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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."

8 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. How does this get around ASCAP royalty fees? by Asprin · · Score: 3, Interesting


    How does this get around ASCAP the royalty fees that are causing headaches for internet radio broadcast stations?

    --
    "Lawyers are for sucks."
    - Doug McKenzie
    1. Re:How does this get around ASCAP royalty fees? by pedestrian+crossing · · Score: 5, Interesting

      According to the article, they pay the royalty fees, although it doesn't say where the money is coming from. Hmmm....

      --
      A house divided against itself cannot stand.
    2. Re:How does this get around ASCAP royalty fees? by KarmaOverDogma · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They don't.

      The article makes vague claims as to payments, but really... from who? Where is the revenue source? Where is the Advertising?

      I wonder if ASCAP and/or the RIAA will tolerate it and for how long? Considering how ASCAP sued the Girl Scouts for singing copyrighted songs around the campfire (and won), I dont think it will be tolerated as legal-eagle for long.

      I dont think it will be attacked as vigorously as P2P MP3 distribution since keeping a copy for yourself involves time consuming use of the anologue hole, but I really don't see this as the free and legal alternative it seems to be presented as.

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      uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
  2. Too bad it's bundled with adware by Spic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just downloaded and installed Mercora and as soon as I did, my Microsoft Antispyware flagged Grokster as trying to install. Just a bit or warning.

  3. My experience by Dracil · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I used it in the past. It was fun for a while, but the problem of course is bandwidth. Most home connections don't really have the bandwidth to have more than a couple people really, and so I moved on to Peercast, although the legality of this is less clear (depends on where you're at and all that). Now, if they could actually make use of the Peercast technology within Mercora, and allowed Ogg streams, they might be able to get me back.

  4. Re:Avoid copyright issues? by Tim+C · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't see why new laws are required. If it's illegal under current copyright law, it's illegal. If not, then it's not, so what's the problem?

    Of course, I understand that legislators (and especially politicians) generally like to be seen to be "doing something about the problem", and that making something *even more illegal* is a nice, easy way to achieve that...

    --
    It's official. Most of you are morons.
  5. Listening but not downloading... heh? by lanc · · Score: 3, Interesting


    Erm, ever heard of tools that allow dumping streams?

    Or is the quality that bad? Then why would I listen to it?

    --
    "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
  6. 20 million? by 192939495969798999 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There's just no way in hell they have 20 million different songs on there. We have all heard the numbers, and there are not 20 million different songs across 2000 radio stations. Even if each station had a playlist of 500 songs, which is very high, that would only be 1 million songs. I'm not even sure if there have been 20 million professionally recorded and available different songs in existence, can anyone else back me up on that?

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    stuff |