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PC Mag Reviews Mercora P2P Radio

Posted by michael on from the all-i-hear-is-radio-gaga dept.

prostoalex writes "PC Magazine reviews Mercora peer-to-peer streaming radio. It's not a service which allows anyone to download songs, however you can listen to any of the top 20 million plus songs available on the network from more than 2000 private radiostations. Mercora supports keyword search by genre, song name or artist name, but does not allow to listen to more than four songs from the same artist to avoid copyright issues. Any Mercora user automatically becomes a broadcaster, when the app scans the drive for digital music and then suggests creating an ad-hoc Internet radiostation."

9 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. How's this different from Live365? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Live365 has done this for years, plus Live365 uses standard technology so I can listen with Linux, PalmOS or even an internet-enabled stereo.

  2. Re:How does this get around ASCAP royalty fees? by oreaq · · Score: 4, Informative
    Maybe from "6. INTERACTION WITH THIRD PARTY SITES AND SERVICES" http://www.mercora.com/eula.asp:
    ... You are solely responsible for any dealings with third parties (including advertisers) who support the Service, including the delivery of and payment for goods and services.
  3. It's filled with Spyware by Torontoman · · Score: 2, Informative

    I thought about installing it and my spyware prg picked up a lot of baddies.

  4. Ooops - Here Are The Rules by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 2, Informative

    3. AUDIO PLAYING AND STREAMING
    You agree to use the Service to only play and stream audio content for which you have acquired the legitimate legal rights for use. You agree that when using the Service for audio streaming, you will not:
    Stream sound recordings that are inappropriate, profane, defamatory, obscene, indecent or unlawful
    Interfere with the Services audio selection for streaming mechanism which adheres to the public performance of sound recording guidelines of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
    Publish advance program guides or use other means to pre-announce when particular sound recordings will be streamed or the order in which they will be streamed
    Stream specific sound recordings within one hour of the request by a listener or at a time designated by the listener
    Disable any identification or technological protection information included in the sound recording (if any)
    Violate any applicable local, state, national, or international law (including without limitation the DMCA)

    I guess that takes care of that...

    If you stream your illegal MP3's - and what else do most people have (leaving out legally ripped MP3's), you're in violation of the law - and if you breathe on their software, you're in violation of the DMCA...

    Doesn't look like such fun now, does it?

    --
    Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  5. legit Streaming audio by andrewzx1 · · Score: 4, Informative
    I provide IT support for a community radio station that provides streaming audio through www.live365.com. First of all let me say that Live365 provides excellent service and hosts many, many wonderful radio stations. We pay something like $1500 for 150 simultaneous listeners at 20 kps. Which is roughly FM quality. It sounds different than FM, but roughly equivalent.

    The radio station used to archive all its programming for people who wanted to do time shifting. This was put to an end by the RIAA and the record industry. We came to a settlement with the RIAA and agreed not to their terms in order to provide any streaming at all.

    There are a lot of great radio stations streaming programming now but the RIAA put 90% of them off the air with the threat of litigation. There used to be thousands of home/hobby stations broadcasting from homes and dorms. The RIAA theatened them with litigation regarding royalties and poof they were gone. This included a lot of great college radio stations unfortunately.

    For anyone who wants to record streaming audio I highly recommend the Windows shareware program TotalRecorder. Don't know if a Linux version is in the works or not.

    - AndrewZ

  6. Re:How does this get around ASCAP royalty fees? by pedestrian+crossing · · Score: 2, Informative
    From the FA

    Mercora's parent company pays the labels a rights fee for each song the service streams.

    Also from the FA

    Currently, Mercora makes its money by letting you purchase the music that you're listening to through Amazon, as well as posting unobtrusive Google-supplied ads to the application.

    Satisfied now? Got karma envy? Moderate instead of bitching about it.

    --
    A house divided against itself cannot stand.
  7. Re:Adware!!!! by number11 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Microsoft Antispyware Beta running on it immediately detected an adware bundle (starts with a "G", I forgot the exact name)

    Grokster. Mercora. Compare the two. They both have the matching string "er" preceded by an "o". Yup, same thing. And after all, who knows more about insecure programs than MS?

    Yeah, it's a false alarm. Try AdAware. Maybe eventually MS will get their antispyware program working properly, or maybe it will follow the path of Microsoft AntiVirus (remember that POS? Granted, it was a while ago, and soon slipped into richly deserved oblivion.)

  8. Re:Avoid copyright issues? by TheIndividual · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's a software called total recorder that captures anything that gets played on your computer. However there's an even easier way: some sound drivers (like my Nforce2) offer the ability to use the output of all active sound sources (e.g. Mercora) as input for any recording tool (e.g. Adobe Audition). In the case of nvidia's audio tool the input is called "stereo mix".

  9. Re:Avoid copyright issues? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative


    streamripper