Posts filed under 'Music'
I read the following in the Examiner and on Digg today about the Music Industries trying to force Eircom to filter my internet connection and limit my bandwidth.
A) Why should any ISP monitor traffic. I don’t want anybody monitoring any of my activies be they on the internet or elsewhere. I value my privacy. Not that I have anything to hide mind I just don’t trust the competence of the people holding this data.
Also I download legal files using torrents etc. so why should I suffer downloading these files because people choose to use that technology to download copyrighted material?
B) Why is downloading movies “hogging bandwidth”? I paid for my DSL line. Why shouldn’t I use it. I think this is why this action will never win. If Eircom limit the bandwidth you can use for torrents etc. people won’t need bigger, and more expensive connections, and Eircom will lose money.
So to save this money Eircom will fight tooth and nail. Which is good news for the rest of us.
From The Examiner:
——————
As CD sales on the Irish market continue to plummet, showing losses of €44 million in the past six years, four of the largest record companies have taken Eircom to the High Court over illegal music downloads.
In the first case of its kind, the record companies are taking on the primary internet service provider rather than individual so-called pirates.
The music industry estimates that for every single legal download there are 20 illegal ones. Latest figures show that on a global scale 20 billion music files were illegally downloaded in 2006.
Because of illegal downloading and other market factors, the Irish music industry is experiencing “a dramatic and accelerating decline” in income, said Willie Kavanagh, managing director of EMI records (Ireland) and chairman of the Irish Recorded Music Association.
The Irish market for sound recordings suffered a decline in total sales from €146m in 2001 to €102m last year, a fall of 30%, he said.
A substantial portion of the decline in sales could be attributed to illegal downloading services and the increasing availability of broadband internet access here, said Mr Kavanagh.
He said legal actions brought against persons with the highest numbers of illegal files on their computers at specific times had proven very costly and time consuming. The companies believed selective legal action was not sufficient to safeguard their property rights.
The four leading record labels — EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner — have brought the High Court action aimed at compelling Eircom, as the largest broadband internet service provider in the state, to take specific measures to prevent its networks being used for the illegal free downloading of music.
The companies are challenging Eircom’s refusal to use filtering technology or other appropriate measures to voluntarily block or filter material from its network, which is being used to download music in violation of the companies’ copyright and licensing rights.
The proceedings arose after Eircom told the companies last October it was not in a position to run the filter software on its servers.
In his affidavit, Mr Kavanagh outlined measures by the record industry aimed at discouraging record piracy, including public awareness campaigns and legal actions against individuals engaged in piracy.
Mr Kavanagh said illegal downloaders come from all walks of life and the reality for many young people was that they have never known a position where they actually have to pay for sound recordings.
From Digg:
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It looks like the IFPI has shifted its focus from the individual filesharer to the ISPs. Last month, the IFPI won a court case in Denmark, and the ISP “Tele2″ was ordered to block all access to The Pirate Bay. Tele2 announced later that it will fight the decision.
Banning illegal filesharing from their network, voluntary or not, is in the best interest of ISPs according to the IFPI: “Illegal P2P file-sharing may have helped drive broadband subscriptions in the past, yet today these activities, particularly in respect of movies, are hogging bandwidth,” they state.
March 11th, 2008
Been listening to online radio a lot recently (Well in work anyway so I don’t use up all my own bandwidth). As ye know on the right of the main page I show which songs I have listened too most recently. Anyway in an obvious plug two of my friends are current broadcasting over the ‘net (and good ol’ FM as well).
For those of you of the heavy Metal persuasion a VERY good Irish based (Galway) metal show called bleedingeardrums can be listened to here.
And for those of you with a little soul can listen to Discos radio show (UK) can be listened to here.
Also I would recommend visiting Shoutcast for a good list of online radio stations.
January 25th, 2007
This is pretty cool. I have been running amaroK for a while now to listen to my Music and each time I listened to a song it submitted it to last.fm.
Well I finally decided to visit the site after reinstalling amaroK recently and wow! It has fantasitc stats on my listening trends and also suggests songs and artists to listen to
Below you can find a feed from the site showing what I am listening to right now (This feed will update automatically each time I play a song on my PC).
I also put a smaller version on the sidebar so you can listen as well. Just click on the links and it will bring ou to a page showing some of my listening stats and will also give you the option to listen to a 30 second sample of what I am listening to. Cool huh?
thesraid's Recently Played Tracks
Last 10 tracks submitted to Last.fm
Simple Plan – I'd Do Anything
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:34:51 +0000
http://www.last.fm/music/Simple+Plan
Dropkick Murphys – Johnny, I hardly knew ya
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:30:57 +0000
http://www.last.fm/music/Dropkick+Murphys
Bloodhound Gang – Fire Water Burn (A Coo Dic Ver Din)
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:26:14 +0000
http://www.last.fm/music/Bloodhound+Gang
Seether – Fake It
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:23:02 +0000
http://www.last.fm/music/Seether
Cypress Hill – Insane in the Brain
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:17:35 +0000
http://www.last.fm/music/Cypress+Hill
Coal Chamber – Blisters
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:14:36 +0000
http://www.last.fm/music/Coal+Chamber
Bloodhound Gang – foxtrot uniform charlie kilo (the jason nevis mix)
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:11:11 +0000
http://www.last.fm/music/Bloodhound+Gang
Faith No More & Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. – Another Body Murdered
Sat, 11 Oct 2008 04:07:46 +0000
http://www.last.fm/music/Faith%2BNo%2BMore%2B%2526%2BBoo-Yaa%2BT.R.I.B.E.
Fatboy Slim – Star 69
Sat, 11 Oct 2008 04:01:55 +0000
http://www.last.fm/music/Fatboy+Slim
Placebo – Every You Every Me
Sat, 11 Oct 2008 03:58:20 +0000
http://www.last.fm/music/Placebo
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November 10th, 2006
I was filling out the online survey recently launched by Novell looking at the applications people would most like to see on Linux. 
One of the applications that people would most like to see on Linux is iTunes and if we could get it on Linux that’d be great. But in the meantime I’ve been using amaroK to move music to my iPod. For those who may not be aware of it AmaroK is one of the best, if not the best, music management applications around. However as it is installed as standard on most modern SuSE systems I am sure many of you have already had some exposure to it. This article is an outline of the what I think are the best features in amaroK and why it’s a joy to use. Please bare in mind however I am not writing about every feature in amaroK (that’s what the manual is for) but just the features that have drawn me to it.
The Player Window
The first thing that I noticed about amaroK was its interface. As it is developed by KDE the look and feel fit in very well with my current KDE theme. The Application window itself is laid out in a very easy to navigate manner, with the tracklist in the right larger pane and your navigation options in the left pane. Particularly useful is the left panes ability to slide in and out so maximising the about of information that can be displayed. Everything is laid out in a very clean, easy to use and intuitive manner
ID3 tags
In my opinion the most useful feature of amaroK is its ability to fill in the ID3 tags automatically. The ID3 tag of a track is basically a way of
storing the name of the song, the name of the artist, the album name and other information about the track in the file so it can be read by any music player. Other music players I had used didn’t have this function (at least not for free) and there is nothing more annoying then trying to organise a music collection where every song you have is called “track1″ or “unknown title”.
To update the ID3 tags on a song simply right click on a track, select “Edit Track Information” and choose “Fill in Tags Using MusicBrainz”. To ensure you get the correct data multiple options may be presented to you, just select the one that matches and away you go. Not only will this update the tracks information in the player window but it will also write the data to the file. Once these tags have been filled in properly organising your music collection is a breeze. The tags are also very useful when you transfer the file to another machine or an MP3 player. As well as that there is a search bar built into the playlist window that allows you to quickly search for a particular song using the information provided by the ID3 tags.
Album Art
Another nice feature is amaroKs ability to download album covers from Amazon. Simply select the “Context” tab from the left pane and click on the cover with a question mark. You can cycle through all the available results from Amazon and for some reason should one of them not be correct you can refine your search using the “New Search” button.
This is a nice feature when used with the “On Screen Display” that flashes the name of the song briefly at the top of your screen along with the album cover. However this can be very time consuming if you have a large collection. So amaroK allows you to download covers for all your songs at once! Simply open the “Cover Manager” from the “Tools” menu and click the “Fetch Missing Covers” button. Easy! Should an incorrect album cover be assigned to an album you can unset the cover and search for it again individually. If the cover cannot be found you can set the cover manually by browsing to an image of the album or simply dropping the image in the albums folder. Again a search bar, similar to the one in the playlist window, is available to make finding the album you are looking for that much easier. Also some built in searches are included to find all albums without a cover etc.
Transfer to/from MP3 Player
So now from a collection of “unknowntrack.mp3″ playlists you now have mp3s with full ID3 tags and even album covers. This is very useful for organising your music collection on your PC but even more so when using a portable MP3 player, such as an iPod, as an MP3 player uses these tags to organise your collection.
To copy songs from your Music collection to/from your iPod simply connect your iPod to your machine and select “Media Device” in amaroK. Click on the “Connect” button and a list of the songs already on your MP3 Player will appear. Now all you have to do is drag and drop songs and select “Transfer”. And that’s it! The songs you selected are now on your iPod. Who needs iTunes?! Not me!
Context Menu
But that’s not all amaroK has a lot of other features that make it a joy to use. On the left side of the amaroK window (which doesn’t have to be open all the time by the way as amaroK can be run from the system tray and operated using the windows key on your keyboard) you have a context pane. Within this pane you have four useful tabs which I will outline very briefly.
Home
This contains quite simply
Your 10 most recently played tracks
Your 10 most frequently played tracks
Your 10 newest tracks
Current
Current is the most useful of all these tabs. It shows you the name of the current track along with the artist and album name. Underneath this it shows the album cover and when the track was first/last played. Under that it shows your favourite (most played) tracks for this artist and under that what albums you have for that artist. Fantastic for navigating your way around your collection!
Also it can suggest similar songs to the one you are playing using the LastFM service, which is very useful for discovering new bands you may not have been aware of. Personally I have discovered a host of new bands I was not previously aware of.
Lyrics
Exactly what is says on the tin. Allows you to search for lyrics using the Lyrc database. Also if it doesn’t find the lyrics for the song you have the option to add the lyrics to the database yourself. Thus helping your fellow amaroK users.
Artist
The artist tab allows you to view info on the currently playing artist/album from the Wikipedia database. This is achieved by embedding Konquerer in the left pane. And since you have a fully featured webbrowser you can follow links, view images and basically get the full benefit of the data stored in Wikipedia.
More Panes
Apart from the Context Pane there are other panes that can be accessed in the left pane. 
Collection
This pane stores all the music in your collection. Your collection are the folders where your music files are stored. You can change which folders make up your collection from the configure amaroK menu. You can sort your collection by Artist, Album, Genre, Year etc. Also this section has the, now familiar, search bar.
Playlist
There is a playlist pane where your different playlist types are stored. You have “Dynamic Playlists” which contain “Random Songs” and “Suggested Songs” playlists which uses your listening habits to dynamically create a playlist of songs. Other playlists contain albums and artists of the same type. Also you can listen to Radio Streams and Podcasts. AmaroK has some Radio Streams preconfigured so you can try them out. A great site for finding more Radio Streams is Shoutcast. AmaroK also has smart playlists which are collections of 50 most played tracks, Newest Tracks etc. All very useful for organising your collection.
Media Device
This pane, as mentioned earlier, allows you to copy music files between MP3 players. Currently, as far as I am aware, only iPods are supported.
Files
And finally the files pane which allows you to navigate through your file system for playable files. This has a very useful search panel built it which allows you to search through the current folder for music files.
Shortcuts
And finally one of the most convenient aspects of amaroK is it’s ability to operate while being minimised to the system tray. When the main window is minimised you can skip tracks and stop/start the player by using the windows button as a hot key. For example pressing the windows button and the “B” key skips forward. When a track begins an On Screen Display shows the current track information (Track, Album, Artist, Album Cover). If you miss the data displayed by the OSD, as it is only displayed for a moment, you can hover over the amaroK icon in the system tray which will show you the same information.
Overall amaroK can’t be beaten in my opinion. It is so straightforward to use and packed which so many useful extras I can’t but recommend it to everybody. It is very well integrated with KDE and maintains the look and feel of my theme. And when I want I can make it disappear to the system tray and control it using shortcut keys. Also nearly everything is customisable. Shortcurt keys can be changed, the engine that plays the tracks can be changed and much more. Brilliant!
May 23rd, 2006
I read the following in the Examiner and on Digg today about the Music Industries trying to force Eircom to filter my internet connection and limit my bandwidth.
