Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Online Music Aggregation of Deep-Linking MP3s One of the main problems with free audio files on the Internet today is "finding them".  Once you do find some you like, what follows is what I call the "finding more like this" problem.  SAM and the BlogAudSphere are all about solving this problem.  In order to grow the user-created  "station idea" or "channel idea" we need to keep creating open interoperable tools, formats and services on the Internet to promote the creation of free legal linkable audio files that are not controlled by any one company or industry.  From the weblog of beepSNORT: In the process of working out some ideas at another site (don't ask) I realized that one of the big missing pieces left from the net online independent music scene that MP3.COM filled (actually created) is the concept of the user-created Station The Station was an M3U file, a list of links which could be viewed as a web page, with associated graphics or listened to as a continuous stream or individual streams or downloaded. The beauty of the Station idea was that it encouraged thousands of folks to be creative in mixing together, curating and promoting music through this user-defined act of aggregation. Many fantastic stations come to mind from the MP3.COM era, from Steve Layton's Music Now Worldwide to hundreds of others. They let the user discover new artists quickly by skipping through hundreds of similar artists. How could we re-create the station idea today? Easily, a little PhP and some MySQL could do it. We need a way to allow users to collect deeply-linked MP3 URL's, and then extract the song, artist, information from the MP3's or have them be user-enterred in some way. Would be great to have a uniform M3U station system or API someday... 5:22:54 AM  comment []    trackback []     Fading Ways music It's great to see the digital world promote services that assist in the discovery of new music and artists.  Napster really did nothing to promote discovery of new music.  At least that's not what the majority used it for.  Napster was all about finding and downloading music you already new about and loved.  Nothing in the online digital world has yet matched the artist discovery impact on the majority of listeners or has had the same disrupted effect caused in the 60s to the Pop music norm as the introduction of cheap analog transitor AM radios or in the early 80s of MTV. From the weblog of Lucas Gonze -> Fading Ways emailed me a press release to say that all their music will be released under CopyLeft / Creative Commons licenses. I feel leery about getting (and forwarding) press releases, but this is a great move anyway. What the Gnu manifesto did for software was to create an ecosystem of free materials. Gnu didn't just write a bunch of tools, they created a self-supporting network of creators and users. Fading Ways, Magnatune and Webjay are part of a similar ecosystem. The strategy is not to forcibly liberate non-free music, as Napster did, it is to build up consensually free music. 5:18:48 AM  comment []    trackback []     Dave Winer talks at Microsoft Research Tim Jarrett blogged Dave Winer's talk yesterday at Microsoft Research. Below is a couple of questions and answers I found interesting as they relate to audioblogging. Q: Where do you see blogging going as more stuff gets digital? A: Well, I'm a text guy. And I use PhotoShop, I use about three commands. Q: What about voice? A: A year ago I would have said sure. But now I've used it and I'm not sure. I work at the Berkman Center with Chris Lydon--having dinner with him and his voice is like having dinner with NPR--and he did a series of interviews with pioneers of blogging. Serious, interesting stuff. But I wouldn't call that a blog. Q: It's oral history. A: Yeah, and I'm not saying that because it's not a blog it's not good. When I tried to quantify what I meant by a blog, I said "it has an editorial voice." Q: But what about voice interfaces, would that lower the barrier to entry? A: I think they're pretty widespread already... Q: What about blogging in other formats--mobile devices, etc.? A: That's just like the question about audio and voice. I don't think I could display a blog on this device and I know I couldn't write one on it. Maybe it could be done but I'm not an expert. IMHO, Dave should give Audlink a listen (on a regular basis) and imagine where this could go.  Today Audlink is where all the "cool kids" , audiobloggers hang out (at least it contains a hangout that we can all link to, find, see and click to listen).  Where will the "cool kids" be tomorrow?  My bets are with the service(s) that embrace the best user creation tools with the best of breed discovery services of the new user created free medias online world. 4:53:10 AM  comment []    trackback []

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