable" systems? Yeah, ok, I grant you maybe Solaris would be a better choice in that category. With the right hardware behind it.

That being said, I'm rather OS and platform omniverous. I have a windows desktop for playing games, which dual-boots into a linux desktop for programming and testing; I have a Powerbook for email, IM, appointments and scheduling, et cetera; I have a Linux and a Solaris server; my home's lights and heat are run off a C64 (mostly just for the cool factor; I could easilly hook it up to one of my other machines and rewrite the interface).

Sometimes I even fire up my old Amiga.

Hmm, I wonder if there's an ogg vorbis codec for the Amiga... *googles* Why yes! Yes there is.

RTFA/RTFS

[Anonymous Coward]

The teensy-tiny problem with your theory is that the client isn't just for Linux. It's also for Windows and Mac OS X.

But hey, why let a little RTFA and RTFS get in the way of a little Linux-slagging, hey Bucky?

Re:This service will fail because Linux users are.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not thieves. Copyright infringers. Please keep that in mind next time you post about the Open Source Developer community.

It'll never work

[skinfitz]

Everyone knows that the only reason people use Linux is because we don't like paying for things - what makes anyone think we are going to start paying for music?

*tsk*

precedents

[poptones]

Don't underestimate the power of independance. Thomas Dolby is a good friend of CD Baby (which offers DRM free music downloads) and Magnatune has several artists that you may not immediately recognize (and what non-geek teenager nowdays knows Thomas Dolby?) but have been published on old school labels before offering some of their catalog under Magnatune's open license.

Artists get generally treated like shit by the labels, and most nowdays don't keep control of their music. It would be great if an Alice Cooper (who still owns his music) or Ted Nugent or Neil Young would sign with one of these online lablels, but don't think because it hasn't happened it never will.

So far as what YOU want... do you just want what you already know? You never look for new music? Unless this is true then you can't know "what you want" until you've checked out their artists. If it doesn't cost anything to do so (I don't know about this new site, but Magnatune offers free streaming and 128kbps previews of everything) then there's an awful lot of Free music out there already to be dismissing as "it's not what I want."

Re:precedents

[Anonymous Coward]

People want what the record labels tell them they want.

Re:precedents

[X0563511]

The playlist files they use at Magnatune actually point to MP3 files. Open the playlist up in a text editor and you have the download URLs.

But please, dont rip them off. If you keep it, buy it.

And what happens then?

[poptones]

And what happens to indies and "upcoming artists?"

Don't forget we're pretty much less than a decade into this whole "download music" thing. Already there have been entire albums released only on the internet and have become "online hits" despite providing their creators no income. Just ask around and see how many hiphop fans have "the gray album."

The system WILl change. Artists will quickly realize the creative benefits of avoiding the major labels, the labels will end up being second tier distribution mechanisms - like cable TV. Artists will be able to reap first tier benefits online and work with those old school labels only when it suits them.

Start enjoying real music

[bluGill]

Here is a better idea: get some taste in music. Now I don't know if the selections are any good, but if you don't listen, how will you know. There are plenty of good musicians that you have never heard of. Most don't even bother looking for the big deals (other than in dreams). Start looking for them. Let your friends call your tastes eccentric, who cares, you get good music.

Now I agree 1000 songs isn't much, but if they are good songs it is enough, it will take you several years to enjoy them all.

Unless you are going to hit number 1 one the pop or country chart (Or one of a few others) there is no point in going for the major labels. You won't get a deal that is worth it. If you are going for the number one on the pop chart hits, then you need a major label (and lots of sex appeal, talent optional). The tiny labels are better for the little guy in areas like jazz because they take just enough off the top to get by (with a one man operation this isn't much), do a little promotion (copies to public radio), and leave any other promotion to you. Big labels do the same in this area, but they take much more off the top, and are more likely to forget to send the promotional copies to radio.

Re:Start enjoying real music

[NotoriousQ]

Maybe you can help me.

I have absolutely no taste in music. None. To me music and silence have about the same enjoyment value. However, I enjoy listenting to intricate melodies, philosophical lyrics, interesting beats, etc.

I guess I have a like for various techno-ish things, but I could never find enough interesting music to even bothering listening to. I would love if I could find an independent band who would produce the kind of music that I would actually like to turn on. It seems that most mainstream music is just not for me.

Can you help me out? Here are some titles that I have heard in the last four years and enjoyed...most of the times I do not remember the artist...but these should be extremely mainstream:

In the air tonight, one more murder (better than ezra), hunter(bjork???), some stuff by robert miles, hear the dolphins cry (live?). Sadly this is pretty much a complete list -- sad isn't it.

Care for some suggestions. I do not like the idea of feeding money to RIAA, so independent is a plus. But what I really would like is to simply develop a taste for music.

Re:Start enjoying real music

[bluGill]

I'm not sure, since I've never heard any of those songs. I'm into bluegrass myself. Free play music has some stuff that might be interesting. A google search for band might result in stuff.

Heres an idea: go to local band concerts. I'm sure there is a listing of concerts in your area someplace. (ticketmaster has one, but they might be too much to the RIAA side of things, in any case they are a monopoly so it is hard to say they are any more moral) Many bars have live music, and most of the bands playing have CDs.

Your local high school has band and choir concerts, the quality varies greatly, but it is worth checking out for an evening. Some will sell you a CD if you like the music, if they won't odds are the directory will make you a copy of their tape (or let you tape yourself!).

Or get an instrument and stay playing yourself. Piano or guitar as the good places to start because you can find instructors everywhere. (I recommend guitar just because piano tends to go for the 10 year track, which is better in 10 years, but few adults will stand for it) There is a good chance that other interment's are taught in your area too. If nothing else, the penny whistle is cheap, and easy to play. Everyone should play something, though few have the talent to become good.

Re:Start enjoying real music

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I see what you're suggesting here. Are you really saying the user should change their opinions to fit an inadequate service?

I think your wrong..

[msimm]

I see where your coming from, but this isn't an OSS project. The complaints about selection are valid to a degree, after all as a Linux user I already do have some good DRM-free alternatives available to me:

AllofMP3
eMusic
Magnatune
Warp Records Bleep Store
Audio Lunchbox
I don't speak German so I don't know about this one
Creative Commons has plenty about DRM-free open music sources

So I think its safe to say that Linux users have quite a few choices available to them, some of which seem to have both good prices *and* a good selection. Personally, I'm not complaining about the selection at Medion, but all this noise about being the only Linux friendly, DRM-free store seems a little disingenuous (but hey, its the holiday, so its probably good marketing!).

Since I buy ZERO music containing DRM limitations I hope they do suceed in ramping up their selection while continuing to support the Linux platform (emusic used to even have a working Linux download manager...but last time I checked it was too out of date to run on modern systems so it right-click/save-as).

Re:I think your wrong..

[msimm]

FTR, I but almost all my music from eMusic, Magnatune and sometimes AllofMP3. eMusic used to be 'all you can download' for a monthly charge (that was very nice) but moved to a more sensible set of caps (I pay $20 a month for 90 downloads per month).

Preview idiocy

[Bob Ince]

Crap. So *nearly* the Right Thing, and then fumbled at the last hurdle.

DRM-free downloads? Check. Platform-agnosticism? Check. Good choice of file formats? Check. Looking good. Might spend some money here if the tracks are any good.

So, are the tracks any good? Er. Where's the 'listen' button? Erm... [reads FAQ] so I have to sign up to the service and download and install a special application, just to see if there's anything I want to listen to. Aha.

Nope. Can't be bothered. Gone. Bye.

When you're launching a new web service it's vital to make it easy for uncommitted potential new users to slip into using your services easily, bit by bit.

This feature, however, is a great big roadblock to discourage potential customers. A simple link to an excessively-compressed or partial MP3 preview file would have been easier for everyone.

Re:Preview idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess your explanation is a hint at why Apple can't sell any songs from their must-absolutely-download-and-install iTunes player to access the iTMS.

- DRM'ed downloads? Check.
- Only two platforms choice? Check.
- No choice of file formats or bitrates? Check.

So far, it's very, very bad.

But let's continue just for the fun of it...

- Huge library of known (and less known) artists? Check.
- Preview function? Check.
- Low prices? Check.
- Easy of use? Double check.
- The computer does all the work to keep your iPod and computer libraries synced? Check.

I guess Apple understand something that you don't.

Re:Preview idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, are the tracks any good? Er. Where's the 'listen' button? Erm... [reads FAQ] so I have to sign up to the service and download and install a special application, just to see if there's anything I want to listen to. Aha.

Nope. Can't be bothered. Gone. Bye."

Hear! Hear!

And I bet it is not a Free app either (libre that is) and I try to keep the non-free ones off of my computer.

Some one will get it right though. I keep looking forward to them doing so, otherwise I may have to give it a shot and I am too busy as it is.

A Nony Mouse

That's Great But....

[kernel panic attack]

Where's the music? I mean the REAL music. If this thing is going to fly, they will need to have some real, big name, actual musical selections to chose from. Say like Fleetwood Mac or Emeniem or something. Something REAL. Not a bunch of Danish demo tapes.

Re:Seems like you can't please some people at all.

[Deraj DeZine]

I don't think the people who complained about not having a "fair" downlaod music service are the same ones that are saying that this one is doomed to failure. The people who visit Slashdot are surprisingly diverse.

Actually, open source is good business

[suso]

This was actually smart to open a music download service that is geek/oss-friendly.

Our web/email hosting business has been getting a lot of signups simply because we support open source software proudly and display it on our website.

Re:Actually, open source is good business

[Anonymous Coward]

Our web/email hosting business has been getting a lot of signups simply because we support open source software proudly and display it on our website

...and spam /. with links at the drop of a hat.

Re:Actually, open source is good business

[suso]

Yeah, shameless plug. But it wasn't completely advertising. I did have a point about how OSS supporting folks are more likely to support any business that supports OSS.

if this is anything like kapital

[karlandtanya]

don't hold your breath for a reliable functional product.

Re:if this is anything like kapital

[bomb_number_20]

misery loves company.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who got burned by theKompany.

to sum it up, don't purchase kivio, and shawn gordon is an ass.

Re:1st..

[Anonymous Coward]

quality

about OS & music availability

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not specially targeted for linux users.
It's for any OS that can read ogg and flac files. (e.g. every OS)
You can burn CDs that sounds exactly like original ones. They have a wonderful app for extracting and burning CDs, but you are NOT required to use it.
And you can download the tracks everytime you like once you buy a CD. So no longer scratched CDs.
Give them some time, they are quite new, just about 3 months.
There are good albums anyway, like FrameShift - Unweaving the Rainbow, from La Brie of Dream Theater. I bought it the same day I found them. And it's impressive. You can find other parallel projects of known prog artists. I just hadn't time to listen to many other demos.
Maybe you'll not find more widespread bands for now, but if you believe in a better distribution system than stupid plastic physical CDs, and you want perfect quality, this is the way.

Yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

does it support Ogg?

Oh, wait...

but does it support Linux?

Shit!

Better example

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a lot of posts about how this place will never survive to sign deals with big labels with a lack of DRM and spending a significant amount of effort targeting the Linux market.

Introducing what might be considered this store's big brother: emusic.com

No, I'm in no way affiliated with eMusic. However, I wanted to point out that these folks do not DRM their songs (they just sell regular mp3s), have a supported linux client, and sell songs at rates far less than any other store (except allofmp3 perhaps, which is of questionable legitimacy) reaching as little as ~0.25$ a song. The one problem is that their library isn't huge: 400,000 songs about.

What keeps me a customer is: despite the smaller amount of songs available, it's enough for me to find something good when I feel like buying new music. And since they don't exactly sign huge labels, I get exposed to music I would otherwise not otherwise be. Some of it sucks, some is great, but since the price is cheap in comparison, I really don't feel that bad about downloading a crap or mediocre album - not as bad if I were using iTunes. And finally, there is no DRM. The Linux client isn't that big of deal to me as the interface is entirely web based - so any machine I use with a web browser and an mp3 player can downloaded and play content (also unlike stupid iTunes).

That is what I appreciate in a music store. Emusic is a pretty good implementation. I'm not sure how well eMusic is doing with its business though.

Re:Where do they get the music?

[shark72]

"And the rest I would guess are the same as how radio works... but one original and pay the record company every time you sell a copy (play the track)"

Not in the USA. When a song is played on the radio, it's the composer and songwriter who get paid, not the record company.

Wow absolutly no music.

[zbend]

iTunes has very little I'm excited about, this has absoultly nothing anyone on earth is excited about.

It's so easy too!

[rampant mac]

...a new music download service was launched recently by theKompany.com that, unlike iTunes and Napster, targets Linux desktops.

And that's why it'll fail.

this is Great

[Anonymous Coward]

the next verson of itunes/ipod will support ogg!

Make money putting your music on the net 101

[ShieldW0lf]

1) Go to a bar and play your guts out
2) Patrons tell their friends you rock
3) Patrons friends download your music FOR FREE and listen to it all the time
4) Come back to town and fill a stadium
5) PROFIT

Fuck record labels. Fuck selling music on the internet. Sell tickets and T-Shirts!

Is this a hard concept to grasp?

Re:Make money putting your music on the net 101

[shark72]

"Is this a hard concept to grasp?"

It must be, as there are still lots more bands that want record labels than have record labels. I hope you were being rhetorical.

One thing we can agree on: It's abundantly clear that Slashdotters know much more about the music industry than, say, those actually in the industry. Pity the music industry won't listen. Makes me wonder if those who are out there actually being successful not following your simple steps -- as well as those who are following your simple steps and finding that it isn't exactly working as planned -- are likewise brimming with ideas for next-generation strategies for SQL deployment across Linux clusters.

Re:Make money putting your music on the net 101

[Unknown Lamer]

Musicians don't make money selling albums.

They make money touring. T-Shirts are concert tickets make way more money than a CD. An artist is lucky to make $1 or $2 on a CD. A T-Shirt can sell for anywhere from $15-$40 at a concert. You can get two color silk-screened shirts done in small runs for around $5-$6 total cost. Selling a single shirt at $16 makes the artist around $10.

The problem is that people view this as a problem. The record industry's job is to promote artists. They therefore take most of the money from album sales but they don't touch the musician's merchandise and ticket sales.

The only people really suffering are people who are obsessed with achieving worldwide fame and getting to the top quickly. It takes a long time and a lot of work to become sucessful. Regularly performing live is probably the most important part of that. Eventually someone will notice if you're good. Maybe not one of the Big Five but someone.

Purchasing power to support the Internet.....

[Russell McOrmond]

I consider the lack of major label music to be a feature, not a bug. In 2000 I started my boycott of the major labels who have been spending their time trying to re-intermediate the Internet when I believe the end-to-end dis-intermediation is in fact the most important feature of new media. I won't pay money to people who are trying to do such harm to what I believe to be one of the most important enhancements to democratic societies in my lifetime.

I only purchase from independent labels, and then most often those who deliberately authorize their work to be shareable via a Creative Commons license. My favorite label is Fading Ways Music in Toronto who had signed up with Mindawn earlier in the month.

See also: Creative Commons Year in review..

...Better than the DRM Providers of America...

[Russell McOrmond]

I would prefer the Music Download Service Providers of America that are going to by definition be far less intrusive on our lives than the Digital Rights Management Providers of America. At least with the music industry I can just opt-out and not have it affect any of my life.

There is a lot of misguided support for DRM in the music industry based on their entire lack of knowledge of how DRM works. DRM is a far greater threat to musicians AND their labels (major or otherwise) than any amount of copyright infringement.

I, Copyright Cop! - Who controls the digital security guards?

telling the tale

[poptones]

In the CD's liner notes, you write that you'll be "corrected on the Internet" if you flub some detail telling the Greendale story on stage. Sounds like the Net is a pain in your ass.

When I play a new song in concert, it's immediately uploaded. Everyone has heard it before I put the record out. For a while, that was a negative thing for me. But with Greendale, I started using it deliberately.

How do you mean?

During the acoustic tour in Europe, when I performed the show that's on the bonus DVD, I was aware that everything I said would be recorded, transcribed, and circulated. So every night I dumped in different information about different parts of Greendale. If you say something in one town, and the next night you add a little more, the Internet brings together these separate occasions. It makes you look at things as not being separate.

Don't you want to control the use of your material?

I can't control what people do. I don't want to. If they want to sell my music to someone else or send it to their friends, they can just as easily tape it off the radio as the Net. MP3 quality sucks. If they want quality, they can purchase a DVD-A.

Please Mod Up parent

[benjamindees]

Great points. Not to mention the simple argument that this service has already been developed and is being marketed with or without major name artists.

RTFS Dudes...

[reclusivemonkey]

Slashdot speak:-

targets Linux

translation:-

Q. What operating systems do you support? A. Unlike any other option available, our Mindawn player and MARS software run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Our technology means just about anyone with a computer can buy and use your music through our system.

Rock On!

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought an album purely because of the cover.
I bought Frogg Café - Frogg Café

And I bought it lossless - not disapointed one bit.
These guys actually PAY the artists - seriously, look at their pay structure!

Back when P2P started to get big, there was a common arguement that the artists don't make squat from CD sales anyway, and so the pirates felt morally justified and claimed they would rather pay the artist directly or buy concert tickets or whatever. These guys pay the artists. You got no excuse.

Another P2P excuse was it allowed you to sample indie music etc. that doesn't make the clear channel playlists. These guys offer indies, and samples you can download.

It's time to put your money where your mouth is - this service is something I have been waiting for for a LONG time.

It took a little while to download the 340 MB flac album, but it sure beats the hell out of DRM. I get more freedom and can choose the codec/bitrate for my lossy players, the artist gets a very fair chunk of the dollar, the need for the RIAA to fat cat themselves as middlemen between the artist and the listener is gone.

If you build it, they will come.

Re:Rock On!

[unitron]

" I bought an album purely because of the cover."

Nothing new there. Of course back when that used to happen a lot the covers were 12 inches by 12 inches, not postage stamps.

Alternative download sites

[Hal XP]

Magnatune.com and eclassical.com have all the music I care to download. They also offer free titles and the option to preview samples of the work. Magnatune provides flac and ogg files in addition to the usual mp3s.

What? No Privacy Policy?

[BrianWCarver]

The site has no privacy policy and requires your address before you can register. Not quite ready for primetime.

I will say that someone offering a .deb download and .ogg and .flac audio files with no DRM is absolutely amazingly right on! Now just tack up a legal page where you explain that you'll never ever, unless required by subpoena, turn over my personal information, and we can do business.

I hate to gripe more, but I'd like to know how the player/preview app is licensed before installing it. Apparently it's not under an OSI-approved license or they haven't got a Debian developer packaging it because you can't apt-get install mindawn from the main Debian repository.

Re:What? No Privacy Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's closed source and it needs to be because it decodes their free drm's sampled oggs.

Hypocrisy among posters

[Anonymous Coward]

People, don't expect the moon on a stick. If you want to buy the music put out by the major labels, then of course you will have to buy from the major labels, not a competitor to their whole business model. Don't complain about the major labels' lack of diversity of music, and then complain that you can't get their tracks.

dude!

[Anonymous Coward]

dude they use Ogg and Flac. Bad Ass!

stop being a bunch of downers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow alot of posters here sound like they would be alot of fun to talk with at the bar.

Allofmp3.com again

[petteri_666]

Why don't you people use allofmp3.com. It's really cheap compared to thise 99cents shops and there are lots of options for formats (Supported file types: Mp3, Wma, Ogg, Mpc, FLAC, Monkey Audio, Mpeg - 4 AAC iTunes compatible). Enjoy the globalization ;)

Re:Allofmp3.com again

[Anonymous Coward]

It's illegal.

Re:Allofmp3.com again

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not

Re:Allofmp3.com again

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends upon where you are.

From their legal page -

All the materials in the MediaServices projects are available for distribution through Internet according to license # LS-3-03-79 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Under the license terms, MediaServices pays license fees for all the materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights". All the materials are available solely for personal use and must not be used for further distribution, resale or broadcasting.

Users are responsible for any usage and distribution of all materials received from AllOFMP3.com. This responsibility depends on the local legislation of each user's country of residence. AllOFMP3.com's Administration does not keep up with the laws of different countries and is not responsible the actions of non-Russian users.

Re:Seems like you can't please some people at all.

[polyp2000]

Of course you are right.
we are in a transitional phase . The music industry is changing and evolving. Consumers and musicians are realising that it is too driven by money and not by talent. Its extremely difficult to break into the industry and actually make it a profitable career. You either have to be in the right place at the right time or be a maleable male/female idol / stereotype...

So what happens to all the genuinely talented musicians out there - the ones that are experimenting and doing things differently. They dont get a look in! With all the hyper marketed manufactured psuedo-pop out there its not surprising that consumers and artists who appreciate music for enjoyment and artistic merit
are looking elsewhere for tunes.

The music industry is changing - sites like this one are the places new and upcoming artists are going to be exhibiting their wares. I beleive this is a trend set to continue. The internet has made it possible for unsigned artists to get their music heard all over the world. Musicians and artists have more control and are freer from the shackles of restrictive licensing and regardless of what some A&R man thinks. What happens in the long run? We get a more diverse selection of music to listen to, the artists get what they deserve and the old bricks and mortar labels have to figure out a way to change - just like all those closed source software companies are trying to find a way to work with / or against the open source movement.

Its easy enough to find your favorite bands tunes to download legally or illegally. But if you want to discover music and new bands for yourself its places like this where you are going to find the interesting stuff.

bittorrent?

[Oct]

last i checked, bittorrent supported a linux client

:)

on a more serious note, is there a way that bittorrent would be a viable alternative to other downloading methods for purchasing music? The only thing i can think of is getting the music via torrent, then purchasing the liscense. Theres gotta be an easier way.

YAY FINALS!, oh wait, booooooooooo

Doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

in Ubuntu.
Installed with --force-all, after installing libtag1.
Starts fine, scans HD, but when trying to go to the shop, it trys to download a page, and then nothing happens.

Any ideas?

Weak AND Unoriginal...

[kikta]

At least write your own bullshit:

http://www.kottke.org/98/11/
http://www.osnews. com/comment.php?news_id=6081#202 216
http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12594 3&cid =10564567
http://www.osnews.com/moderation.php?ne ws_id=5617# 186197
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=79563& cid=7030 431
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=125741&ci d=105 33393
http://apache.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid= 105830& cid=9007618

and so on...

Umm

[bogomipz]

offer full previews of the entire songs

Doesn't this mean free down downloads of everything they sell??