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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.)
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.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
GnomoRadio
iRate
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.
I have found the implementation at http://www.audioscrobbler.com great for finding new music, no P2P attached.
Mac and Linux clients coming Summer 2005 according to the site.
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
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"
Life is not for the lazy.
Check out iRate.sourceforge.net. Sounds like a vaguely similiar idea....
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.
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...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
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.
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.