All posts tagged ‘Music’

File Under: APIs, Multimedia, Social
Dec
9
2009

Could MySpace’s New Real Time Stream Lead to Better Music Sharing?

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MySpace has thrown open its doors to app developers, giving them real time access to all MySpace users’ activities via a new suite of APIs.

Now, every time Jenny friends somebody, posts a photo or writes a blog post, you’ll be able to make that notification show up in your app mere seconds after it happens.

The company announced the new Real Time Stream API, along with two other social APIs, Wednesday morning at the Le Web conference in Paris, France. It posted all the details on its developer website and kicked off a contest to see who can create the best apps. The new APIs offer access to every MySpace user’s stream in real time. MySpace publishes its user activities using the ActivityStrea.ms format, and it’s using PubSubHubbub to push the streams out in real time.

Wednesday’s announcement comes during a big week for MySpace. Only a day before, the company completed its acquisition of iMeem, the music sharing service, which also published ActivityStrea.ms data about its users’ actions. It also comes the same day that Facebook announced it was making status updates from its users publicly available to the web at large — previously, the default setting was to only publish status updates to Facebook’s own platform or approved Facebook apps. The new APIs at MySpace will allow its developers to post users’ updates with the same frequency as Facebook and other services.

So, what’s going to happen next?

MySpace has long been eclipsed by Facebook as the hottest social network for individuals, but bands and musicians of all levels remain incredibly active on MySpace. Lots of musicians don’t even have a website anymore, they just have a MySpace page, and maybe a Twitter account. A handful of major clubs in every city book all of their shows using MySpace. If you’re in a band, you pretty much have to be on MySpace — like it or not. It’s one of the key web tools driving the music industry right now.

However, one big thing missing from MySpace’s music experience (well, one of the big things) is the ability for people to easily share a song they like. When an artist uploads a song, their status update provides a link to that song. But for fans, all music sharing happens through playlists, which are clunky.

If you are listening to a song and you want to tell all your friends about it, you add it to your profile playlist. That action shows up in your stream, and the song shows up in the player widget on your MySpace profile, (Here’s what it looks like). It’s only there as long as you decide to keep it there, and since MySpace only get 10 songs at a time, if you’re an avid music lover, chances are it won’t be there for longer than a day or a few hours.

Compare this to other popular music sharing services, like LaLa, Mog, Last.fm and iMeem, or even smaller ones like TheSixtyOne, and you’ll notice that it’s much easier for users to send a Facebook update or a Tweet about a particular song they like (and as many songs as they like) complete with a short link leading back to the page where their friends can listen to the song right away. They don’t have to deal with playlists or anything similar, they just share a link to that song.

It’s an elegant and direct way to spread music, which is why it’s become the standard for song sharing on every social network except for MySpace.

This open sharing, along with direct short URL links, is one of the most powerful forces for artist exposure, and for fans to express enthusiasm, driving the music business. For evidence of this, see Ted Greenwald’s post on our Epicenter blog, “Geeks to Music Industry: APIs Can Set You Free

,” about how open song sharing is changing the way people engage with and encounter new music.

MySpace’s music sharing system works, but it feels backwards and weird when compared to the rest of these tools. But with the purchase of iMeem and with the launch of these new APIs, we’ll probably see some positive changes quickly.

For MySpace’s sake, we hope so. The only reason for most of us to visit MySpace these days is to interact with bands. So, anything at all that makes it easier for users to like, link to and comment on songs, and to publish those activities out onto the web in real time would be a boon for the old beast of a social network.

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File Under: Multimedia, Software & Tools
Oct
21
2008

Songbird Media Player Gearing Up for 1.0 Release

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songbirdSongbird, the media player that’s one part iTunes, one part Firefox, is nearly ready to release its long-awaited version 1.0. The Songbird blog reports that 1.0 should arrive in about a month.

It’s worth noting that the timeframe is “approximate,” but even adding a bit of time for unexpected delays, we’re still very likely to see 1.0 before the end of the year.

That should good news for those of you fed up with iTunes and other media players (most of which are essentially the same as they were 7-8 years ago, Amarok being one notable exception).

Among the goals for the 1.0 release are:

  • Reduced RAM Usage
  • Reduced Startup Times
  • Faster Media Importing
  • Faster Search
  • GStreamer Media Cores on all platforms

There’s no official release date yet, but we’ll keep you posted. If you’re unfamiliar with Songbird, be sure to check out our previous coverage for an overview of what the app does and why you might like it better than iTunes and others.

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File Under: Multimedia, Software & Tools
Sep
26
2008

Behind the Scenes of The Demise of Muxtape

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muxtape logoWell, it’s official, Muxtape as you know it is dead. The wildly popular mix tape sharing service has fallen victim to the RIAA/music label’s desire to maintain a stranglehold on music distribution. Although no lawsuit was every formally filed, the threat of one was enough to convince Muxtape’s founder Justin Ouellette to shut the service down.

Muxtape will be reborn as a music sharing site for indie bands — kind of a MySpace music without the MySpace. And of course Favtape recently relaunched as a Muxtape replacement, so if you’re looking for the functionality of Muxtape, we’d suggest giving the new Favtape a try.

But while there may be alternatives to Muxtape, the story of its demise is depressing news for music fans. Contrary to popular opinion, Muxtape did not survive for as long as it did because it flew below the RIAA’s radar, in fact the RIAA and several labels contacted Ouellette within a week of Muxtape’s launch. The story goes downhill from there:

Around the same time I got a call from the VP of anti-piracy at one of the majors. After I picked up the phone his first words were, “Justin, I just have one question for you: where do I send the summons and complaint?”

Despite some shaking beginnings Ouellette managed to keep things going and felt that Muxtape had value (as it obviously did) and even the labels agreed, at least privately.

I always told myself I’d remove any artist or label that contacted me and objected, no questions asked. Not a single one ever did. On the contrary, every artist I heard from was a fan of the site and excited about its possibilities. I got calls from the marketing departments of big labels whose corporate parents were supposed to be outraged, wanting to know how they get could their latest acts on the home page. Smaller labels wanted to feature their content in other creative ways.

But of course bands are not their own masters and market departments don’t run the labels. Eventually the middlemen (henchmen? Record labels? Semantics really) stepped in. Ouellette tentatively agreed to some licensing deals, but the record companies kept coming back with additional requirements and restrictions.

The first red flag came in August. Up until then all the discussion had been about numbers, but as we closed in on an agreement the talk shifted to things like guaranteed placement and “marketing opportunities.” I was denied the possibility of releasing a mobile version of Muxtape. My flexibility was being constricted.

In the end Ouellette shut the service down because the RIAA filed a complaint with Amazon (AWS was hosting the site and its files). “Over the next week I learned a little more, mainly that the RIAA moves quite autonomously from their label parents and that the understanding I had with them didn’t necessarily carry over,” he writes.

Frustrated, Ouellette walked away from the tangled mess of licensing deals and decided to shutdown Muxtape as we knew it.

And so it goes.

Of course we’re hoping that the reborn version of Muxtape catches on with independent musicians and bands, and with Favtape offering features somewhat like Muxtape, maybe users can take their cake back from the RIAA. And eat it too.

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File Under: Multimedia
Sep
22
2008

Favtape Reborn as a Muxtape Replacement

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favtapeFavtape, one of our favorite ways to build online playlists, has relaunched with a host of new features that mean the site is no longer exclusively tied to Pandora and last.fm playlists. I fact, the revamped Favtape is now a worthy replacement for the still-on-RIAA-compelled-hiatus, Muxtape.

When we looked at Favtape earlier this year, its features were somewhat limited — the idea was to provide a very simple way of getting on-demand access to your Pandora and last.fm playlists. But since then the popular Muxtape was forced to shutdown and, sensing an opportunity, Favtape has expanded to embrace many of Muxtape’s features.

Most notably, Favtape now offers accounts, which are free and allow you to create mixes using any song, rather than old method, which imported your data from Pandora or last.fm. Along with the new accounts come the ability to re-order of your playlists — an obvious feature that should have been available from the beginning.

Other new features include a host of links below each song in your playlist. — you’ll now have one-click access to lyrics, music videos and album art. Those looking to post their playlists elsewhere will be happy to know that there’s now an embeddable player available.

Now, I know what you’re thinking — Favtape has turned into Muxtape, which means surely, it too will be shut down.

Perhaps, but Favtape is different in one very important way — it doesn’t host any of the song files on its own site. Instead Favtape leverages the Seeqpod API to stream music. Seeqpod in turn is only indexing files already available on the web.

Of course that doesn’t mean the files are infringement-free, it just means that there’s no big target for the RIAA to go after.

Hopefully that means the recording industry won’t turn their sights on Favtape, but of course you never know, so enjoy it while you can.

[via Lifehacker]

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File Under: Software & Tools
Sep
5
2008

Tumbltape: Turn Your Tumblr Blog into a Muxtape Clone

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TumbltapeIf you needed any proof that Muxtape was wildly popular, consider the number of copycats and streaming music alternatives that have popped up since the site went offline. We’ve already looked at 8Tracks, which offers similar features, and OpenTape which allows you to host a Muxtape clone on your own server.

If neither of those options quite float your boat, check out Tumbltape. As the name suggests Tumbltape uses the dead-simple blogging tool Tumblr to upload and host your Muxtape-style mixes.

To use Tumbltape all you need to do is upload an MP3 to your Tumblr account and then sign in to Tumbltape. Tumbltape will (in most cases) automatically pull out all the relevant track data from the ID3 tags. If you’re not good about keeping your ID3 data neat and tidy, you can always tag your Tumblr post using the structure, tt:artist name - track name, and Tumbltape will use that info to build a playlist.

Tumbltape will show the last 12 files you uploaded to Tumblr; as you add more it simply bumps the older ones off your playlist. if you upload a track you don’t want Tumbltape to list, just use the tag tt:skip.

There are some limitations to what you can do with Tumbltape — for instance, Tumblr only allows you to upload one MP3 a day and there’s no rearranging a playlist, you need to plan ahead and upload song in the proper order — but if you’re looking for a really easy way to create an online mix to share with your friends, Tumbltape makes a decent alternative to Muxtape.

via Lifehacker

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File Under: Multimedia, Software & Tools
Sep
2
2008

8Tracks Picks Up Where Muxtape Left Off

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8trackIf you’re still on a quest to find a replacement for currently closed Muxtape music streaming site, 8Tracks offers similar features and adds a search engine and album artwork to the mix — two nice options Muxtape never offered.

Otherwise the two services are very similar, 8Tracks allows you to create and share 30-minute MP3 playlists just like Muxtape, Favtape and others. Looking for something in particular? Just search and see how other users have mixed your favorite song into their playlists.

You can also search by type of music, artist, 8tracks user and more.

There’s a pretty good chance that 8tracks will eventually fall under the RIAA’s whack-a-mole mallet, but at least for now, it’s a viable replacement for Muxtape.

The only real criticism we found is that the service’s stylized “8″ in the logo does, as a Lifehacker reader points out, bear a rather strong resemblance to the curvy “F” in Fedora’s logo.

If 8Tracks doesn’t float your boat and you’re still missing Muxtape, your could always Host Your Own Muxtape Clone With OpenTape.

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File Under: Multimedia, Programming
Aug
27
2008

Host Your Own Muxtape Clone With OpenTape

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Opentape_2Muxtape, the web service that let you create music mixes to share with your friends, is currently wrestling with the RIAA and has, at least for now, shut its doors. But if you’re fan of the service and you happen to have some web hosting space available there’s a new open source project that allows you to create your own hosted Muxtape.

OpenTape, as the project is known, is written in PHP and is no more difficult to set up than WordPress. Of course, being a self-hosted program, OpenTape isn’t going to work for everyone, but if you have a server running PHP5 and Apache all you need to do is upload the OpenTape package.

If you’re a band looking for a cheap, easy way to get your music on the web, OpenTape could be a great option. Thanks to an included embeddable music player, OpenTape would be an easy way for your fans to take your tracks to their own sites and help spread the word.

While it does require some technical chops, OpenTape has managed to reduce installation to a matter of drag-and-drop FTPing (or scp if you’re the command line type). I set up OpenTape on my local home server and was up and running in about five minutes.

The results are pretty much an exact feature clone of Muxtape — create a playlist, upload your tracks (or use SFTP, since it’s on your server) and create your mix.

There’s an embedded player available, so if you want, you can stream your OpenTape mixes to other sites — beware the bandwidth though.

As nice as it all sounds there are some potential legal issues. Hosting your own version of Muxtape might open you up to the same fees and legal concerns that brought down Muxtape and are threatening to bring down Pandora. There’s a fair use argument to make with Muxtape, but it hasn’t been tested in court and we’re no lawyers, so proceed at your own risk.

One possible way to avoid the RIAA would be to dive into OpenTape’s source code and modify it to stream music from Seeqpod or the like, which is what FavTape does to avoid the legal issues that come from hosting the actual files. Assuming you have some experience with PHP it shouldn’t be too hard to whip something up.

From a technical standpoint, while it’s true that OpenTape seriously tilts the RIAA’s whack-a-mole game in your favor — assuming it catches on — never under estimate the number of mole-whacking mallets the RIAA can wield.

[high five Factory Joe, Twitter]

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File Under: Multimedia
Aug
19
2008

Muxtape Shuts Down to Deal with RIAA

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MuxtapeMuxtape, one of our favorite ways to share playlists, has temporarily shut down due to unspecified pressures from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The company’s blog assures users that the shutdown is not permanent and Muxtape will eventually return.

Muxtape is one of many services that offer streaming music from user-created playlists — you upload the MP3 files, and others can listen to them, but there’s no built-in way for anyone to download the tracks.

While the company has offered few details about what what is behind the shutdown, it’s not hard to imagine that uploading MP3′s rubs the RIAA the wrong way. Many similar sites (like Favtape) use Seeqpod to serve MP3s, allowing them to sidestep concerns about hosting actual song files.

The Muxtape blog did offer a small update late yesterday evening saying, “No artists or labels have complained,” and reiterating that “the site is not closed indefinitely.”

Another possibility is that Muxtape has run afoul of the licensing fees associated with streaming audio — the same problem that’s haunting Pandora. However broadcast fees are generally handled by SoundExchange and not the RIAA.

Whatever the cause, at least for now, there’s no Muxtape for you.

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File Under: Software & Tools
Aug
18
2008

Exorbitant Fees May Force Pandora to Shut Down Popular Radio Service

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pandora.jpgPandora is quite simply one of the best ways to discover new music on the web. What Pandora lacks in social discovery tools (like those popularized by Last.fm), it more than makes up for with its brilliant music matching algorithm. Recently Pandora experienced a surge of new listeners thanks to an excellent iPhone app, but unfortunately that may not be enough to save the popular internet radio service.

Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, recently told the Washington Post that the service is “approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision.” The service says it won’t be able to continue in the face of the new exorbitant licensing fees levied on internet broadcasters. At the behest of the music industry, the licensing fees for internet radio are roughly double what traditional radio stations pay.

For Pandora that means that 70 percent of this year’s projected revenue of $25 million will go to pay royalties. Already the service has been forced to shut down its international broadcasts.

So why must internet radio stations pay exorbitant performance rights fees when terrestrial broadcaster pay nothing to broadcast the same songs to a much larger audience? There doesn’t seem to be answer to that questions save the cynical one: internet radio lacks the powerful Washington lobby that traditional radio has developed over the years.

Curious how powerful that lobby is? Consider this: traditional radio pays nothing in performance royalties.

It’ll be a shame if Pandora shuts its doors, especially given that Pandora is playing, and exposing people to, artists far outside the limited playlist of mainstream radio, artists many would never know were it not for Pandora.

Of course yet another example of the music industry shooting itself in the foot is hardly news. Between the lawsuits, DMCA takedown notices and crippling web radio fees, you’d be forgiven for thinking the music industry is designed solely to stop you from listening to music.

And sad though it may seem, it doesn’t look like the music industry will be satisfied until it has firmly knotted the noose and taken a last suicidal leap to its final resting place in the history of bad ideas.

Pandora isn’t giving up the fight just yet, Westergren says that NPR-style ads are in the works, but even that seems unlikely to save the company over the long run. Pandora is looking to Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) who is fighting to reach a last-minute deal to lower the broadcast fees.

But if Berman fails, Pandora doesn’t plan to stick around. “If it doesn’t feel like [the royalty fees] are headed towards a solution,” Westergren tells the Post, “we’re done.”

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
13
2008

Screaming-Fast Banshee Media Player Hits 1.0

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BansheelastfmThe Linux jukebox media software, Banshee, has reached stable 1.0 status. Banshee often takes a backseat to Amarok in the Linux music player world, but if you’re using GNOME the latest version of Banshee blows Rhythmbox (the default music player in many distros) out of the water.

The biggest news in Banshee 1.0 is the massive speed improvements. Banshee isn’t technically a native Linux app since it uses .NET and runs as a managed app via Mono (F-Spot, the default photo organizer in GNOME, also uses .NET). In the past the overhead has made Banshee a bit slower than other options — especially with large music libraries.

But 1.0 is much snappier and performed as well as Rhythmbox in Ubuntu 8.04 with some 25,000 MP3s. In addition to the speed gains, Banshee 1.0 packs in a number of new features. Among the improvements are:

  • album browser with cover art (one downside, there’s no GUI support for adding your own album covers, everything is automated)
  • Better last.fm integration — one of Banshee’s standout features, this is about the best last.fm integration you’re going to find.
  • Video searching and playback
  • Optional auto-rip on insert
  • Shuffle by song, artist or album
  • Mini mode
  • Podcast support

Banshee unabashedly borrows much of its feature set from Apple’s iTunes, but cuts out the Apple Store bloat, so if you’re looking for the features of iTunes without the DRM nastiness, Banshee makes an appealing choice.

Depending on which Linux distro you use, it might take some time for the Banshee 1.0 release to hit your repositories, but the Banshee download site has packages for most major Linux distros, including the latest versions of Ubuntu and Fedora.

[via Desktop Linux]

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