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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.)
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...
The results show that the two most recommended "indy" artists are Green Day and 50 Cent! Never saw that one coming.
listerners.
I believe the correct spelling is list-turners. When with the editors learn? SIGH.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Hooray!
mund freud.
"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
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.
MPAA will shut it down first, for using the name "Indy", which is a clear rip-off of Indiana Jones...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
...that this will eventually house RIAA music, why doesn't this, or any new p2p, encrypt the data?
-Valiss
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
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
People who didn't buy Death Cab for Cutie also recommended anything by Elliot Smith.
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.
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!
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
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 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.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
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.
I have found the implementation at http://www.audioscrobbler.com great for finding new music, no P2P attached.
And why not just use a web site?
Have you ever tried Irate? The more popular download locations can get hit pretty hard.
Everything will be taken away from you.
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
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.
R(k)
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.
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.
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.
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)
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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?
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
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.
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.
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?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.