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Indy: Auto-Discover Free Music to Download

Posted by timothy on from the no-pirates-here dept.

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.)

11 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Finally.. by blake213 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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!

    --
    mund freud.
    1. Re:Finally.. by LesPaul75 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

  2. Re:RIAA by PDXNerd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Since we all know... by Valiss · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

    --

    -Valiss
    1. Re:Since we all know... by jarich · · Score: 3, Insightful
      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...

      --
      Agile Artisans
    2. Re:Since we all know... by LordSnooty · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

    3. Re:Since we all know... by pavon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

  4. Re:RIAA by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  5. Re:Sounds interesting by rkcallaghan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

  6. Re:RIAA by jim_v2000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
  7. Plugins? by edmicman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.