Posts tagged InternetRadio at Download Squad

Posts with tag InternetRadio

Last.fm hits Windows Mobile

Posted Jan 10th 2008 7:00PM by Danny Mendez
Filed under: Fun, Internet, Windows Mobile, Web services, Freeware, Social Software, Mobile Minute, web 2.0

Fancy Last.fm? Fancy Windows Mobile? Then you'd probably fancy the Last.fm Windows Mobile app currently in development, which happens to be called Last.fm Mobile. The Pocket PC version includes scrobbling and experimental radio functionality, but the Smartphone version can only scrobble from Windows Media Player.

The app has a healthy backing of supporters at the Last.fm forum, which is where you can learn where to download and how to install Last.fm Mobile. You'll need Windows Mobile 5 or 6 and the .NET Compact Framework 2.0, which should be included with Windows Mobile 6.

Last.fm offers tools for discovering new music, social networking, and, of course, listening to music. The addition of WM functionality only makes it that much more useful.

[via MR MOBILE]

Pandora forced to pull the final plug on UK service

Posted Jan 7th 2008 7:00PM by Christina Warren
Filed under: Audio, Internet

Attention UK Pandora users: as of January 15, 2008, Pandora will stop streaming its Internet radio content. This comes more than six months after Pandora was forced to shut-down service to most non-US users and is the latest in the continually messy battle over licensing Internet radio.

A reader just forwarded us an e-mail from Pandora, explaining the situation. Here are the pertinent bits:

...As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee...

The message goes on to describe some of the problems Pandora has had trying to work out licensing agreements with UK licensing agencies that were financial suicide. Suffice to say, nothing could be worked out:

...Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.

Just when we think the music industry might finally be taking steps - small as they may be - to stop fighting against technology, and instead work with technology, something like this happens, and we are reminded once again that this is an industry doing anything and everything in its power not to evolve. Although the RIAA has been the most vocal in its lobbying efforts against the removal of DRM and against fair Internet radio rates, this incident proves that it is not just American record executives; it is the industry as a whole.

Never mind that forcing unfair licensing terms on Internet radio stations and riddling files with DRM hasn't worked (US album sales, even with digital sales tallied, declined by nearly 10 percent in 2007), let's just continue to refuse to face reality while the market and business model quickly disappear and change irrevocably.

Thanks Gordon

Continue reading Pandora forced to pull the final plug on UK service

Music to our ears: SoundExchange and webcasters reach compromise

Posted Aug 24th 2007 3:30PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, Internet

Net radio isn't dead yet. SoundExchange, the organization responsible for collecting royalties from online broadcasters has reached an agreement with the Digital Media Association that will allow the music to keep playing, we think.

A quick history less:

Earlier this year, the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board voted to raise rates for internet broadcasters. In some cases, the new rates could have cost billions of dollars, driving pretty much every online radio station out of business. After months of contentious debate, SoundExchange agreed last month not to enforce the new rates until some sort of compromise could be reached.

Today's compromise involves a $500 cap per channel, with a $50,000 overall cap per service.

Webcasters will have to provide SoundExchange with a detailed annual list of songs performed and the Digital Media Association will work with SoundExchange to "evaluate the issue of streamripping." Presumably that means the two organizations will try to find ways to prevent users from making permanent copies of streaming audio files.

The new fees could still be a bit steep for small time webcasters. But today's announcement should keep larger companies like Pandora, Yahoo! Launch, and Last.fm piping out plenty cups of steaming hot internet music.

Schedule online radio recordings with RaimaRadio

Posted Aug 14th 2007 5:00PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, Internet, Freeware

Remember radio? You know, that little box with the knobs and dials on it that lets you listen to music or talk shows? You might still have one in your car. But odds are you listen to radio over the internet when you're at the office. On the go, you might download some radio programs as podcasts.

But what if there's no podcast for your favorite show? That's where RaimaRadio comes in. There are a number of applications that let you save internet radio streams as MP3 files. But RaimaRadio is free. And it includes a handy scheduling utility which is perfect for recording the morning newscast to take with you on the go.

The application really shines when it comes to music streams. It reads the metadata of program streams and attempts to download and display appropriate cover art for the song that's being played. Oh yeah, and since everything's digital, you can record multiple radio streams simultaneously. Try that with your old AM/FM radio's tape cassette deck.

[via gHacks]

Court rejects webcasters request for rate hike delay

Posted Jul 12th 2007 3:00PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, Internet

Lawmakers have gotten involved, webcasters held a day of silence protest, and SoundExchange has agreed to reduce its fees (although that offer was rejected). But the big day is still just around the corner. On Sunday, the U.S. will levy new royalty rates on internet broadcasters. In some cases, those rates could be high enough to seriously threaten the existence of smaller stations and web sites.

A coalition of webcasters had sought another delay in the implementation of the new rates until some sort of a solution could be found. But a federal appeals court ruled that the group had not met the standards necessary to grant a stay.

In other words, there's a very good chance that sites like Pandora, Last.fm, Yahoo! LAUNCHcast and others could go off the air next week until some sort of an agreement is reached with the music industry.

The Save Net Radio coalition is urging supporters to call members of Congress in support of the Internet Radio Equality Act. But we're rather curious to see if the standoff could lead to a backlash against the record labels. After all, much like traditional radio, internet broadcasts serve to promote new music and songs. If fewer people are exposed to new artists, will record sales take a hit?

June 26th: a day without internet radio

Posted Jun 21st 2007 2:30PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, Internet

Next month internet radio stations will have to begin paying new royalty rates that will be high enough in some cases to put the webcasters out of business. Of course, the implementation date has been pushed back a few times, and Congress is considering legislation that could help out the internet radio stations.

But advocates for independent radio are making their voices heard -- by shutting off their mics. On June 26th, a number of online radio stations, including Live365, AccuRadio, KCRW.com, and Radio Paradise are participating in a day of silence.

There's always a risk associated in this sort of silent protest. On the one hand, you're showing what the world will be like if internet radio is shut down (at least in the US). On the other, what if an internet station goes silent and no one's around to not hear it? Does it not make a sound?

Slacker - new desktop app for your tunes

Posted May 31st 2007 4:00PM by Dolores Parker
Filed under: Audio, Internet

Slacker the internet radio for people who are, uh slackers, or too weary to create playlists for their tunes, has just released a desktop app in beta. You can now manage your entire music library and create playlists. (Gasp!) This goes without saying, but only if you want to. You can still be the slacker you were before you downloaded the desktop app.

Some neat features of the desktop app are a mini-player, large album art and groovy visualizations, and of course the playlist thing ability (no pressure though).

Here are the system requirements:

Windows XP + SP2 or Vista
Flash player 8.0 or higher
Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher
Broadband Internet connection

Sorry Mac users - Mac is not supported at this time (and we're not happy about it).

When the Slacker portable player becomes available sometime in June, you can use the desktop app to sync your custom Slacker stations and music collection to it.

Here's the link for the Slacker's desktop download.

[via Digg]

Lala to launch free music on demand service

Posted May 29th 2007 4:00PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, Web services

Music website Lala plans to launch a new music on demand service soon. While online radio sites like Pandora or Last.fm let provide a stream of audio tailored to your tastes, Lala's service will let you click on an individual song and listen to it. Currently that's only something you can do with subscription services like Rhapsody.

There's just one problem. It costs money to stream audio on demand. A lot more than internet radio stations have to pay to stream music, even if new royalty rates take effect this summer.

In order to offset the costs, Lala hopes to sell CDs through its service. The theory is that visitors to the site will be music fans who are willing to pay for the music they like. But the average user will have to buy one CD per month in order for Lala to break even, that just doesn't seem too likely.

[via TechCrunch]

Last.fm adds music video service

Posted May 9th 2007 4:00PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services

What do you do if you've got an internet radio station, but the future of online radio is murky? Add video, of course. Because no content owners have ever demanded much of internet companies that offer video.

Last.fm plans to add video to its site this week, allowing users to create custom music video channels much the way they can currently create custom music stations. The music will be encoded at 128kbps, which is twice the bitrate of music videos on YouTube.

The company is partnering with a group of major and independent record labels, so there shouldn't be any lawsuits to worry about. But with the copyright royalty board seeking significantly increased fees from internet radio stations, how long will it be before sites like Last.fm also have to pay exorbitant royalty rates to deliver music videos online?

Slacker great for lazy music lovers

Posted May 3rd 2007 4:30PM by Peter White
Filed under: Audio, Internet, Utilities

There are untold fortunes to me made in this world, as long as you live by one cardinal rule: never underestimate the laziness of consumers. This is the guiding logic behind a new "intuitive" mp3 player launched by the Slacker Company. Slacker and their new gadget called... The Slacker (creative, no?) are set to be available in June and cost around $150 for a 2 Gig model, and $400 for 12 Gigs. The real innovation is that the player chooses music automatically, and allows you to decide if you like it or not. If you say you don't, it'll never play the song again. Many internet radio users will be familiar with this format. Mainly because it's taken directly from internet radio. Slacker's internet radio has been operating since March, and has 100 stations which will is where the songs for the mp3 player will be downloaded from.

In a wonderful testament to just how lazy we've become as a society, one of the founders of Slacker was quoted as saying "Most MP3 players are too much work for the average user." Valid point. Many of us lay tired and sore in our beds at night after a long day of handling our Mp3 players. Medical experts have recently reported a high rate of chronic fatigue among young Americans and feel that portable music players are to blame, even going so far as to dub the trend "Ipod Drain". Poor attempts at humor aside, the Slacker does seem like a useful tool. A portable radio with just enough control over the playlist that you can be sure to get something you like, while trimming out that which you don't. And more importantly, now that we don't have to spend so much time and effort slaving away on our old fashioned MP3 players, we as a society can finally get around to getting some work done.

Net Radio gets two more months to live

Posted May 3rd 2007 12:30PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, Internet

The Copyright Royalty Board has delayed implementation of the new royalty rates on internet broadcasters that had been set to take effect May 15th. The new rates will now be effective on July 15th, giving netcasters a few more months to try to reach a deal to prevent the coming apocalypse.

Basically, internet radio producers say the new rates would be so high that most online radio services would be put out of business.

Meanwhile, a bill has been introduced in Congress that could reverse the Copyright Royalty Board decision and establish a new system for setting royalty rates.

The SaveNetRadio coalition says it will use the new two-month reprieve to lobby Congress in support of the bill.

Pandora closes door for most non US customers

Posted May 3rd 2007 12:00PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, Internet

Internet radio service Pandora is no longer available to most customers outside of the United States and Britain. The network has been unable to reach licensing agreements with most copyright holders in most other countries.

The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act requires copyright holders to license their content to internet broadcasters, but most countries have no such law.

Founder Tim Westergren says the company has been receiving pressure from record labels and could not hold out any longer. Ironically, the move comes the same day that Pandora and other internet music broadcasters received a two month reprieve from increased royalty fees in the U.S.

Bill introduced to save internet radio

Posted Apr 27th 2007 1:00PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, Internet, News

Congressman Jay Inslee and eight cosponsors have introduced the Internet Radio Equality Act, designed to combat the recent rate hike implemented by the Copyright Royalty Board.

If no action is taken, royalty rates on internet music broadcasts will jump significantly on May 15th, potentially putting many small netcasters out of business.

Among other things, the new bill would:

Nullify the Royalty Board decision.
Change the arbitration process for internet radio rate setting.
Establish that the minimum annual royalty a netcaster has to pay can be no higher than $500.
Set a transitional royalty rate that is the same as the rate paid by satellite broadcasters.

The bill gives the save net radio crowd a chance to rally behind a specific action. Up until now, they'd been asking folks to write their local members of Congress to demand action. Now they're asking for people to call legislators and ask them to support the bill.

Download Squad Interview: Tim Westergren of Pandora

Posted Mar 23rd 2007 8:15PM by Victor Agreda, Jr.
Filed under: Audio, Business, Internet, News, Web services, Commercial, Freeware

Pandora is a music discovery service we've covered before. It goes beyond "regular" internet radios, who largely base their taxonomy and discovery services on rather flat databases and sterile genre/artist/album nomenclature. At best, you might get web-based social suggestions, like what built MySpace and makes Virb sing. Pandora utilizes the research and ongoing classifications of the Music Genome Project to suggest songs similar to the ones you already enjoy.

The Music Genome project is a story in itself, but Pandora uses real, live musicians to dissect songs and analyze their pieces and parts, organizing that data in such a way that, frankly, makes it a little scary to use Pandora regularly. Once you "seed" a radio station with an artist (something you can try on their homepage for free without even registering), subsequent songs are based on the style of that original artist (and the random song chosen by Pandora from said artist). You can give a simple thumbs up or down to indicate your song preferences as each new song plays.

A provision in the DMCA allows Pandora to play these songs, almost every released song out there. They really make an effort to grab the long tail and most of their songs, once you start just listening, are not well-known. You can't rewind or even go back, due to the restrictions of the DMCA, but you can order the songs from Amazon or iTunes as you listen. All together, Pandora is a remarkable service for a "simple" internet radio service.

But a ruling from an obscure, 3-person panel from the Library of Congress threatens the existence of Pandora, and every other internet radio service out there. The plan from the Copyright Royalty Board is to increase the fees to internet radio operators so high that they will effectively be out of business. Paying $.0008 a song might not sound much, but if you consider the millions of songs per day served up by Pandora alone, it becomes a very large bill indeed.

There is an appeals process, and those threatened are taking action. However, it might require legislative action. Ultimately it is puzzling why the RIAA (proponents of the onerous charges) would threaten a nascent industry in such a way. What's to gain? Web radio has no doubt spurred online music purchases, much as the radio generated (and continues to generate) wads of dough for the music biz.

We sat down with Tim Westergren, the man behind the Genome Project, and the founder of Pandora. In our interview, Tim explains the basic situation, and where some logic might prevail (we hope).

Copyright Royalty Board raises rates: internet radio stations cry foul

Posted Mar 5th 2007 2:00PM by Brad Linder
Filed under: Audio, News

The Copyright Royalty Board wants to more than double the amount of money internet radio stations pay to license the music they stream online over the next four years. For many webcasters, the new fees could be enough to put them out of business.

Bill and Rebecca Goldsmith, who run Radio Paradise, have started a new blog, with a detailed explanation of the impact the new rates would have on small webcasters. While both internet and traditional radio stations pay royalties to artists and songwriters, only online webcasters have to pay royalties to copyright holders. That's because Congress bought the argument that streaming audio is no different from MP3 downloads, in that both make high quality digital audio available to users who can then save copies on their computer.

Of course, you could also record broadcast radio onto a cassette or CD if you have the equipment. And while it's not that difficult to find software allowing you to save internet broadcasts, the product you wind up with typically isn't nearly as good as what you'd get from iTunes or BitTorrent. The songs run into one another; may or may not include metadata; you don't get full albums.

At the very least, internet and terrestrial broadcast radio stations should be subjected to the same fees. But the truth is that while companies like Clear Channel could easily afford the new fees, small stations like Radio Paradise cannot. And I think the world needs small non-commercial stations to broadcast music that might be hard to come by otherwise. Something copyright holders have never seemed to understand is that internet radio serves the same promotional purpose as broadcast radio. If you hear a song you like, perhaps you'll go out and buy it.

#	Blogger	Posts	Cmts
1	Brad Linder	119	14
2	Joey Celis	47	0
3	Jay Hathaway	46	16
4	Drew Olanoff	30	25
5	Christina Warren	15	4
6	Lee Mathews	14	19
7	Kristin Shoemaker	14	12
8	Nancy Messieh	6	0
9	Danny Mendez	5	3
10	Emily Price	5	0
11	Todd Ritter	4	0
12	Alan Silcott	4	7
13	Adam Maras	4	1
14	Ian Dumych	3	1
15	Jason Clarke	3	0
16	Nik Fletcher	2	0
17	Gordon Finlayson	2	0
18	Dolores Parker	2	6
19	Patrick Beeson	2	5
20	Sue Polinsky	1	0

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Last.fm hits Windows Mobile

Pandora forced to pull the final plug on UK service

Music to our ears: SoundExchange and webcasters reach compromise

Schedule online radio recordings with RaimaRadio

Court rejects webcasters request for rate hike delay

June 26th: a day without internet radio

Slacker - new desktop app for your tunes

Lala to launch free music on demand service

Last.fm adds music video service

Slacker great for lazy music lovers

Net Radio gets two more months to live

Pandora closes door for most non US customers

Bill introduced to save internet radio

Download Squad Interview: Tim Westergren of Pandora

Copyright Royalty Board raises rates: internet radio stations cry foul

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