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Web Radio Negotiations Carry Poison Pill
Adambomb writes "It seems that the deal that saved Net radio at the 11th hour, the new terms that would limit the maximum fee for multiple-channel Web radio broadcasts, contains a hook. To qualify for the cap, broadcasters must work to ensure that stream-ripping is not feasible. Given that the analog hole will always exist as far as I can imagine in such scenarios, is this even possible?" The article mentions the measures Net stations could easily take but have been reluctant to — lowering bit rates, playing jingles over the music, cross-fading songs. How long before they are backed into using these techniques?
Impossible. Nothing was saved. As long as microphones and Full duplex cards exist, and a headphone jack, you cannot...
Why is my nose bleeding?
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
This will be used to force AACS on end users. Instead of web radio paying the bill, it will be consumers.
I do. Last.fm is great for my musical needs, and BBC Radio 4 & 7 for comedy.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
I occasionally do, and it depends on the channel. Q Radio on the Internet in the UK is identical to Q Radio on Freeview (digital TV) so if you're on your computer and feel like listening to the radio then you can run it through your (already running) PC rather than having your TV on (and in a different room)
Somehow I suspect this legislation was written by legals with no idea of technology. Or even simple logic, come to that. "Well, it may come out as something you can hear, but make it so that you can't copy it, and lets just ignore the fact that if you can hear it you must be able to copy it in some way".
Alll the radio stations I've heard are 96 Kbps - and that's crappy quality as is... who would want to listen to anything with a lower bit rate?
When I lived in Italy, I noticed the DJs always talked over the first and last 20 seconds of every song. A friend told me it was so that people don't record the music.
It's kind of annoying, but understandable. The RIAA wants to use MTV and radio as an advertisement for CDs and DVDs. The artists want to use the CDs and DVDs as an advertisement for live performances. The radio stations want to use music as a filler between their own advertisements.
In the end, everyone makes money.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Sky.fm and Smoothjazz.com are already doing crossfading. Plus they crossfade jingles into the end of a track, so if you try to stream-rip, the jingle gets saved too. I can't speak for the other Internet Radio stations.
As another person has pointed out, all national and local (there are alot of stations) BBC radio is simultaneously streamed online, along with many radio shows to listen to whenever. All in streaming formats, so there is (at least here in the UK) definitely some radio worth tuning in for.
But it is usually just easier to use one of these.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
Today, it is impossible to listen to radio there, not because of all these problems, but because payola there is rampant, and if you are lucky, you get to listen the same 50 songs over and over and over again. Once I recorded 24 hours of radio programming, and I was able to identify a group of 8 songs (I can remember the exact number) that played at least 4 times that particular day, and one that played every 2 hours. That was a special spot on the programming called "the song of the week", played every two hours, every day, for 7 days. The other radios had a similar sport, with variations in the name ("the best of the week, the hit of the week"). It is a mafia, and it is not exclusive on U.S.
Payola killed the radio star, and the internet will kill the payola star. Well, at least one man can dream.
I'd say that making an analog recording isn't stream ripping. I think stream really means the digital bit stream, so no problem here.
We have P2P, usenet, friends, and even clever use of google to find illegal music ripped straight from CD. Does the record industry seriously believe thayt stream ripping is seriously affecting their sales?
How many do rip music streams? Really? I have listened to lots of di.fm and similair back in the days when I was to lazy to download new MP3s but I have never ripped any stream. I know one guy who did but he only burned the whole mix to a CD-R to play in his car anyway, so it was just a sort of delayed playback.
;D, this is a non-issue.
What's the problem here? The money lost must be so very small.
Same with radio station nowadays, do they really need this kind of system longer? How many people care about casette tapes and record from radio?
They need to understand that we just download our illegal music file by file at even higher quality instead of ripping streams
Cool! Now, I can hear music just like the DJ's played it back in the 70's!
Seriously though, while crossfading makes separating songs pretty much impossible, that presentation style was so distinctive. It really is a lost art, because it took real finesse for DJ's to get it sounding right with vinyl.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Even if they cut songs, talk into them and play some annoying jingle, compared to standard radio it's still gold. How often can you listen to the same crappy song before the urge to shoot the box is overwhelming? Currently, I measure my work hours in "umbrellas" (ya know that audio pollution called a song, right?). When I've heard it 8 times, my day is over, my 8 hours are done.
Does anyone really "record" off internet radio? Sit there for 12 hours like we used to in the pre-internet times in hopes that "your" song comes up and you can hit record? Oh, of course you can today just use software to do that, but still, simply sucking it from some P2P is easier.
Not to mention a "hole" that is more important than the audio hole. It's just like in real estate: Location, location, location. What keeps me from tuning into a station from Genericstan that doesn't care about the mafiaa?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't think it's right to close television, but who the Hell watches it ? I did a little and it sucked.
Actually, I use one of these. Same form factor and user interface, but with the global choice of stations that internet radio has over standard AM/FM broadcast. There are some very good Jazz stations with good bitrates in Switzerland and France that I listen to a lot, AFAIK there is nothing of the sort locally since Jazz FM became Smooth FM.
you got tired of lost too, didn't you ?
All the sound cards I own have an option to record "what you hear".
If you can hear it you can record it digitally.
Even without this there's SP-DIF connectors, etc., no analog conversion needed.
It's all moot though. So long as the RIAA sells CDs in shops then all music will have perfect copies available on P2P, no matter how much DRM they put into the online versions (sorry to break it to you, but your emperor's naked!)
No sig today...
I used to listen to di.fm quite a bit, and it was pretty cool. I was just getting into electronic music, but it was difficult to find stuff I liked, since no radio stations here (Los Angeles) play it consistantly (Granted, a few shows at night do, but you're looking at either listening to that or nothing, and you are only even given that option between a few hours on a few days.) so the net radio was perfect for me. I found it through iTunes' Radio listing, so I never was taken to the di.fm site anyway (I have since gone on my own, but that's not the point). I wound up ripping the stream for a few weeks, and after eliminating the duplicates and such, it was a nice addition to my music library, not to mention pointed me in the right direction. The stream was only 96 kbps, but that's still not unlistenable. Anyway, the point is, now I know what I like, and if any of the artists I found were performing, I'd see them. Unfortunately, many of the artists are European, so the point is moot. Oh well. Oh, and last.fm is cool for stuff like that, too, but I didn't learn about it until much later.
If I could rearrange the keyboard, I'd put U and I together.
Stream-ripping isn't analog recording. Stream-ripping becomes unfeasible with DRM (well unless the hack is trivially accessible and not pursued or fixed... which is never the case).
So the analog hole doesn't mean anything. They want to prevent direct digital ripping of the music on the station.
I'm convinced that all this (rate hike, denied appeals, last-minute "change of heart") was orchestrated expressly to get every web broadcaster into a deal that favors the recording industry. It's disgusting, in a "Lex Luthor teasing Superman with kryptonite" sort of way.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
I dunno, maybe it's because some of those Net stations are by people who like and respect music for people who like and respect music? You know, music by "artists" who are actually worthy of the title? What a concept.
Make reversible changes and let the (modified) player fix them for you.
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
"visiyous trols" ... with spelling that bad, your entertainment value makes you almost worth feeding ... almost.
... this hole has existed on radios for decades (ever since tape recorders have existed). So that's no reason to prevent streaming audio.
Anyway, from the main info page, "Given that the analog hole will always exist as far as I can imagine in such scenarios, is this even possible"
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
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errrm....
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Please stop stalking me, bro.
And voila! Who says you need analog?
I've run my own radio station (a popular one at that) from my home for about 3 years. I stream at 80kbps. I've nobody complain about quality and I havent heard a single word from anyone about legality. The only thing I ever hear about my radio station is a stream of emails from indie bands who want air time OR people requesting playlists (to download I presume).
Okay, so now that the music industry has killed radio over the air they're trying to kill radio on the internet as well, that makes sense. To those of you who would say this is a bad thing, just remember, they can only shoot themselves in the foot so many times before they run out of feet.
I actually like cross fading of music. Am I really in the minority about that? Given the number of music players that have the option, I can't believe that I am.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I believe that any restrictions from the RIAA can only pertain to music owned by its members. I'd love this to result in online sources providing a separate and competing channel for distribution of music not controlled by the RIAA.
The RIAA's power currently stems from one real source. They control the major channels for the marketing and distribution of music. In the past, control of recording studios and equipment has also been a big deal, but with the decreasing costs of recording equipment and improving technology, that has become less of a factor. These two factors have resulted in their ability to own most of the music that many people want to listen to.
If the online music sources were pushed away from music that was controlled by the RIAA, it could push them into providing an alternate distribution network, completely beyond the RIAA's control.
Thing is that in the UK they are f*&ked when it comes to stream ripping. Any sane person stream rips either the Freeview (digital terrestrial TV with absolutely no DRM) version if available (has higher bitrates) or the DAB version. You do end up with an MP2, but it is a perfect digital copy and free of any DRM.
If you want music, you can just stream rip the Freeview music channels, the hits, TMF, and E4 (weekend morning only for E4). Full of music videos but here is the deal while the video itself is not suitable for stream ripping, as it is overlayed with channel graphics and other stuff, the audio is and you get a nice DMR free 192kbps MP2 file with no fades when you demux it from the video. It is dead easy to cookie cutter out the tracks if you are so enclined.
It would take at least a decade to force out the existing DRM free TV and radio.
What's next, force conventional radio to switch to DRM-encumbered PCM?
I used to listen to music quite much. I bought everything on CD. My iPod made me listen to my music more, and I bought more and more music. After a while they started putting copy-protection on CDs. Around that time I more or less stopped buying music - not as a statement... but I was annoyed and I didnt really find so much interesting music either.
A few days ago I tried www.live365.com, which I havnt used in years. It is great! If it remains open I believe I will subscribe to it (to get CD-quality no-ad radio, that I can play in my HIFI-system at home). I also think I will start buying CDs with those artists I discover at live365. Really. No promises, no threats. I just think live365 may help me find CDs to buy. If they close it I doubt I will discover those artists.
I doubt the actual wording of the law uses the term "stream ripping"; that's just the summary.
Probably longer than that. It's based on the european DVB standards (which is partly why the boxes are so cheap) and encrypting the channels has been ruled out - to the point that very few of the boxes produced since the ondigital debacle several years ago even have CAM slots.
To encrypt a music channel you'd have to force 70 million people to buy new freeview decoders (by 2012 everyone will have at least one as the analogue signal will start disappearing). Not gonna happen.
You know, I don't *like* it, and yes, I'd like to be able to rip a stream so that I can store the file and listen to it later to decide if I want to buy it, but it seems to me that the only onus on the radio stations under this "catch" is to stay vaguely abreast of those who are breaking their systems. Apple did this, quietly mending their DRM when it was broken to keep the RIAA off their back. When it comes down to it, if the RIAA and record companies are so lame that they feel they need these types of nominal assurances (and there's *always* going to be a way to get around them), then, well, I don't like it, but I'd much rather not say goodbye to Pandora and Last.fm, where I've been exposed to most of the great music I've *legally bought* in the last couple of years. On a slightly related note, I hope that Apple, with the digital distribution leverage that it has, is able to prove with its DRM-free tracks, that the old model doesn't work, but that may be too much to ask from the RIAA.
u-bend
What is this "web radio" you speak of, and does it run on port 80?
As far as crossfading, mid-song jingles, etc, if i was web radio broadcaster, I'd say to Sound Exchange, record companies, etc: "if i am playing the song, and paying you for it, I want to play the song, the entire song, and nothing but the song. Anything less than that, meaning crossfading, etc, is more like a fair use excerpt of the song, and should not be counted as a 'play'".
Bought a ticket recently? Seen the massive other fees they tack on now? Do you understand what's happening? The musician gets paid a fraction of the 'ticket price'. NOT the extra fees. So when you pay $24 for a ticket and $17 in fees the act only gets a slice of the $24 and the venue pockets the $17 + whatever their skim of the $24 is.
So record companies are eventually going to:
Kill radio
Kill internet broadcast
Kill sharing
Force everyone to live venues;
Which are already screwing them harder than the record companies and live acts are screwing their audiences. And the acts and the record companies are just going to make less money until all the scumbags are broke. Except for maybe 2 dozen acts that make hundreds of millions of dollars for them.
Music will in fact become a lot more like movies than you imagine. There will be a tiny handful of 'blockbusters' each year all pretty much shit and music will die as an entertainment let alone an art form.
And I for one couldn't be happier. May the RIAA executives drown in the blood of their own children.
remember that the customer of the radio station is the advertisers, not the listeners who are merely "bait" to get the advertisers hooked into giving the station money.
... excepting when the listener is paying a subscription; sadly, especially in the case of TV, the consumer/listener often still has to suffer advertising.
Not only that, but some DAB radios (e.g. http://www.pure-digital.com/Products/Product.asp?
>playing jingles over the music, cross-fading songs.
You know, I've always hated it when they did that. It completely messed up my radio recordings... -oh.
There was once a show on a Dutch channel (Kink FM), which would consist of 2 hours back to back music, which you could record to tape. The songlists would come out in a magazine that same week. After a few shows, it was cancelled. I wonder why.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
All that will happen is that people will continue to do what they do now, that is, when they hear something on the radio (internet or otherwise) they will either buy the song/CD or they will go to and download it.
Perhaps the correct response would be for no-one to listen to Internet radio, and no-one to set up an Internet radio station broadcasting MAFIAA-licensed content. That way the MAFIAA get to keep their obnoxious rules, but at the same time they make no money from them, and hasten their path to irrelevence and bankrupcy.
At some point the artists who "sell their soul" will have to regret doing so. Let true internet radio competition begin! Goodbye RIAA, I won't miss you. :)
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
In order to qualify for the cap, ensure that Fair Use capabilities such as timeshifting is impossible, so that regular listeners will miss out on your show and lose interest, furthering weakening of the market.
Way to go, RIAA members! Alienating customers on a daily basis. Bravo!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I am seriously getting tired of the major music groups-- all of them. Do they perform any studies before they launch their campaigns or do they confirm their actions by talking to their buddies?
I have always listened to music from multiple sources: radio, internet radio and other streams, downloading (gasp!), borrowing cassettes and cd's, et cetra. I've even (gasp again!), recorded cassettes from the radio and copies of others' cassettes as a kid. I've stuck to the legal methods where possible to the best of my knowledge. And in all cases in the past, if I've enjoyed the music, I'd either go out and buy a CD/tapes that contains it, or in some cases, other CD/tapes by the artist.
I've always tried to support the artists (or companies) that create things I like. Why? Because, silly me, I'd like to see them rewarded and I'd like to hear more. I'm by no means rich, I can only spend money for entertainment occasionally, but I do when I can. (This is true for me across other products as well.)
Nowadays, every major group that represents an artist or band's interests seems to be taking every step they can to stop me from giving them money. The common one (there are many) is: if I download or stream a song, they lose money. Wrong! If I do, I'll probably listen to it a few times and then trash it if I just don't like it or I WILL GO OUT AND BUY IT. The thing is, if I can't listen to the song first, I won't be buying it. And radio usually doesn't match my taste, so that usually doesn't work. Another one is: if I rip a stream (which I never have to date), I will not return to that internet station. Wrong! If I rip it (which is just time shifting in the same fashion as cassette recording regular radio), I will listed to that song from the rip and from the internet radio. And, again, if I go that far, I'm probably going out to buy it when I have the money. Listening from alternate sources (like, what about CD's?) does not stop me from listening to radio/internet radio. (Don't even get me started on the fallacy of DRM.)
I suppose they are concerned with the truly malicious. Those that collect everything for free and pay nothing. The thing is, the "anti-pirating" methods to date largely will not and cannot stop these people, the people that want it. It does however stop people like me from finding music to buy and thusly it stop me from giving my money to them. I already spend a lot less on music because I have trouble finding new music.
I wonder now... do they actually study the people they sell music to? It certainly doesn't feel like it. They seem so focused on making money that they are spending gobs of it in making sure they don't make it. Have they ever heard about not holding something you want too tightly?
They are crushing their industry in a desperate move to hold on to it. Adapt or fall!
--Dave Romig, Jr.
The World's Largest Jukebox is BBC Radio Two. Located in London, it is reckoned to contain a copy of every record ever made. Instead of an array of letter and number buttons, it has a website and a telephone line for making selections, and the records played are broadcast wirelessly to loudspeakers using Very High Frequency radio waves in the band 88 - 91MHz. Playing 24 hours a day, no fully-automated mechanism would be able to stand up to the thrashing it would take and so a veritable army of DJs are used to carry the records from the magazine (or "gram lib" as it is known in BBC speak) and operate the turntables.
There is even a special Training Camp for people who wish to become a Radio Two DJ.
With the now widespread use of the internet to listen to music, it's becoming easier and easier to distribute your work without a record lable. All you have to do is make it available for download on a website for a fee. The only hard part will be getting the word out about your music. That's exactly what Trent Reznor say's he's going to do as soon as he's fulfilled his contract. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,217 41980-5006024,00.html
Just an FYI for those of you who regularly listen to net radio or are looking for something new. KATT 100.5 FM in Oklahoma City has a show on Sundays called "The Katt's Seventh Day" where they pick several albums and play them back-to-back with little or no interruptions.
In the past when I listened the DJ would actually encourage folks to get their cassette tapes ready . . .
Who knows what you could try during their next webcast.
Since I'm as asshole, I probably would've responded with "Well, if you're going to make us do this, then in all fairness you'll have to charge us exactly ZERO dollars to broadcast, because doesn't that essentially eliminate the threat to you from internet-radio?"
:P
Hehe, this kind of attitude is probably why I don't own any kind of (legal) business...
In other news, 2,000,000 people firebomb the RIAA headquarters.
Internet: Serious Business
All you need is an audio interface with digital I/O and a digital mixer. Every pro audio workstation has this. You route out to the digital mixer and back in and you have a perfect digital copy. No loss due to D/A and A/D again. For those who don't know about these things, look at say a MOTU 2408 and any digital console with lightpipe or a lightpipe add-on card such as the Yamaha 02R96.
Why are they doing this now? I've been ripping streams for years... back when I was a kid we would rip a couple of streams a night... although the terms we used were different... "cassette deck", "record", and "radio station". Now I guess Dr. Demento will knocking down my door for royalties.
It's a road block. It's a provision webcasters cannot easily adhere to. It's a license to shutdown/strong-arm stations selectively.
What happened to the wave of business books a few years back about the importance of putting the customer first, and showing that the companies that just concentrated on satisfying the customer--actually, I think "delighting, not just satisfying" was one of the phrases--consistently outperformed the companies that engaged in all the clever-clever manipulation and chiseling and trickery?
If people want to record the stream, let 'em.
They've been doing it for decades, folks. I remember a guy in college whose nickname was "tapes" because he had a huge collection of tapes of popular music recorded off the air. At 1-7/8 ips on open-reel tapes on an analog tape recorder, which dates me and the period.
People always have been able to do stuff like that.
And it never amounts to a hill of beans, in terms of hurting artists or recording companies or whatever, because it's just too much work organizing the recordings and editing the stream to find the starting and stopping points and labelling the tape boxes. And, these days, either accepting handwritten scribbled labels or futzing some more looking for cover art or pictures of the artist or editing CD labels or formatting LightScribe text.
And it tends to be a lifecycle thing. You do that when you're in college and short on cash. People who are willing to put that much work into it are also people who are deeply committed to listening to music and sooner or later most of them get a job and a salary and suddenly they no longer have six hours to edit and organize recording but they do have a credit card and money to buy CDs or iTunes downloads or whatever.
It's like worrying about the possibility that someone could pay for one newspaper but take two out of the vending box. Does it ever happen? Sure. Does it make it worth building a complicated, more expensive vending box? Obviously not, and the newspaper folks obviously understand the tradeoff.
If the music companies just focussed on pleasing the customer, they'd do a lot better than they're doing now. It almost seems as if they're more concerned about the sheer abstract principle of the thing ("but they're robbing me!") than about dollars and cents. They're certainly not showing any concern for their customers.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
My local Adult Contemporary station doesn't crossfade, doesnt talk over the songs, and that's what they remind me of every time they read their call letters. Are they now going to be subject to these same restrictions to keep pirates from taping Phil Collins tunes?
I wound up ripping the stream for a few weeks, and after eliminating the duplicates and such, it was a nice addition to my music library, not to mention pointed me in the right direction. The stream was only 96 kbps, but that's still not unlistenable. Anyway, the point is, now I know what I like, and if any of the artists I found were performing, I'd see them.
I guess actually buying the music of these artists you've discovered and enjoy is out of the question, huh?
Now you know why music companies are trying to get net radio stations to prevent ripping...
I stream-rip during the day to have something to listen to on my sansa when I work out at night. If there's anything that I really like in the stream, I'll research the artist, and *try* to find the music to buy at a reasonable price. The radio stations usually aren't great quality, and if it's something I would listen to several times (ie, I'd like to own it), then I'd much rather encode it myself with my quality specs and indexing/tagging.
I WILL NOT PAY MONEY FOR LOSSY COMPRESSED MUSIC. That is a really dumb direction that everyone wants to head in. How about instead, the music companies sell CDs for a reasonable price ($5-$10), and let people download FLAC for $2-$5 per album? They may find that people actually start to buy music again.
There are several albums that I would love to own, but I am not paying $15-$20 for them, and have not found them used anywhere. I admittedly did download some FLAC via pirate bay's tracker. But you know what? I liked the band so much that I bought 3 of their other CDs, Albeit, used. So again...the artist is losing out again because the price of new music is ridiculous.
Oh yeah, because buying tickets to Europe just for a few CDs or a concert is so practical. Same with me- I like the music, but tell me with a straight face that you think I should go to Japan just for a few CDs. Maybee a few concerts back-to-back, but not just for some CDs.
OSx86 FTW
http://media.collegepublisher.com/media/paper932/s tills/3e5564337cc2e-58-1.jpg
I don't understand stream ripping. Why would anyone want to listen to a song more than once? You hear it, and there it is in your head. And don't give me any of this "I want to learn the words" crap.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
Broadcasters blocking digital stream ripping is never going to be a reality because stream ripping does not only happen at the application level, it happens at the hardware level. As long as developers on the Windows, Mac, and Linux/BSD platforms can hook into the sound hardware, then it will be impossible to control the digital copying and recording of streamed music.
If you have ever listened to Electonica, you would know that the record stores don't carry most electronica bands. Staling is really the only choice. Most of the time if they do have a CD, when you buy the CD, it is not nearly as good as the live set.
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I really believe this has very little to do with fee's and DRM and everything to do with control. The music companies see that internet radio is killing off there payola cash cow FM and people are buying indie music or whatever. I see this as a stalling tactic till they can figure out how to make it work in the payola scheme or kill it all together to force people back to crappy FM and one hit wonders.
I think some of the industry actions have less to do with controlling consumers and more to do with controlling artists.
If they can limit the distribution and marketing (which is the bulk of what a major player music corp does) options an artist has, then you increase both your control over the artists and the amount you can extract from them in contracts. This is especially important to the music corps. where it comes to areas opened up by newer technology which favor cutting out the middleman and the major players have a track record of complete ineptness.
Oh yeah, because buying tickets to Europe just for a few CDs
Uh, can't you buy those CDs from an online store...?
You know, there's PLENTY of creative commons and public domain music out there that you don't need to play their crap. Don't play their music and you don't have to worry about royalties, and the RIAA doesn't have to worry about people ripping their music. Everybody wins.
I'm glad to see the RIAA tightening the noose on Internet radio. It's bad for the Internet radio stations that tried to play nice with the RIAA, and I'm sorry for them, but in the end the more pressure the RIAA puts on the Internet to avoid their music, the more independent artists on independent labels have a chance to figure out that, together, they can create the next generation of radio over the Internet. It needs to be DRM-free, and it needs to have a blend of pre-recorded and interesting original content (the way radio used to before it became the drone of commuter background noise). Once someone does this well, it won't take much to get the avalanche started.
If you like internet radio like I do, you can ask your congress persons to be a co-sponsor of the bills. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR020 60:@@@P - H.R. 2060
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:SN013 53:@@@P - S. 1353
Just email them at firstname.lastname@mail.house.gov or firstname.lastname@mail.senate.gov
This would stop the need for unreasonable agreements altogether.
Intersting comment about the analog hole.
I imagine that requiring the digital broadcasters to enact protections that the analog broadcasters cant would qualify as an anti-competitive practice. Particularly if it effects pricing of music at the wholesale level.
Q: How many pirates get their music from web radio?
A: ZERO
Does anyone even bother trying to record web radio?
A: No
Hello RIAA. See that bag there. It has no cats in it. It will never have cats in it again. Get over it.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Crossfading works for some kinds of music, but it kills others.
Obvious example: classical music. Crossfading two symphonies...
I listen to Salsa music on live365. While there are DJs in Clubs that crossfade, I don't like it. Good salsa songs have a well composed beginnings and ends and the artists take great effort to make them stand out to make the whole song a piece of art. Cutting/dilluting the front and end is a sin to the music and disrespects the artists. This might be particular to that kind of music, because it is dance music in the strict sense (couple dance). You especially do some spiffy moves at the end of the song. If the music cross-fades, you prepare for the end and then, instead of the accentuated end, the next song starts which is simply annoying.
That said: If the station is forced to do crossfading, I will cancel my subscription. And don't get my started on the playing jingles over the music and that other crap.
"What the radio-stations really need to keep secret from us pirates, is the names of the songs they are playing."
If it has any lyrics Google'll come up with a name in seconds.
No sig today...
I used to *love* Pandora. But they sent me a very kind email saying "you're not really within the US, are you?", which I honoured. Since then, I am using Last.fm as a fallback.
... absolutely useless.
But man, Last.fm sucks.
At Pandora, I had a couple of finely tuned stations that played *just* the sort of music I liked. At Last, the best one can do is to select a tag, and it will play whatever sounds vaguely similar in anyone's opinion
"Good news, everyone!"
Is barking up the wrong tree if their aim is to prevent Internet radio from being used as a means to pirate music. If I hear a song on Internet radio, I'd sooner download it illegally, or get it from iTunes, than I would bother to go through the pain in the ass of recording it off of the radio station. Maybe in some misguided RIAA fantasy, they think they'll actually shut down LimeWire, Kazaa, and all the others, and then Internet radio would be the last bastion of pirated music on the Internet unless they stop it now. Dream on....
I think the RIAA knows this. I think that they are trying to hinder the experience of Internet radio, which, at the end of the day, probably helps artists not on the RIAA lables a lot more than it does helps those who are.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
Now I see that if we set them up a back-channel, we can get radio stations to hire them to do it, so it can be mixed in to keep the RIAA happy, and we can actually make practice pay in hard dollars rather than just improved skills.
Squirrel!
Every new development by the RIAA and related idiots merely increases my determination to not ever buy any commercially produced recordings of music. The assumption that there is a demand for the supply is incorrect, at least as far as I'm concerned. If the masses will buy this garbage and bow down to the Oligarchs, the Oligarchs will succeed. So what. These are the same people who watch "Reality TV." My suggestion: learn to play an instrument and make your own music. The outcome may not be very polished, but you'll entertain yourself (and perhaps entertain others), and be at least incrementally smarter than before you started. All you need is a soul.
Streamripping takes too long. Since most songs are about 4 minutes in length, it'll take 4 minutes to rip it at least (note the crappy bitrate and possible crossfading/ DJs talking over the song). Why do this, when we can download a Lossless rip from the internet in much less time! To streamrip an hour of music.. it takes at least an hour. We can download the lossless rip in 10 minutes or less!
Visit garageband.com, cdbaby, myspace, podsafe music network, etc. to find some great music that is being distributed by songwriters who are not part of the commercial music world. It's time to say "no thank you" and move on.
wherever I go, there I am.
The geeks will love Dr. Karl and the other science shows, like his recent call-in show with Sir Roger Penrose and Dr Kip Thorne (links to mp3).
It helps me have some hours of radio stored for whenever Im working and don't have a reliable connection, I also use the saved streams to put on the ipod to take out cycling, very handy.
If you can hear it you can record it digitally. Yes but if we keep quiet about that maybe the RIAA will leave it alone.
..if someone likes the tune and looks us up, comes to a show, or buys a disk that is great.
I think that if the RIAA is pissing about not getting enough royalties then they should implement a limit to the number of times a particular song gets played for a given period of time before royalty charges go up. So if a song is played 6 times in a twelve hour period then big royalties should be paid on scale...the more asongs gets played the higher the fee. Oh imagine that...I can see it now. VARIETY would return to broadcast commercial radio as they would stop playing that song once the limit was reached. And the public would of decided they were going to by the disk or not based on if they liked the song, not because it was shoved into their ear with a ice pick every hour for 6 months and it is the only song played on the radio.
If a radio station profits form playing the same seven songs over and over again then they can afford to pay the fee. Don't penalize internet radio for having a different business model.
That would save internet radio as nothing would change. Variety is already the name of the game on the internet radio streams. Commercial radio sucks off the sheeple tit by playing the same songs over and over again. It works for crappy commercial pop station that pre-teens listen too. sucks. Rather than kill off internet radio for being "different" make commercial radio pay for flooding the market with the same five songs over and over again.
http://soul-amp.com/
I knew I shouldn't have clicked on that Death Note torrent!
When the Pigopolists hoodwinked and bribed--er, I mean lobbied Congress into passing the DMCA in 1998, one of the basic premises codified into the law was that ANY transmission over the Net was viewed as "a perfect digital copy of the original". It was a lie then, and it's a lie to this day, as anyone who actually listens to Net radio, with its decimated sampling rates, drop-outs, rebuffering and other glitches, can attest.
This lie is one of three on which the RIAA bases its demand for greater compensation than they've received from other media such as terrestrial radio. The other two are that program directors and DJ's provide no added value whatsoever, and that exposure on the Internet has no promotional value (whereas exposure over the airwaves magically does).
It's okay for someone to steal something copyrighted but it's wrong to steal the code that enables someone to steal something copyrighted if after said theft you plan on selling the code or taking it closed source.
I guess another way to put it is that it is okay to steal as long as it's somebody else stuff.
Glad to have that cleared up. I was getting confused by all this talk of freedom.
And then you won't have to pay as much in royalty fees as you will be paying in bandwidth costs. Result, you still won't be able to afford to do business against the Big Boys.
The only thing I can hope for in the light of these royalty demands is that it will bring the radio drama back. Learn the foley arts, write some original scripts, and get some perfomers. Just make sure you use no music to set mood.
Unfortunately, regurgitating news and political opinions (is there a difference anymore?) is a lot easier, and thus more likely.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Am I reading this right or is this the equivalent of the FCC asking for the producers of VCR's and Tape Decks to make sure that VCR's and Tape Decks do not allow the consumers to record radio and tv shows? This is getting interesting.
Some countries, like the one I currently live in, people don't look too kindly on shipping to. Gotta love all the fraudsters who make it hard for legit people to buy online...
OSx86 FTW
Where did i put that sound card driver that saves to a file instead of playing it out a sound card.