Indy: Auto-Discover Free Music to Download

Luyi Chen writes "Indy is a free p2p music download system, which is a new way for independent musicians to find their listerners. From Buzzsonic News, "Indy uses collaborative filtering, a system similar to that used by Amazon to recommend books, etc, to prospective buyers, to learn about your musical preferences in relation to other Indy users." The author of Indy is also the creator of the Open Source P2P platforms Freenet." (That would be Ian Clarke.)

Comments

RIAA

[wlan0]

How long until people start using this as a way to transfer non-independent songs?
That, and after that, how long would it take the RIAA shuts it down?

Re:RIAA

[Flamora]

One would assume (a dangerous pastime, I know) that they have measures in place already to regulate this... Community moderators? Checksum analyzers? Who knows? I think there'd be a way to stop it...

Re:RIAA

[PDXNerd]

Does it matter? You could come out with a new-fangled widget and say "How long until the stoners figure out a way to smoke pot out of this?"

Who cares??? It's primary use is, and probably will be for the forseeable future, sharing of indy music. Besides, since when has the RIAA shut down anything? Their M.O. is lawsuits, and you can't sue if there is no traffic going.

Re:RIAA

[Reignking]

MPAA will shut it down first, for using the name "Indy", which is a clear rip-off of Indiana Jones...

Re:RIAA

[bird603568]

From what i can see on indy.tv it looks like it gets streamed.

Re:RIAA

[Humorously_Inept]

Maybe they should just shut it down right now. Clearly, "Indy" "artists" are cutting into their members' sales by producing music that is luring away members of the teenage demographic target market and does not generate profit for... Anyone? This erosion of the teenage demographic's core values of purchasing and consuming represents a serious threat to member record labels, enterprise at large, America and the entire world! Nefarious uses of a so-called P2P "sharing" scheme are of secondary concern.

SAVE THE MUSIC! Share your favorite music by buying it for a friend!

Re:RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like it gets streamed.

That's what I thought too, but fortuantely I read TFA before I posted, so I had a chance to grab the program before the site was slashdotted.

It downloads a few mp3's at a time. As you rate each song, it either plays the rest of the song (3-5 stars) or immediately skips to the next song (1-2 stars.) After the song is over, the file gets sorted into one of 5 folders, depending on which star rating you gave the song. Then it downloads a few more mp3's, presumably based on your star ratings of previous songs.

Re:RIAA

[jim_v2000]

I think they should do something like having the artists register which songs they are distributing. There then could be a master list of all available songs that the user side would look to to see if the song they are downloading is supposed to be on the network. It would also be a good idea to make it so that users cannot add files to the network. Probably there's a much better way of doing this that might already be imped, but that's just the concept that I was thinking about.

Re:RIAA

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Besides, since when has the RIAA shut down anything? Their M.O. is lawsuits, and you can't sue if there is no traffic going.

Increasingly, the RIAA's M.O. is to get their bought-and-paid-for congresscritters to pass laws imposing criminal penalties for stepping on their business model. (See the next story.) If you're complacent about this, you're not paying attention.

Re:RIAA

[Drooling Iguana]

Not if the IRL gets to them first.

That it, if they're still around. Haven't followed racing in quite some time.

Re:RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Look. "Congresscritter" was moronic the first time it was used; it certainly isn't getting any more clever with tedious reuse.

HTH.

Re:RIAA

[jim_v2000]

I mean like two different account types. Artists (posters) and Users (downloads/sharers) Artists register their files with the network. Users can then download and share those files, but ONLY those files. They can't add anything they've ripped off a cd or anything like that.

Basically, there just needs to be a system in place to make sure that the music really is independent so that this doesn't become just another Kazaa or Napster.

Re:RIAA

[frank_adrian314159]

How long until people start using this as a way to transfer non-independent songs?

Well, not at least until the Slashdotting is over...

Re:RIAA

[DigiShaman]

SomaFM.com got shut down by CARP because the were broadcasting indi music over the internet without giving CARP and RIAA royalties, but only for a moment. I think it's all settled now and SomaFM is still free. You can read about the history of this issue here http://www.somafm.com/news

But basically, the RIAA/CARP are a legalized mofia using the power of government to shape the industry right into their own pockets.

I think I speak for most of us on slashdot when I say "fuck em"

Re:RIAA

[Skynyrd]

Not if the IRL gets to them first.

That it, if they're still around. Haven't followed racing in quite some time.

Uggg. Still around.
Tony, the flaming butthead who was going to "make a series for American drivers to drive on ovals" now has a spec series full of foriegn drivers, driving on road courses and ovals. They have plans for races overseas in the next year or so.

He (with CART's lack of action) has killed open wheel racing in the US.

Re:RIAA

[sumdumass]

I think the important part here is the filtering technoligy. One of the key points in the napster case if i remeber corec tly was that napster had the ability to stop ilegal downlads but never did.

I imagine that if they made an attempt to stop ilegal sharing, it would be enough to satisfy the "party police" and courts. I'm not sure how much of an attempt to stop it would be worht it but i assuem most lawsuites could be dismissed because of those efforts. On the other hand, RIAA and the likes could just repeatedly try to shut it down and make it financialy impossible for anyone to associate with the developement.

Maybe INDY could fight fire with fire and go after RIAA and CO for harassment or some type of monopoly statute. The argument might be made that these anoyance lawsuites were just to manipulate the distrobution model for profit thru thier services. I'm surprised others haven't tried this. INDY might not be as reliant on RIAA's distrobution model like some isp and retailers are. I'm wondering why withholding one product or causing problem in obtaining it unless they play ball with another service doesn't already open some eyes in the anti trust/monopoly camps. We have read the statments RIAA is trying to force on ISPs were they are threatening the content distrobution if certain "products or services" aren't applied with them. This seems like the entire reason the sherman anti trust act was developed in the first place. Standard oil all over again with a semi different product.

Re:RIAA

[lowrydr310]

One of the key points in the napster case if i remeber corec tly was that napster had the ability to stop ilegal downlads but never did.

Now how exactly does that work? I thought that was the whole problem with MP3s - there's no way to really tell if they're copyrighted or not.

I'm not up to date on current p2p technology as I don't download or share music, but I always wondered why someone doesn't start a private P2P network among well-known associates/friends that uses SSL to keep spying eyes away? Or does something like this already exist? If not, anyone want to help me make one?

Re:RIAA

[Hatta]

How long until people start using this as a way to transfer non-independent songs?
That, and after that, how long would it take the RIAA shuts it down?

Furthurnet.net has been supplying free artist authorized live recordings through p2p quite successfully for several years. They use a band whitelist, but with a supportive community it's kept pretty clean. And why wouldn't it be? We know we've got a good thing going, why would the majority risk losing it?

Re:RIAA

[sumdumass]

Napster held a list of all the items offered for share on thier internal servers. They redistributed this list to everyone loging on and doing the searches. Here is were they could have restricted the listings of the copywriten material.

Current p2p applications don't realy have a centralized server. They adapt several of the workstations that become the severs and they switch often or as needed. Kazza and the likes have done this to aviod becoming liable like in the napster case.

How they check who is serving files is threu several different ways. One way is to log onto the networks and search for the files they want. Next they have several computers attempt to download the files and check the netstat on those computers. The ip adresses shown to the conections are the computers conecting and sending the files. The tcp headers also contain information about what computer ip adress it came from and they can tract it that way too. I'm sure there are other ways that i am not aware of. i don't pretend to be an expert on it.

Creating a private network using SSL to share might work. The issue here is that the software/music needs to be obtained from somewere first to eb offered. This means that someone in the group with either have to purchase it or go outside the group and retrive it. Purchasing it kind of negates having a file sharing network were going outside the network and getting it from Kazza or somethign places the risk back into it. If you open it to enough people that there would be enough different files,you would be inviting RIAA in and there goes the neiborhood.

Re:RIAA

[facelessnumber]

The thing you're lookin' for is called WASTE and it's a beautfiful thing. Roll your own encrypted P2P network and only let in people you trust. Nullsoft released it under GPL, then didn't.

Re:RIAA

[spiritraveller]

You're misunderstanding how this works.

From the indy.tv FAQ

Where does Indy's music come from?
All music on Indy has been made freely available on the web by artists. When Indy downloads music, it comes directly from the artist's website, and you can visit that website by clicking on the title of the track in Indy's user interface.

The only p2p sharing that's going on here is the sharing of users' ratings and the urls that link to mp3s on the web. It is not possible to inject illegal mp3s into the network because there are no mp3s on the network. The mp3s are on a separate network.

I am curious whether there could be potential liability to users if links to illegal mp3s are placed on the network. Although one can be liable for copyright infringement without knowing that a work violates someone's copyright (the reason SCO could sue AutoZone), I question whether a person could be liable when they don't even choose to download the particular file. It is the program that chooses what files to download, not the user.

This is probably an unsettled question under the law, and it would be interesting to read the opinion of some copyright experts on this.

Re:RIAA

[bruns]

Any way I could convince you to upload it to one of my mirror servers so we can get this out to more people?

Re:RIAA

[Alsee]

I question whether a person could be liable when they don't even choose to download the particular file... it would be interesting to read the opinion of some copyright experts on this.

I'm not a lawyer, but for a lay person I'm a bit of an expert on the subject.

In my oppinion the law is quite quite broken on this point. Assuming you can't pull off a Fair Use defense, the best you can do is plead 'innocent infinger'.

US law title 17 section 504 (c) (2) sets the minimum damages to $200 per infringment.

Why is this so broken? Because everyone who surfs the web is generally going to be technically guilty and legally liable for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars - PER DAY. Lets take a hypothetical example. Lets say Slashdot copies all of those lovely little topic icons, that Slashdot had not right to use them. Well, just by loading the Slashdot front page you just downloaded over a dozen different icons and saved COPIES in your harddrive cache. You are an innocent infringer, you just went to an ordinary website and *IT* sent you whatever it felt like sending you and you had every reason to assume Slashdot was sending you legal pages. Well, as an innocent infringer you are legally liable for a minimum $200 damages PER ICON. Close to $3000 just for loading the Slashdot front page. If you surf the web you're inevitable going to come across pages with technichally unauthorized icons and other elements. In just a few hours of surfing you can easily rack up over a million dollars in liability and have absolutely no clue. On top of that a substantial fraction of the population is technically guilty of felony copyright infringment. If it were actually enforced we'd need to build more than ten times as many prisons to hold them all, the country would just collapse overnight.

The only reason we tolerate existing copyright law is because it is virtually never enforced.

-

Amazing!

[SleezyG]

The results show that the two most recommended "indy" artists are Green Day and 50 Cent! Never saw that one coming.

Re:Amazing!

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean on the "sellout" lists.

because greenday and 50 cent are the biggest sellouts there ever was. even metallica seems less scummy compared to them.

Re:Amazing!

[evil-osm]

No, you got that incorrect, its actually Gleen Day, and 50 Cert. They are the knock off bands silly!

Re:Amazing!

[Lord Kano]

50 Cent was a crack dealer, there aren't many things scummier than that.

LK

Re:Amazing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that wouldn't happen, since Indy only recommends legal music. If it does happen anyway, you should report it, and it will be taken off the network.

To answer another person's question (too lazy to post two comments), yes, it is indeed similar to IRate. And yes, some people do find IRate's interface unintuitive. That's the prime motivation behind Indy. Clarke says so himself on his blog. He also says on his blog that he does not want Indy Slashdotted. Apparently the submittor didn't read it.

Wrong...

[mekkab]

listerners.

I believe the correct spelling is list-turners. When with the editors learn? SIGH.

Re:Wrong...

[cacepi]

At first I thought it said cisterners .

Puts a whole new spin on the term "crappy music".

Re:Wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

When with the editors learn? I believe it makes more sense grammatically to say "When will the editors learn?"

Re:Wrong...

[FinchWorld]

When with the editors learn?

You must be new here.

Re:Wrong...

[mekkab]

You must be new here

So let me get this straight. To you, "irony" means the same thing as "goldy" or "bronzey", except its made out of iron, right?

Finally..

[blake213]

I've been predicting the rise of indy music for quite some time now, and I believe this is a great tool that will further the movement. The state of the music industry and its bastardization of the art of music is in dire straits, and I believe it is only a matter of time before listeners will no longer be able to be "brainwashed" into listening to cookie cutter music.

Hooray!

Re:Finally..

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it is only a matter of time before listeners will no longer be able to be "brainwashed" into listening to cookie cutter music

You mean like Dire Straits? : p

Re:Finally..

[jim_v2000]

So true. I've been looking (not too much though) for somewhere to find good indy music. I'm tired of all the crap that the commercial music industry keeps pumping out. I mean, you turn on MTV and all that stuff (in the same genre) SOUNDS EXACTLY THE SAME. Occasionally someone will get lucky and make a track that sounds original, but the rest is like the parent said, "Cookie cutter music". How many Creed-ish bands have popped up in the last few years? How many 50 Cents have we heard? How many Linkin Parks? Aaargghh!!

I used to by lots of cds because I liked a song that an artist had. Then I realized that either all of the songs on their cd sounded the same, like one big hour long song, or they had one good song and the rest were utter crap.

So /rant and give me my indy music download client!

Re:Finally..

[Max_Wells_SH]

The state of the music industry and its bastardization of the art of music is in dire straits

Didn't you hear "Money For Nothing"? I think it's pretty obvious that the bastardization of the art of music has nothing to do with the Dire Straights.

Re:Finally..

[rasjani]

Rise of the indy music .mmm .. i just recently read article about how Vivendi effectively shut down mp3.com. Read the article and start building your tinfoil hats! The article below could provide some historical background of the online artist community. It is originally posted on http://www.dubroom.org/articles/0009.htm

------

MP3.com, the biggest collection of music from independent online artists. Not anymore, though. In what seems to be a final and perhaps lethal strike against the online artist community, VIVENDI UNIVERSAL destroyed around three terabytes of music before selling the MP3.com domain to CNET.com. This is the story, the ballad, of MP3.com as told by one of the pioneers in the online artist community.

VIVENDI wasn't the original owner of MP3.com, but they took the website over just after they sucked the original owners empty. A look at the complete story reveals the true intend of the musical industrial complex and the way they try to achieve their goal.

Let's start at the beginning.

In about 1998, 1999, there was a sort of "golden age" of MP3. The format looked very promising because it had created a whole new generation of artists. Sites such as MP3.com began to make it possible for artists to receive a royalty over their downloads. If someone listened to or downloaded your music, you would get a few cents. Other programs were created to have your music heard and get some royalty payment.

All these things were very good for the Artist and the Listener. I could see that I was approaching a situation in which this could totally provide me with my daily bread. The listener could listen to music without having to buy it first; I would have direct response to my releases.

In this same time, the MP3 format was also used in a different way. People would start to record their records and rip the CD's, put everything in MP3 format on their computer and use software to exchange music with others. One of the first pieces of software that enabled people to do that, was called "Napster", perhaps some of you remember the name.

Until this time, I'm still talking about '98, '99, the music industry wasn't really around on the Internet. They were still sitting in their ivory towers, selling people the stuff they want people to buy, telling artists to play what they want artists to play, you know, the usual things dictators and criminals do. The music industry was totally unaware of the revolution that took place in Cyberspace.

But right under their nose, a whole new generation of artists was formed. Artists independent from the main music industrial complex, building up an audience. And they were becoming more and more popular. Download charts at MP3.com revealed the immense popularity of many new artists. Their names were often above some better-known names.

Then, a hard noise came out of a Hollywood villa. The residence from a member of a band called Metallica, to be precise. The hard noise wasn't a new tune, but a complaint. It had come to the attention of this particular individual, that people were actually sharing Metallica music over the Internet, through Napster.

The musician complained that he would lose income as a result of the music sharing that was going on through the Napster software. I'm not a heavy Metal fan, but a bitter Metallica listener told I, that this particular band started out by having people share their music through tape sharing. And I still wonder, why an artist who can live a good life, would complain over people liking his music enough to share it with others.

Because, through the action of this artist, and many other ofcourse, the online Artist community was being attacked, as I will expose later on. So one can safely say that this Metallica member did not have the interest of the online artist in mind.

The music industry woke up from their sleep, their little nap, and they began their take on Napster. Backed by a multi-million dollar well of money, th

Re:Finally..

[LesPaul75]

But the "bastardization of the art of music" doesn't matter to the average consumer. This is what the indy music crowd doesn't seem to get. It's not about who has the best music (RIAA or independents). It's about who gets their product out there (everywhere) and brainwashes everyone 24 hours a day. The RIAA does this very successfully, and independents don't. I hate the RIAA, but continue to listen to their music. Why? Look at the choice that I, the average consumer, have:

1) Sit on my lazy ass and let the RIAA bombard me with music all day, every day (radio, TV, whatever).
2) Go and actively search for non-RIAA music by installing some P2P app or subscribing to some website like emusic, and actually pick and choose different music to try and see whether I like it or not.

This is why the RIAA wins, and will continue to win. If you want to defeat the RIAA, you must organize the effort. You've got to get the music out there to the people, not the other way around (make the people find the music). People may want an alternative to the RIAA, but they're not going to jump through hoops for it, plain and simple. Give me a radio station that I can listen to, even if it's just over the Internet for now. Give me a weekly "Top 40 Countdown" of the most popular independent songs. Come on, I'm the average Joe Schmoe, and I need to be spoon fed! Independent artists need to realize that their target audience is not the hi-tech/Slashdot/emusic crowd. It's thirteen year olds and couch potatoes. It's people who think that Yahoo is the Internet and have never typed anything into the "address bar" of their browser. Better yet, it's people who don't even have access to the Internet. Put some effort into reaching those people. Then, and only then, will people start to leave the RIAA. And even then, it will only be a small fraction who'll leave the RIAA behind. But hey, at least it's a start.

Just launching a new website or some new P2P or other music "sharing" technology will accomplish absolutely nothing. There are already enough ways for me to go out and find independent music -- that is not the problem. Come on, let's get it together and beat the RIAA at their own game.

Re:Finally..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and Linux will be coming to your desktop this year.

Re:Finally..

[STrinity]

I've been predicting the rise of indy music for quite some time now, and I believe this is a great tool that will further the movement.

We already went through that. It was called "grunge." At the end of the day, the good indy bands were still laboring in obscurity while cheap immitators sold millions of albums, and the term "alternative" went from signifying something to being just another word for "rock".

Re:Finally..

[Threni]

But why is it an exe instead of a website?

Re:Finally..

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that's really....zzzz...

RIAA Shutdown

[csmacd]

RIAA Shutdown will take much longer than the /. slam-dunk. One comment, and the site is down.

meh

[Anonymous Coward]

"Clarke is also the designer of Dijjer, a distributed P2P web cache, meant to reduce the bandwidth load on slashdotted websites." - From wikipedia

http://www.indy.tv/ is already not responding :\

Since we all know...

[Valiss]

...that this will eventually house RIAA music, why doesn't this, or any new p2p, encrypt the data?

Re:Since we all know...

[jarich]

why doesn't this, or any new p2p, encrypt the data?

That might slow them down a bit by preventing network sniffing, but the Powers That Be would just dummy out clients to act like client software and get the same information. Unless you went private, they'd still be able to see what you were sharing.

Heck, that might be what they are doing now. It'd be faster than grep-ing through network logs...

Re:Since we all know...

[maxzilla]

if the data is encrypted on a P2P network, how long would it take before something illegal like child porn is being transfered. then law enforcement would shut the servers down.

Re:Since we all know...

[dreamt]

Maybe, just maybe, because they don't want this to turn into a target? Maybe because they don't want it to be used for theft/copyright infringement/whatever the 'pc' name for stealing other people's creation is. Its just like Bittorrent. Bittorrent was never made to be used for this purpose, making it an 'easy' target for the RIAA (the torrent trackers) while still having legitimate uses (linux distribution).

Re:Since we all know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we want those people to be caught so that in the future we can get good music legally sans RIAA. I'm all for the RIAA enforcement efforts and all against their exploitative contracts. The only way out is to not deal with them.

Re:Since we all know...

[merlin_jim]

Yeah unfortunately there's no untraceable way on the current internet to transfer a file without a central content aggregator. And even then only if you can guarantee that this central aggregator is untouchable legally and physically and has very good data "retention" policies. Retention, of course, being a euphemism for "deletion".

Just wait for Internet2... I'd love to see a multicast P2P software. Just multicast the packets for a particular file on occasion. The scheduling algorithm would be tough to get just right and you would still need a central server (or use kazaa's idea of distributed supernodes) but the only record of who received the packets would be router logs... and most routers don't have the storage space to log that sort of thing for long.

Actually multicast P2P sounds pretty dope now that I think about it...

Re:Since we all know...

[jacksonj04]

peer moderate it.

8_yr_old_nude_rape.mpg is going straight to hell as soon as it appears in the listings. If it is being shared as Cool_Rap_Video_274.mpg and it turns out to be the rape of naked 8 year olds, then it's going straight to hell.

Low enough score with enough moderations, it just drops off the network and the checksum is banned.

Re:Since we all know...

[LordSnooty]

Then the moderator gets his door busted down for viewing illegal material. Wh'd be a moderator?

Re:Since we all know...

[pavon]

Exactly. The idea of keeping P2P private by encrypting the files is as silly as the idea of enforcing DRM by encrypting the files. Encryption is usefull for communication between trusted parties, while blocking third parties. But if you don't trust the recipient then encryption can't really do much for you.

Re:Since we all know...

[Anonymous Coward]

whaaaaaat? you are a fucking dangerous psycho.

stay away from me.

Re:Since we all know...

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't work on Kazaa.

Re:Since we all know...

[nege]

The point of this system is NOT to distribute RIAA copyrighted works. That is a huge different between this and say, KaZaa or Limewire.

When the supreme court was hearing the case of MGM vs Grokster, one of the main issues was that the Beta Max decision "(a.k.a. the "Sony Betamax ruling") held that a distributor cannot be held liable for users' infringement so long as the tool is capable of substantial noninfringing uses." One of the main issues in the MGM V Grok case is that the majority of its use is used for "infringing uses", i.e. trading copyrighted works (even though there are plenty of legal uses), and the makers knew this, thereby using the traded copyright material as startup capital. In this new software, the main idea is NOT to distribute Copyrighted works (without permission of the copyright owner), and I do hope that the software maintainers take steps to eliminate illegal activity on their network.

The ability for music consumers to have easy access to a central wealth of non-crippled music is exactly the type of legal counterbalance to the RIAA tyranny over music distribution, NOT pirating.

Re:Since we all know...

[suitepotato]

Actually, using encryption between two nodes as well as encryption of all containers on every node goes a long way to reducing the physical evidence they need to prove their case in court.

The next stage is to fragment the files, make parity files, replicate them a number of times to various nodes based on usage and traffic and demand statistics such that NO ONE MACHINE EVER held an entire whole assembled plaintext file within the file share system.

You want to sharea file? It gets sliced and diced, parity files generated, all the pieces multiplied a number of times, and then scattered across the sharing net. The original you gave it is not itself shared by you intact. Your original is never actually "on" the system. Just pieces that if you yourself wanted to get back should you lose the original, you'd have to collect from various nodes to which the pieces had been scattered.

Every user would by default share the hd space load of the entire net based on their availible space and connection speed. If they download a file by collecting the pieces and reassembling them all, the reassembled files would go someplace on their drive other than the system. No complete plaintext files hosted on any one person's system ever.

Let the RIAA sue twenty-two thousand six hundred ninety-six people for sharing an encrypted piece of gibberish which may or may not even be property they are claiming was infringed. Prove it.

Re:Since we all know...

[ColaMan]

congratulations, you've just decribed FreeNet :-)

WOOH!!!

[shredswithpiks]

At leat this software is being created with good intentions. I'll be sad to see the RIAA take it out. :/

Is it honest?

[dfn5]

What I mean is if no one wants to listen to an artist's music, will it tell that artist, "I'm sorry but you suck, have a nice day". Or will it instead find pity listeners.

Re:Is it honest?

[Anonymous Coward]

why is this modded funny? i would love to break it down to quite a few "artists" as they call themselves.

iRate

[athakur999]

This sounds pretty similar to iRate which is a front end for downloading freely available songs from artist web pages and letting you rate them which in turns find more songs to download.

It seemed like a good idea but the interface was annoying enough that I gave up using it when I tried it out several months ago. Hopefully this project can take the idea and run with it and couple it with an interface that's more flexible.

Re:iRate

[Eil]

iRate has always sounded like one of those highly innovative pieces of software that the open source community is known for.

The Java Web Start crud that it depends on, however, is not. And it's prevented me from checking out iRate every single time I've had the urge based on both technical and philosophical reasons.

Re:iRate

[Eythian]

It doesn't require Java web start. You can also download builds, however JWS is the easiest way of having it work for people, and having it autoupdate. If you don't like using the java interface, there is also kirate, which is a plugin for KDE's noatun.

Re:iRate

[metal_priest]

iRATE has can be run without any Sun crap. It is designed to compile to native code with GNU gcj compiler which comes with gcc.
Additionally it uses SWT to have a native look on the platform of your choice (OSX, Linux or even Windows).

System similar to that used by Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

People who didn't buy Death Cab for Cutie also recommended anything by Elliot Smith.

Re:System similar to that used by Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at 'Data Structures and Algorithms in Java', they recommend 'The Fimbles Activity Colouring Book'. Great.

Sounds interesting

[Dragoon412]

Apparently, the article is already slashdotted, so you'll have to forgive me for following tradition and not R(ing)TFA, but I have to say, I'd love to get my hands on this.

I use iTunes quite a bit (yes, in conjunction with Jhymn so I can listen to the music I buy on the CDMP3 player in my car), and while I appreciate iTMS' decent selection of indie and less-known bands, I have to say that their suggestion system sucks.

I find most iMixes to be abhorrently bad, and iTMS' recommendations as to what other users bought are, quite frankly, nuts. I'll be looking at an indie rock/screamo band (like Sparta), and I'm getting recommendations to buy, and I'm not kidding, opera, elevator muzak, and some christian metal. What the hell?

Hopefully, Indie will work a bit better than that. Can't wait to try it out - I'm running out of suggestions on Gnoosic and Music Plasma. ;)

Re:Sounds interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be looking at an indie rock/screamo band (like Sparta), and I'm getting recommendations to buy, and I'm not kidding, opera, elevator muzak, and some christian metal. What the hell?

Hello, welcome to the "weird shit" category.

Re:Sounds interesting

[rkcallaghan]

I'd love to get my hands on this.

So would I.

Unfortunately, I got through, and its only available for Windows. No Linux or Mac support. Bleh.

~Rebecca

Re:Sounds interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac and Linux clients coming Summer 2005 according to the site.

Re:Sounds interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

iRate is a similar piece of software that is available for Linux and OSX as well as Windows.

Re:Sounds interesting

[utexaspunk]

I use audioscrobbler to find out what people who like what I like are listening to. then I go to DC++ and download it. piece of cake...

Re:Sounds interesting

[yardbird]

Sorry for the plug, but if you are on OS X, you might like my project (in sig), which is currently for OS X/iTunes only. I started it because I liked iRATE, but wanted better integration into iTunes.

Other similar projects

[Anonymous Coward]

GnomoRadio
iRate

Encrypted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me it is an encrypted P2P network. A legal application of P2P technology concealing the participants is sorely needed to finally stop the bullshit arguments that a) only criminals encrypt and b) P2P is only used for illegal purposes.

Re:Encrypted?

[ciroknight]

Please tell me it is an encrypted P2P network. A legal application of P2P technology concealing the participants is sorely needed to finally stop the bullshit arguments that a) only criminals encrypt and b) P2P is only used for illegal purposes.

The fact is, this is more likely to bolster their arguments.

They have all the money in the entire world to throw at legal arguments, whereas the people they'd be attacking have little to no money at all to defend themselves with. At this point, they're the 500-lb gorilla, and Congress does their bidding.

While the battle still continues to prove that P2P has uses outside of sharing copyrighted content, and we have made small victories, we still have a long, hard road to hoe.

On the flipside, I think this should have an encryption engine as well. It'd be really easy for the RIAA to argue its misuse, but in the meantime it'd stop the RIAA's oppressive lawsuits, and eventually when a defense is designed that will stand up to the RIAA in court, we will have won.

Re:Encrypted?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

and, if the RIAA breaks the encryption to check what's going on you've got a lovely DMCA gotcha. Gotta love turning the tables.

Re:Encrypted?

[ciroknight]

They don't need to break the encryption; they do the same thing they're doing now. Make a client, connect it to the network and start distributing files. When people get them, they snag their IP address and they're doomed.

Re:Encrypted?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

ah, well, that's easy. Move to the UK. have the ToS and text message transmitted to every client that connects state that access to the network is denied to those affiliated with the BPI (British RIAA equivalent). Watch them get criminal law on them for unauthorized access to a computer system due to the Computer Misuse Act 1994.
Ok, you don't have the DMCA gotcha, but you have got high encryption bittage and they still can't sniff the packets to decrypt anyway. Now all we have to do is get the major supercomputer and processor maufacturers to refuse to sell to the RIAA (and their ilk) and we're all set for them not being able to bruteforce the decryption.

IANAL etc

Re:Encrypted?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're stupid. There's no need for this to be encrypted.

Because we intend to abuse it for stealing...

[Anonymous Coward]

...against the creator's express intent, he should make it easier for us to get away with that.

Not sure of your logic there.

Local paper has some free download music

[WillAffleckUW]

it's at NW Source.

Haven't used it much, as too many of my friends are musicians, so I mostly buy the CDs direct from them at shows or at the local Sonic Boom that gives local indie musicians a higher cut on CD sales.

Re:Local paper has some free download music

[ZBM-2]

Lots of papers have local bands. Here's two I've used:
http://mp3.washingtonpost.com/
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/bands/

If I find a group I like,I try to pick up some of their stuff at the local small music stores. That way it helps the band and the local retailers.

Of course,indy bands can always just post here on /. with their site in someone's sig. That's how I got turned on to Apocalyptica and Subthunk.

Re:Local paper has some free download music

[WillAffleckUW]

Seattle PI on nwsource.com is the link I meant to free local music downloads.

It's almost as much fun as dropping by the local Sonic Boom store to hear the bands play live.

Of course, RIAA will try to shut them down at some point, but it won't do any good.

.

You already can

[Anonymous Coward]

All you need to do is find a torrent site that has a RSS feed, set up a few simple regular expressions and you will get everything you want.

I do it with TV episodes, as well as new PC game ISO's.

I already got all the music I will ever need (about 40 gigs) from napster before they closed the virtousa loophole.

Yet another garage band site

[Animats]

There are already too many sites with free music by bands that suck. Endless archives of bad techno. "Collaborative filtering" won't help if the content isn't there.

And why not just use a web site? What does "peer to peer" add, except inefficiency?

Re:Yet another garage band site

[Anonymous Coward]

And why not just use a web site? What does "peer to peer" add, except inefficiency?

I've only used the program and read a few parts of the website, not looked at the source, so I may be wrong here. I believe that the program downloads the mp3s directly from the artist's website, so there's not P2P sharing happening.

This basically acts like an RSS feed that is customized to your preferences by the collaborative rating system.

Re:Yet another garage band site

[Joe Tie.]

And why not just use a web site?

Have you ever tried Irate? The more popular download locations can get hit pretty hard.

Re:Yet another garage band site

[Anonymous Coward]

spoken like a man that doesnt have a clue.

Re:Yet another garage band site

[gl4ss]

even if 1/1000th of the music out there is good - that's enough music to keep a person entertained. the trouble is finding that music among the trash - this is where the collaborative filtering kicks in - then there's the thing that bandwith and huuuge, huuuge libraries are expensive to keep, this is where the p2p kicks in(keeping something like mp3.com up must have been pretty expensive on the bandwith side of things).

lately i've just been listening to slay radio all day long( link here).. too bad they don't do live shows more often.

Re:Yet another garage band site

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not like techno, but I do. Consequently, I find it easier to support independent, non-RIAA labels. Who published the last CD you bought?

Re:Yet another garage band site

[Anonymous Coward]

Peer to peer might add the fact that the bands don't have to pay for the bandwith?

Re:Yet another garage band site

[menace3society]

Buzzword-compliancy.

Re:Yet another garage band site

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, man, my band has stuff on Soundclick, and we don't s... Well, I guess we kinda do. Never mind, carry on.

And..

[EpsCylonB]

And its slashdoted, when will the madness stop.

How about Indy Movies and Videos

[aeproberts]

I would love to see something like this for indy short films and flash movies. You could input your favorite hollywood movies and get a list of the best small independant films or videos that are in that same genre. Think it would work?

Indy is based on Irate..

[acomj]

Indy is based on Irate.. see Ian Clarks page

Compared to Gnomoradio?

[gojomo]

Can an Indy contributor or user compare it to Gnomoradio or other prior work in this area?

Audioscrobbler

[Dan Farina]

I have found the implementation at http://www.audioscrobbler.com great for finding new music, no P2P attached.

Re:Audioscrobbler

[gl4ss]

it's great for finding what the new music would be named.. not actually for finding great and free music in audio.

Re:Audioscrobbler

[siliconjunkie]

it's great for finding what the new music would be named.. not actually for finding great and free music in audio.

Ah, this is true, but Audioscrobbler's sister site, Last.FM features streaming radio that features tracks culled from your "neighbors" library (profile radio) and YOUR library (personal radio). The latter requires a donation after the 30 day trial, but the former is always free, and is a great way to hear new music based on your "musical neighbors".

looks like an ipod/ buggy/ submit your music

[acomj]

I submitted this monday, so was surprised to see it today. That aside.

This article has a review of the player. Not ready from prime time software buat a great idea though. As another poster pointed it its based on the open source Irate software .
It also looks like an ipod shuffle sideways with a screen.

When the page is done with its slashdotting, you can submit your music to the indy page

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

[EtherAlchemist]

WeedShare is my current favorite way to find new music.

I think it's actually a brilliant way to distribute and promote music. You get three free plays of each track you download. If you decide to purchase it, you can put it on three PCs, burn it, put it on a portable device and even share it with someone else as long as it remains in the original file format.

I just looked at their site and now it looks like they will give you $5 to buy music with for creating a free account. As far as I know, they've never had a sub fee. You just buy the tracks.

Pricing is totally up to the artist. I've seen tracks as low as a qaurter, but most are right around a buck.

Now for the "different" part. The artist always gets 50% of the track price. 15% goes to Weed and the balance is split up among the people who distributed the file. This is fucking brilliant, you can actually make some money by sharing someone else's music.

Check it out here.

BTW- if you're an artist, they tell you how to get your music in their system. Sweet.

Crap

[darknightroot]

Woohoo! More free crap! Move along, nothing to see here

This is the reason that the RIAA...

[Yaa 101]

Wants away with P2P, not the "pirating" as pirating is a part of marketing to your stuff well known...
They can't stand other distributors because that would really mean the end.
Even the richest companies can go down, mainly because lack of daily revenue can cost millions a day.

I hope the indies out there in the world will be in high numbers and pluriform to keep off the RIAA.
I for one wish them all success in the world.

Re:This is the reason that the RIAA...

[Yaa 101]

to make your stuff well known...

learn to spell Yaa 101!!

Run and Hide it's /.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Check it out here, let me know what you think (PS. the website will shut down automatically if it starts getting too many hits, so tell your friends, but don't tell /. ;-)."

Taken from Ian Clarke's blog.

Apparently he planned for the /. effect.

It won't work...

[Exitar]

just like Freenet.

Good idea, bad implementation.

Re:It won't work...

[CarrionBird]

If it were really like freenet, it would be: Good idea, awful implementation (that isn't portable despite being written in java).

Re:It won't work...

[Markus Registrada]

Freenet was an awful implementation not despite, but specifically because of "being written in Java". (Probably there were other reasons too.)

Scamming

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Like doubleclick hiring clickers, "artists" might hire downloaders to boost their ratings. Apart from ego-inflation it also helps up the celeb status and eventually money.

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

[Otter]

This is a terrific balance of benefits to the consumer, the artist and the distributor. Good pricing, just enough DRM to make it workable -- I look forward to trying it out!

Of course, you know that Jon Johansen is going to be breaking their minimal DRM, Slashdot will advertise the hack and the mob will be yapping about how "DVD Jon" has once again heroically saved them from a fate worse than slavery. Good luck, Weed.

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

[Anonymous Coward]

why is this moderated funny? it's no joke, people! /happy 4/20

Doh!

[Bozovision]

I think I remember the Indy site suggesting that perhaps it's a bad idea to post to /. because server-side Indy shuts up shop and goes home if the traffic gets too heavy.

So what's the first thing that someone does?

I suggest: if this interests you, imagine you are Ethernet. You've just had a collision. Put a todo item in your list, with a random-ish number of days until you do it, then try again. That should spread the load.

Re:Who cares?

[MrP-(at work)]

yes because the nsyncs and britney spears of the world are super talented

(yeah i know you're a troll, but i just like to bash nsync and britney =P)

Sounds like iRate

[Agent_9191]

Check out iRate.sourceforge.net. Sounds like a vaguely similiar idea....

Site text

[Sanity]

Indy is a music discovery program that learns what you like, and plays more of it. And it's free.

Indy makes it easy for you to find great new independent music. Just download Indy and double-click: as it plays songs, you rate what you hear. Indy quickly learns what you like and gets really smart about sending you more music you'll like. Let Indy help you find your place in the collective conciousness as you help other people find theirs.

DOWNLOAD NOW - Windows 98/2000/XP

Latest News
19th April, 2005, Build 3 Released - Read more...

Why Indy Rocks
You aren't just a target market - Indy can help you find your own path to the music you like. There are tons of great bands out there that don't have big labels promoting them; Indy helps you find them. And once Indy downloads a track, you can add it to your music collection, listen to it whenever and wherever you want. For musicians, Indy gives you a chance to reach a whole new audience that's excited about what you're playing. Best of all, it's free for everyone!

How Indy Works
Indy uses an advanced collaborative filtering system to predict what kind of music you'll enjoy hearing. As you rate songs, Indy finds out what you do and don't like. It compares your preferences with the ratings of all the other Indy users. For example, if you rate a song highly, and another user also likes the same song, Indy guesses that you'd probably like other music that they enjoyed. As you rate more songs, Indy will gets better and better at picking songs that you'll really enjoy.

Indy contains no adware or spyware.

Re:Site text

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, really nice anti-slashdot tactics.
Internet 1:0 Slashdot.
Now the download link anyone?(Round 2)

Re:Site text

[BugDave]

they must have really been hammered seeing as they had to forward their dns to a slashdot comment ;-)

Re:Site text

[One Div Zero]

You can't use the slashdot effect on slashdot itself... oh well. Nice try

Re:Site text

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot's been slashdotted.

IN YOUR FACE, SLASHDOT!

Re:Site text

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, no way you can change DNS so quick, they just forward here from their server :)

Re:Site text

[Anonymous Coward]

This would have been useful to me if that DOWNLOAD NOW - Windows 98/2000/XP part actually worked.

Re:Site text

[andrel]

Hi Ian,

What's the license like, is Indy open source?

Thanks,
--Andre

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

[EtherAlchemist]

Well, I guess it could always be hoped that if the music can move from one place to the next and you only have to pay for it once (and at a reasonable price), that maybe a hack wouldn't be needed.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

atleast they just suck at music, as opposed to you sucking cock

Kinda Relevant

[mpath]

Kinda like what happened to Ghosts of Pasha, thanks to a recent mission by ImprovEverywhere.

Back in The Day

[Greyfox]

MP3.com had a similar setup and there was a lot of stuff on there that completely sucked, but there were some good bands too. If you were willing to poke around in the categories a bit you could find some real gems (I personally was a big fan of Gossamer.) All in all it was about the same level of crapshoot as going to a music store that lets you listen to CDs before buying and much less of one than going to a music store that doesn't. And of course a CD from mp3.com was usually about half the price of one from the music store. I thought that was a great business plan but I haven't been back to them since their legal troubles. Lately I just listen to the old CD collection and maybe add a new CD about once every two or three years. I guess the Industry's shannagans(sp?) has just burned me out on music in general...

Re:Back in The Day

[AussieVamp2]

Yeah, hence as someone said earlier, a popular 'top indie stuff' site might be interesting. Am in process, of converting old tapes, lps (cds already done of course) to mp3 - and going to have a few hundred - that is a LOT of stuff to listen to. The odd new CD sure, American Idiot, or someone else that manages to actually come up with a good album...

What? No Linux, Mac or BSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Got an ETA for those versions?

Media Distribution

[Fox_1]

We were concerned that even with all of the advancements with online media in the past few years, it was still pretty difficult just to find new independent music that you liked.
It sounds like all the elements have finally come together for this kind of program. This kind of software could be used one day to share other independantly produced media - ie books, movies, and really fancy flash stuff :). Basically whatever we can produce for the medium can be shared and evaluated by others, ideally with cream floating to top.
The article also mentions this is based on iRate with a cleaner interface.

iTunes

[johkir]

FWIW, and I guess this could be considered a shameless plug, but I really do like it, I have found lots of good stuff via the radio links in iTunes. Indy Pop Rocks!, Radioparadise, and all the DI.fm. Yes, there is also lots of RIAA crap available on other stations offered.

first rule of indy, don't tell slashdot.

[Suppafly]

From Ian Clarke's blog


Check it out here, let me know what you think (PS. the website will shut down automatically if it starts getting too many hits, so tell your friends, but don't tell /. ;-).

Re:first rule of indy, don't tell slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's utterly pathetic that the godfather of DDOS attacks is known so prevalently that people actually have to ask others to not post their site on /.
You'd think a geek community would have at least a tiny shred of ethics and solve the problem instead of forcing the world to endure DDOS attacks worse than what could be unleashed by a 16 year old kid in russia with a 10,000 bot zombie net.

torrent pls

[Anonymous Coward]

mmm, someone make a torrent?

linux version

[gradix]

Where is the Linux version of Indy ?

Re:linux version

[Nallep]

From the FAQ, "Our Mac and Linux versions of Indy will be ready for summer 2005."

So let me get this straight...

[Horkdoom]

This is a p2p service focussed mostly on a genre of music in which your status raises with your obscurity? So in effect by joining this service Indy artists are "selling out"...

Not only are they using p2p ...

[un1xl0ser]

but they also are using a technology that Amazon uses.

They are just trying to provoke IP lawyers.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

*YAWN*

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least we now know one more of the aliases Ian uses to generate free publicity for his brain droppings on Slashdot. Crap coder, but he seems to have the marketing thing down.

Plugins?

[edmicman]

Instead of a separate program/interface, why can't we have a plugin for winamp or wmp or something? I'd love for a way to find new music, but browsing shoutcast and its billion and a half techno stations that don't interest me is a pain in the butt. Plus I don't necessarily want to be limited to just indy rock music...I'd like to be exposed to new or underground rap/hiphop, rock, maybe even country, who knows? But I'd also like to not have to download a new media player for all of these.

Indie Music

[alfien31]

I always thought it was Indie - as in Independent... My favorite music site of the moment is Last.FM. It's a streaming service, and they ask for a small donation, but the beauty of it is that they match your preferences with others who have similar tastes, (using Audioscrobbler )so you can listen to new music that you might not otherwise hear...

FreeNet

[nurb432]

FreeNet works for what it was intended for. Anonymous dissemination of 'restricted' information and knowledge in repressive areas.

It was not intended for P2P file sharing.. So you cant judge its success of failure on being unable to download the latest movie ..

It does suffer from the fact its not *needed* yet today in the civilized world, so there are not enough members to make it work really well.

However, that is about to change I think...

Re:FreeNet

[CarrionBird]

Freenet working at all must be a recent development. I tried running a node a couple of times because I thought the concept was cool, but I could never get to the point where I could retreive more than the occasional site.

Plus it was way too resource hungry to run on my main PC. The concept was neat, but it seemed that the informaton was lost out there in nodes beyond my reach.

Re:FreeNet

[nurb432]

Its always worked fine for me. If you leave your node on a few days you will find that things improve *greatly*.

Don't expect blazing speed, due to the tradeoffs in the name of security/anonymity, but it will be more then useable.

Load issues: Some releases are better than others I agree.

[ot]Re:Finally.. [ot]

[Koiu Lpoi]

Holla to a fellow fruitylooper!

Arrg

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd think on Slashdot they could mention that it's useless Windows-only software, so I don't have to waste my time on it.

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

[Koiu Lpoi]

My current favorite place to find good music is DMusic. I don't think it even qualifies as Indy because all the music is released for free, for everyone. There are a few amazing artists on that site.

Although, I'll take a look at weedshare. Looks interesting.

I'd love to submit my music to give away

[spoot]

But all of the links, including the "how to submit your music" link, return 404 errors. Sounds like they really got it together over there.

Audioscrobbler?

[Mr.Progressive]

I think Audioscrobbler works pretty well for this kind of thing. No intrusive 'rating system'. No isolated file downloading network (Gnomoradio, iRate) to divide the potential pool of artists. Just download a plugin and play the music you would play anyway. Go to sites like 3hive for freely available indie tracks and check your recommendations every so often. Simple.

Re:Audioscrobbler?

[AussieVamp2]

might not help so much if you have made mp3s out of tapes, etc. so you have The Cult - Track 01 which is one album? Will it still work ok with the band? (and Track 01 could be a popular song if lots of people had done this!)

Discovering music: Audioscrobbler

[neves]

IMO the best way to discover new music is with AudioScrobbler. You install a plugin in your favorite audio player and it records your musical habits. Beyond WinAmp, iTunes, and Windows Media Player, here are open source plugins for xmms, amarok and other linux players.

The pro of this system is that their recomendations are based in what you really hear. It won't count that bad albums you have in your hd but just heard once.

The problem is that it looks like they don't have a very smart algorithm for discovering music. I'm starting to build my musical profile and they just recommended me famous musicians. What is really fun is to browse your network of people with similar tastes.

I alson believe they are having some problems with their servers, since some features, like the group charts, aren't working.

I'm not affiliated with them, but it is a really cool system.

Clinko Music...

[clinko]

My site does collaborative filtering for Music and Movies.

Granted this is sorta spammy, but I think that the Music part of my site has some really good recommendations, especially for indy artists...

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

[Anonymous Coward]

WeedShare is my current favorite way to find new music.

It sounds really interesting, however, there is about a snowball's chance in hell that I'm going to run the risk of leaving any evidence at all that I even briefly visited a site called "WeedShare."

Intent

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point is to find songs that you don't already know about. This tends to mean songs without radio play and bands without million-dollar marketing. Stuff the RIAA isn't already pushing to you. Even if some RIAA music gets in there, it should be clear that's not the intended or primary use.

Going after users who share RIAA music is certainly possible, but given Supreme Court comments in the Grokster case, I doubt the RIAA will be able to go after the developers.

Sigh, download application.

[tom75646437]

Wish this was implemented server side with web access and downloads so that everyone could use it.

Clarke was begging to be slashdot..

[rasjani]

On Ian's last blog entry he wrote:

Check it out here, let me know what you think (PS. the website will shut down automatically if it starts getting too many hits, so tell your friends, but don't tell /. ;-).

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

[meza]

Some weeks ago I read about magnatune.com in another slashdot comment. They offer all their music for free download in pure mp3, no DRM. And if you buy the music you also get to download in ogg or the lossless flac format. Oh and yes, 50% of all sales goes directly to the artist.

I just love the entire concept, I get the feeling that they just have it all right. They seem like a true 21th century music label, and I hope and believe that they will find this buissness model successful. Infact since I started listning to music from them I have totaly lost interest in the ongoing "p2p pirates"/"music labels" that is going on in my country (sweden) right now. Because I feel that soon there won't be any needs to pirate music, lots of good music will be free to share anyways.

Of course the most important part is that magnatune do have good music. Mere hours after I found the site I also bought my first album of the year: Williamsson - A few things to here before we all blow up. Which is a lovely soft and relaxing electronic album.

Classical? No seriously!

[Gatton]

One problem I often have with some of the indy sites is that a large portion of the music is rock, punk, electronic and their derivatives. I don't mind that so much when that's what I'm looking for but I have always wanted a good source for indy classical musicians. Mp3.com was ok but of course there was a lot of crap to weed through. Magnatune is a good site (although it's not p2p) but again not a ton of classical artists represented.

It seems to me there's plenty of unheard violinists, pianists and even small chamber orchestras just playing for weddings and bah mitzvas and many of them are quite talented. Ok so maybe I'm the only one who's interested in this but it would be nice to find.

Re:Classical? No seriously!

[gmaestro]

Well, maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but my site provides sheet music "open sourced" for the public. I wouldn't call anything on the site "classical" as in Mozart or Haydn, but there's solo 'cello music, quintets and concerti. Many of the works have recordings, hopefully more will in the future.

I'll be re-opening the site May 1st. for now, you can go over and vote on which piece gets released first, or visit the old site.

Re:Classical? No seriously!

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm having the oposite problem with it... no punk or rock yet :( only bossa nova, and other "calm" genres

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

[Anonymous Coward]

". Good pricing, just enough DRM to make it workable"

Why would you think you need any DRM at all to make it workable? As a listener, what "balance of benefits" does DRM help me? Why would I want to do business with someone who insists I must be a thief, even as I give them money? DRM on a file I pay for is nothing less than an insult.

Many sites offer music in non-DRMed formats. Emusic seems to survive as a pay service, even though music is in MP3 format. Magnatunes offers MP3 too. It isn't necessary for the distributor, and it is worse than useless for the consumer.

Download mirror?

[nutbar]

Can somebody that has already downloaded the client put it up on a mirror somewhere?

Please?

Re:Download mirror?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or seed it? PLEASE?!
Or give me a filename? :)

The Problem with Collaborative Filtering

[thelizman]

It only really works for people attached to a single genre. I'm in the minority of people because I listen to just about anything but rap - and there are exceptions there as well. So if I click on Portishead, I'll get a bunch of acid jazz lookalikes, but when I click on Raymond James it'll probably get confused and kick me over to bluegrass, which would be swell...but Wind River is not folk.

Only for Windows

[houghi]

No program to download for any other OS. From the FAQ:When will Indy be available for operating systems other than Windows?
Our Mac and Linux versions of Indy will be ready for summer 2005.

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

[Koiu Lpoi]

Why? Are you living under an opressive government/opressive tech dept/opressive significant other/opressive parole officer?

Dewey Decimalization

[VibeWatcher]

Depends on the algorithm, a good one should cross-select and surprise. You're actually describing the problem with genre/category/buckets in general.... if written well, a good CF can transcend the insanely predictable, ever-so-broken catalog approach.

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

[SirTalon42]

Mom checks history?

Thats what I'm gonna go with (wooo! furthering the /. stereotype!!!!)

Sounds like iRate Radio

[josath]

I used irate radio a while back, and it worked pretty well, I burned a couple CD's of free, legal music. It gives you some songs, you rate them on a scale of 1 to 5, and it recommends some more based on those ratings.
See the link: http://www.irateradio.com/

Re:Sounds like iRate Radio

[AussieVamp2]

doesn't work through a proxy it seems :(

Virus Found In Installer

[C4P741N]

I just downloaded Indy, AVG Free edition detected "Trojan Horse Downloader.Istbar.8" in the installer!!

Re:Virus Found In Installer

[Astfgl]

According to the Indy website, this is an error on AVG's part. They have contacted AVG's author regarding this issue.

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

[Alsee]

Will it play in WinAmp with the rest of my music? Will it play on whatever MP3 player I pick up? I'm a programmer, will it play when I write my own player to implement some cool ideas I've been working on? Or on any player from anyone else?

If not, why the hell would I want to buy a deliberately crippled product?

I'd be better off buying noncrippled music from Magnatune or AllOfMP3.com or getting free music dmusic.com and iRate and Indy.TV, or just grabbing MP3s from any of the major P2P services.

DRM is just plain STUPID. All it dues is drive away customers while acomplishing absolutely nothing. It's not like DRM has ever prevented a song from showing up on P2P, and once a single copy hits P2P it doesn't matter if it's 1 or a hundred, it still replicates the the exact same steady state level.

If you run a good and valuable service you can indeed compete with 'free', but it's just plain stupid to cripple your own product and then attempt to compete with free and BETTER.

-

AVG detected a trojan

[artifex2004]

I downloaded it, and AVG detected it's got the trojan called downloader.lstbar, or something like that??

Indy music

[SeanDuggan]

Heck, in the case of Indy music, that could boost their popularity. Isn't Indy status based upon listening to the most obscure groups, preferably ones no one likes?