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Oboe Offers Portable Playlist
Chiggers writes to tell us that Mad Penguin has an interesting look at Oboe, the new music service from MP3Tunes. For a monthly fee Oboe allows you unlimited space to create a cross-platform music playlist available anywhere you have an internet connection via their AJAX-enabled GUI. The audio player still needs a little work but overall it is an interesting idea.
However, I see mucho problemos in this sites future. In short, I'll summarize them all into 4 letters:
RIAA.
An online music store with a name of three characters before the word Tunes sounds a lot like an online music store with a name of one character before the word tunes. I guess the press attention has been calculated to be worth the legal expenses.
1. Create MP3 storage service
2. Wait, rubbing hands and cackling evilly, for everyone to upload their pirated music.
3. Show up at the door and demand to see the CDs the music came from...in fact, forget the CD, just sue.
4. ???
5. Profit!!
12:50 - press return.
Isn't this similar to the service that mp3.com provided and got into trouble over? If I recall correctly, because mp3.com provided the same service, Vivendi-Universal got to buy them out at a discount price.
ampache can do this:
http://www.ampache.org/
kplaylist is a bit more lightweight (i use it):
http://kplaylist.net/
jinzora is a bloat beast, but a nice one at that:
http://www.jinzora.org/
Looks like an awesome way to 'share' your music with friends all over the World.
20 MB audio file limit per song
So I'm guessing that means I won't be able to take some extended Iron Butterfly tracks with me then?
If big boobed women work at Hooters do one legged women work at IHOP?
anything new here? except for that I might have to spend some time customizing my playlist on my radio, but it sure is shorter than uploading
byw this Robertson (CEO/prez) is the same guy behind Linspire.
Uhm, like .m3u?
If you're into music playlists webs you really have to check Pandora, a great page that creates playlists based on genetic algorithms that relate an entire collection of songs to the one you describe as your favourite.
--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95
Create a small portable device with either a hard drive or flash storage, a battery, and maybe a screen that displays the song title, album name, artist name, and album art. That way people could bring their playlists anywhere, even if they are behind facist firewalls or even (gasp) away from a computer.
Oh wait, I seem to have one right here. It's called "Photo iPod 60Gb". Come to think of it, I think my wife has one too - hers is called "iPod Mini 4Gb".
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I don't know if I would be comfortable with the idea of having all my music hosted by someone else. Obviously with local security you can only do so much, but for people that thought apple suggesting songs via itunes as a breach of privacy, having some service house your whole music collection surely shoots up the red flag and makes this thing a tasty target for the RIAA. Who needs logs when you have the whole collection.
I love the way people who don't have a need for some product or service love to talk about how little they need it on slashdot! It makes such a refreshing change from the people who, when they realize they are not the target market, say nothing, or even occasionally make some sort of insightful or interesting comment. Slashdot is getting too intellectual for me, and I'd like to see more pissing, whining, bitching, moaning, and complaining.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I guess it's cool. Just not for me.
Blar.
I have a great service for my music collection. It works on multiple hardware and software platforms. I can even use it in my car, without being tied to a network connection -- or monthly fee. That's right, I have a CD-RW drive. It's great! With RW discs I can burn new playlists anytime I would like. Mind you, I can't use the service anywhere, but I certainly couldn't use the online service at work either. I think these CDs are really going to take off soon. Yep, they are super fantastic. [/sarcasm]
The idea is all fine and dandy, but I have serious issues with not being able to use my music or change playlist "offline". Even though we are in an always on society, sometimes its nice to be disconnected.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
does anyone here remember muse.net, the failed startup venture started by a bunch of the original winamp guys? it seems like this is a more expensive, less open version of that....
I still wish it took off. would have been a very convenient service...
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
How is this substantially better than Launchcast or Pandora?
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Slashdot is getting too intellectual for me, and I'd like to see more pissing, whining, bitching, moaning, and complaining.
There's always fark, somethingawful, plastic and k5. But if you really do like idiot posters, you should try browsing the imdb comments for a while.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Nice to see the Oboe finally getting the respect it deserves!
For the ultimate noise:signal ratio, I prefer the news.yahoo.com message boards. It makes all other turds look shiny.
Personally I like the way that Slashdot announces this amazing new service that is exactly like 47 previous announcements of previous implementations of the same idea, most of which failed as business models or were sued out of existance, none of which did a clear job of explaining why anybody would want such a service. Yeah, that's much better than hearing about alternatives that work and which are not going to get you sued or fired.
Enjoy your RIAA lawsuit.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
1.) 60 Gigs of Music would take a good while to upload at 32k/sec.
2.) This assumes you always have internet connectivity.
3.) Just seems like a huge pain really, and for what gain?
4.) I can do the same thing right now if I wanted to with my broadband connection.
5.) This is more convienent than my iPod how? Cheaper in the short run maybe, but not more convienent.
Someone needs to explain the need for this. Maybe for a small segment of the population that has internet access and a computer attached to their hip 24/7 this would work. The review says he has problems carrying around an iPod, even an iPod nano, because he would forget it.
Come on people. I don't see how this can possible last, or take off and the capital investment involved on the company's side as far as storage and bandwith costs doesn't seem at all to be covered by $40/year?? How does the company make a profit off that? That seems a bit ridiculous to me. I'd be leery of uploading my entire collection of music to a third party. Especially one of questionable staying power. So I spend hours and hours uploading my entire collection and then what happens when it all goes down?
Just don't think this was well thought out.
Don't forget digg. 95% of the users only know how to say "lolol this is cool" and "DIGG+++++++++". And don't get me started on their archaic, non-threading comment system.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
Don't forget digg. 95% of the users only know how to say "lolol this is cool" and "DIGG+++++++++". And don't get me started on their archaic, non-threading comment system.
The trolls of slashdot, the comment system of fark, and the "'my site' is better than yours" mentality of k5. Dig+++
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
You know there's just going to be some guy sitting at the big 9-screen display at the company HQ watching as the hard drives fill up with music, shifting his hands in that manical way saying: "MINE! THEY'RE ALL MINE! ALL THE MUSIC I COULD EVER WANT!!! MINE!!!"
He'll download all of it to his 500TB iPod Mega-edition and never listen to the same song twice in his life.
And they said zombies weren't real!
I run Slimserver at home that accomplishes the same thing, minus having to upload all of your music to a remote site. Just create a playlist and point any player capable of streaming a URL at it and you're done.
It also has the cool feature of being able to sync up multiple players on your LAN (using Softsqueeze or their hardware) for music that goes throughout your house..very cool stuff.Well except without all the Ajax goodness - but myplay was fun while it lasted. They wanted to get in on the whole internet music scene but like everyone else they couldn't get licenses from the music business, so they let users store their music online and make it accessible wherever they went. The money ran out before the music industry started doing deals.
Business model: I pay them $40 a year to listen to my own MP3s? Can't quite see the must-have attraction of this. You could buy a flash MP3 player for about that much. Or burn your MP3s to a DVD to take with you for much less. Is the sock puppet involved in this?
Some kind of Oboe-playing symphony composed of Mad Penguins running rampant with Chiggers?
Since this is not customary historic use of music, it hasn't got a chance.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
From DVD Jon:s blog http://nanocrew.net/2005/10/21/moved-to-san-diego/
As you might have read, I've moved to San Diego. I've joined a great team at MP3tunes and will be applying my expertise to a project called Oboe. That's about all I can say at this point.
On my way to San Diego I stopped by San Francisco. I met up with some of the people at the EFF and Seth Schoen demonstrated the research they've been doing into printers that spy on you. Unfortunately I did not have much time in San Francisco, but I did get to visit the Exploratorium.
I will try to get back to everyone who has emailed me recently. If you haven't received a response by Monday, feel free to resend your email.
Interesting.
It may seem like the parent to your post was just being a smart-ass, but he actually raises a legitimate question.
What does this service offer which you can't accomplish with greater ease by toting a personal MP3 player (such as the iPod) in your jacket pocket and/or handbag?
Anyone who springs for an iPod can already hear their music anywhere, anytime. Who would find it better to pay a monthly fee to be able to only hear their music some places, some of the time?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Sorry, I can't ever hear the word oboe again without thinking of American Pie Band Camp!
Is there software out there that streams music to networked computers at the same time? For instance, I have a computer in each room of the house. I want all the computers playing the same thing.
For $60 a year, you can get music on any computer supporting WMA, plus load it onto any mp3 player supporting WMA. Of course no iPod support (thanks Apple). So for a little more you get free music, instead of just a place to store it.
Vote for Pedro
With the PSP firmware adding streaming media client capabilities, I might be persuaded to part with some cash if they integrated with that...
Anyone know how feasible this would be? (I've avoiding upgrading to post-2.0 firmware in order to leave open the downgrade route, so I'm not very clued-up about what's currently available...)
MY.MP3.COM
The courts, in the case UMG v. MP3.com, ruled in favor of the record labels against MP3.com and the service on the copyright law provision of "making mechanical copies for commercial use without permission from the copyright owner." Rather than fight on appeal, MP3.com settled with the major labels for more than $200 million and the service was discontinued.
from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3.com#My.MP3.com
nice idea, but RIAA executive bonuses have to continue, that new condo is way more important
The FAQ says you can upload to a free account from your PC via their software client, once you register you find out that you can only 'sideload' from content that's already Web hosted...
What makes Oboe unique is that you can store all of your music online and then access it from anywhere or sync it to multiple devices. There are 3 primary uses which make Oboe useful:
1) Backup all your music. You've probably spent a lot of time digitizing your music collection and making playlists. Or maybe you've bought lots of music from iTunes store. You can very economically and easily back that up with a single mouse click using the Oboe Sync software for Mac/Win/Lin. I'm surprised to hear slashdot readers say "I wouldn't trust my music to online storage." Very funny! That's what people said about the first banks too. In actuality, your music is much safer in data centers around the world then in your house where it can get stolen, broken, etc. $39.95 for unlimited storage is a new model for music fans that makes a lot of sense.
2) Keep your music in sync on multiple devices. If you listen to music on more than one computer, you can use Oboe Sync to keep the music on all your computers in sync. You'll have all your music and playlists on all your PCs with one click on Oboe Sync. If you add a CD to one computer it will ripple through your listening world. Today we offer sync clients for Mac/Win/Lin devices. Tomorrow we'll have sync clients for all devices. It's clear to me that people will have 20 devices they listen to music on in the future (car radio, sunglasses, phone, internet alarm clock, bike helmet, wifi-mp3 player, PDA, etc). You'll want a service to keep track of all your music and get it to all those devices. That's exactly where Oboe will shine.
I fully expect people to not understand this now because they'll say "I'll just carry my ipod around everywhere." I believe all your data will live online and you won't have to carry it everywhere. You also won't have to plug it into a PC to get music on it. It will just get the music directly from the net. You'll see new devices start to get this functionality shortly. And if you want to see a list of current locker sizes check out http://www.lockerenvy.com/ Here you'll find the biggest lockers and Sideload users.
3) Listen from any web device. Oboe has a nifty web interface so you can go to any computer in the world and play your music and playlists via streaming.
The concept is similar to my.mp3, but the music loading is very different. All music loaded into personal Oboe lockers are at the request of the user and not from a master database at MP3tunes. There's also a free account you can sign up for. You can't sync your music, but you can Sideload tracks and use web interface.
-- MR
CEO of MP3tunes.com
The ability to play (or otherwise access) music when you visit any web-connected computer, without having to carry anything around with you.
People who don't want to carry a bunch of crap around with them, but tend to go places with internet access.
If you need any more questions like this answered, I suggest you ask Captain Obvious.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
All your music are belong to us.
Services like these have been around for a long time. In fact, so long that I was dissatisfied with the few existing services and decided to try my own hand at something similar for my senior seminar project.
I'm quite sure that this service is more complicated and sophisticated and things, but I needed a simple solution for listening to music from my home PC while I was commuting to school with my laptop. I looked at existing solutions but they seemed to either be too sophisticated, not work, or cost more than I was willing to pay for such a service.
I always thought it was a tad bit redundant to host another whole collection of MP3s when all I really wanted was to listen to my own music while away from the computer. I didn't need a lot of bandwidth to pull this off, because it was only me listening.
My solution was a program I wrote that is basically a HTTP server modified to send playlist files containing the URLs of music, and will also zip up files if you have to get a whole album during a visit somewhere.
I know that most broadband has not enough upload speed for a real server, but if you are just serving yourself your own files and you don't mind leaving your computer on, why not just do it that way? I noticed that the 30k/sec I get in upload speed is more than enough to stream most MP3 files without a hitch. You definitely don't need a dedicated service to accomplish these goals.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Storing YOUR music files and giving only YOU access to them doesn't seem like much of a lawsuit waiting to happen. Of course, storing only one copy of a song and serving it to everyone as if it were theirs could be a big problem, which is about the only way I can see them providing "unlimited" disk space.
However, you are not seeing this story instead of "alternatives that work" - you are seeing it in addition to the alternatives. Remember when the iPod came out, and there were no announcements about it on slashdot because there were a bunch of other stories taking up all the space?
Nope. Me neither.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
From the terms of service:
You agree that you will not upload music and content, and will not request that any music or content be uploaded to your account maintained on the Site, that infringes the copyright or other intellectual property rights of any third party.
And so on. Sounds like their big change from the "other" service they originally ran is that they're offloading the legal burden on the users -- planning to throw up their hands and say "hey, we TOLD them not to do that!" when the RIAA comes knocking.
Same idea, multiplatform (yes, Linux), open and more mature. I'm not trying to knock Pandora, but LastFM (who is an off-shoot of the Audioscrobbler project formerly reported here) has a much, much larger database of well known and extremely hard to find music. Along with artist decriptions, previews and amazon links to buy its a nicely designed, decently planned out service (although I'd prefer if they sold the tracks themselves or partnered emusic.com style, but hey, I'm impatient like that).
I spend a good deal of time finding new music there. And yes, it has a "type the name of a band you like here" feature. Only with LastFM when I type Ms. John Soda it finds something (hey, their on Morr records).
Quack, quack.
So I always felt sort of like I had a system like this (only generally I don't build playlists on the fly because I've got it programmed for listeners). But I do like the idea of having the ability to listen to my music from any browser (most of us work at a computer now anyway) and the off-site back up is a great benifit.
If they throw shared playlists or any kind of relational system into the mix it could be a pretty neat system.
But personally I've got over 15 thousand mp3's (yep, most of them are paid for) and I've already got my own off-site hardware. Still, interesting to see.
Quack, quack.
It is the same -- RIAA will come after it and then what? All my uploads gone.
Pandora with an OBOE in her box...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I didn't read the FA, but how will they ensure it's ONLY MUSIC being uploaded? Do they have some algorithm running to sample the files? How do they encrypt the music or tag it with a token to ensure that YOU and ONLY YOU, the "storer/licensee" of the music tracks aren't going to get Oboe to blow their own oboe like a hobo on the sidewalk?
They'd better cover their butts nicely to keep the riaa and the others from strokin' too close to them, salivating, waiting to bust into uploaders and downloaders. They'd better REALLY careful if they don't want riaa to rip that oboe of their hands and ram it where it won't play too well.
Anyway, with all that horrific hardware-mapping code ms was uses to prevent users from moving 'their' windoze OS from hardware to hardware (or, to keep it from running on extensively upgraded systems), maybe Oboe should do something similar, except make the token map the device (assuming some sort of logic or board code is identifiable in the device), place tokens on the device and in the file, and then let at least give the appearance and some attempt to keep the files from being wildly deployed.
The other side of the swrod, umm, sword tho, is that the riaa could sue for the "tokens" and then try to plant them across media routers to track the users and nail them where ever they go...
(NO, I haven't read Catcher in the Rye since 1983 or so...AND for this post, I selected "No Karma Bonus"...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
So, you're willing to pay a monthly fee to avoid carrying a couple ounces of gadgetry with you?
Hey, tell you what. For $15 a month, I'll offer a service that let's you know what time it is, any time you're near a phone. That way, you don't need to worry about a wrist watch putting all that strain on your back.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
... And osnews.com! Heeh.
Shit no, I have no intention of getting an iPod or using this service. The only time I need music on the go is in my car. An iPod might actually be a good way to handle that but I don't want to pay the premium, but since I'm in my car I can handle having a bunch of CDs full of mp3s...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The way I understand it, there are two things that really kill your speed. The first problem is with the huge buffers at the ISP, and the second is delayed TCP ACK packets. Traffic shaping allows you to throttle your connection down a bit so as to keep those buffers empty (well, the outbound one at least) and it also allows you to give priority to ACK packets.
It takes some tuning to get it running properly, and I've had much better luck with it over DSL than with Cable, but you might want to give it a try.
Never eat more than you can lift -- Miss Piggy