More alternative business models for digital music

For those that follow the events in the digital music arena, it's an interesting time. The labels are desperately trying to protect the falling profits from the traditional model, but while they were busy suing their customers, the customers are deciding it is not a good idea to pay the money for someone who would sue you afterwards.

In one of the previous posts I mentioned some of the places that distribute the CC-licensed music.

Some interesting thing that I've found recently.
A blogpost from Steve O'Hear shows five alternative business models for distributing the digital music.

On the CC front, there is Jamendo, which distributes the CC-licensed music for free. Check it out - there're quite a few nice tunes.

And then, there's the WE7 - which allows to download the DRM music for free. What's the catch ? 10 seconds of ad in front of it. I think this is a fair deal. There's already a lot of ads, one-two more - does not matter. Especially since they are still quite short :) more than 10 seconds would be annoying.

HOWTO: live concert performance in SL

Thanks to Pocket Pfeffer for the idea of this blogpost.

So, you do music IRL, and would like to give it a shot in SL ?

Here's some background on how the whole thing works, and a few links to the tools that you might find useful.

First, how it works. Not any different from any internet radio - except that the URL to get the music from is not typed into the browser, but is provided by the parcel media URL in the parcel settings.

Now, how does the internet radio work ? Very simple. The source of the audio uses a special client to upload the stream in real time to the streaming server ("the stream" in SL terminology). The latter then is referenced in the media URL, and takes care of resending the stream to all the clients that request it (in the SL case - to all the users that are hitting "play" on the music control while being on the parcel.

Usually (that is, in my experience), the venue owners have the stream anyway, so you only have to supply the talent and have the client to help them distribute it :)

So, I assume the talent you already got... now we have to solve one small remaining issue - to get the client to upload your performance to the stream server.

If you are a happy user of a Mac, then I'd recommend nicecast. It does cost $40, but in my experience is well worth it - well done, with plugins, etc, allows to do some interesting effect (when using Mac, I was generally adding a *little* reverb - but be careful with effects, not to sound like you are singing in a swimming pool :)

If you use windows - there my experience is a bit smaller. Since I am a lazy person, and since I play mainly acoustic - I simply went ahead and downloaded Oddcast. Take the "standalone" version. It's totally free, but you get just a pipe from your sound source to the stream, nothing more. I tackled it simply by taking two Shure PG58 mics, and connecting them to the two sound inputs of my USB E-MU 0404 sound card. The result was reasonable, even though initially I did get some 50hz noise - a punishment for not using the supplied mic cable. After fixing that, the acoustic of the room did seem to make it sound acceptable.

If you use linux - well, then you will use again oddcast, connect it to JACK, and if you are doing the music on linux, I do not need to tell you about JACK and the wealth of the various tools that come with it.

There's certainly other tools which can do better - especially I feel Windows is not so well covered - feel free to put in the comments which of them you personally use.

Once you got your client up and running, you will need some data about the stream - typically just address/port and the password. Pay attention to the server type - you will need the correct one (shoutcast or oddcast) in order for everything to work.



The next step - is to get the place to perform. There are certain events where the club owners get to catch the new performers for their venues. Typically they would be called something like "Open mic" in the events - take a look and then talk to their organizers.

How the cash part works - well, as far as I know, quite a few musicians both take some fee for their appearance, and also take the tips from the listeners. I personally take only tips - and the venue owners are welcome to be present and tip too. I feel the more freedom I give - the better.

This, I think, pretty much sums up all the small rocket science needed to start your musician career in SL.

Good luck!

Too much noise out of nothing...or: "protect our streams!"

I've seen this in the IM spam in live musicians group, and Vint also pointed me to this entry, where the author in total panic suggests that the world is collapsing.

Uh-oh. The visitor can view the parcel media URL without a problem. Now, let me tell you - it is a bad idea anyway to base your security on the fact that your stream URL is "not visible".

First, we go over the reasons why the world is indeed not collapsing - we'll consider three of the possibilities to get the URL of the sound stream (one of them is absolutely impossible to circumvent without the drastic change of the client architecture). Then, I will present a couple of solutions to the panicking folks for their consideration.

So....

How to find out the URL for the parcel sound stream

In these examples, I've used the stream URL of Digitally Imported - the radio that is frequently heard in SL. So here goes the credit to them - take a look, and maybe get the membership with them for listening outside the SL.

Terminal output in the linux client

Start secondlife. Start music. Look at the terminal. Done.

This scenario can be "fixed" by having LLs remove the printing of the URL. But please, do not submit a jira on this, please. It is ridiculous. Why ? keep reading.

Debug console in any client (linux, windows, mac)

Basically the same thing as above, but requires turning on the debug console. Here we go.



Again, this is "fixable" by removing the printing of the URL by LLs. However, consider that these are useful for debugging. Those of you who would rush to file a jira right now, will be the first to shout be worried when the streams do not work at all, no ? So, keep reading.

Capturing the requests for the stream itself

This one is a bit more involved and multistep.

1. Go to wireshark website and download the Wireshark - a tool for capturing and analysing the network traffic.


2. Install wireshark on your secondlife PC, start secondlife, start the stream


3. (optional) Launch command prompt ("cmd" on windows), and issue command "netstat" - one of the connections will tell you the streaming server address. Now we need to know the URL


4. Stop the stream, launch wireshark for capturing TCP traffic ("tcp" in the filter)


5. Start the stream, once you hear the music stop the stream and stop capturing via wireshark


6. Find the addresses that do not belong to LLs machines - or the address you found previously from "netstat" if you did that step.Select one packet out of that conversation, right-click, and select "Follow TCP Stream". You will see the output similar to the one below, where first goes the request to the server, and then the reply. The interesting parts are: "GET /stream/1024 HTTP/1.1 ; Host: 64.236.98.50".
   

This gives us the stream URL of http://64.236.98.50/stream/1024.





This "problem" is not fixable. In principle. Unless LLs will start using skype or some other encrypted way to transfer the sound. Which, my friends, will drastically limit your ability to select the streams, and I would not wonder if this would become a "paid service" then, with LLs being the streamhosters themselves. So - Do not rush to submit jira.

This is why I think that while MISC-378 is a bug, it is at most a minor bug, in my opinion.

Now, we go to the second part of the post...

The solutions for the panicking masses

To find the solution it is always best to first define the problem. And the problem is not others being able to view the URL. The problem, as I see it from the words of those who are worried, is that they would like limit the listener audience only to those who are present on the parcel, as much as possible.

The first "weak" solution was presented in the bug report - simply check the user-agent of the client that requests the stream. While it is also by far not fool-proof, it would limit the impact.

The second solution is something I've just come up with. You would want to turn on the stream *only* when there is someone on your parcel. Assuming that your streamhoster does allow some kind of control over scripts via HTTP(S), this is quite trivial to script with the LSL - ask your nearest friendly scripter on how to do it.

All in all, I think that for legitimate music this should not be a problem at all - but I can imagine those streaming the kazaa-ed mp3's to be worried.

Oh, by the way, and before anyone labels me a code junkie who does not get anything in the fine arts, I do write the music myself and from time to time perform in SL, so... :-)

An edge between FL and SL: The future of the internet radio...

Yesterday there was a "silence day" for the internet radio.

The folks dealing with the music apparently do not like the fact that the world is *changing*. They think that the cash cow does not bring enough milk, and the internet radios have a great potential for being milked more.

And while the clever folks note that the world is flattening, the others seemingly fail to realise that.

If you happen to read this from the US - take a look, for example, at DI's coverage of this gem of human creativity of a happening, buzz your nearest authorized bureaucracy representative and bug about that.

In parallel, I think we should just shift the focus towards the CC-licensed music, such that this problem disappears. Although, indeed, there will always be people who do not honor the CC licensing, but heck, CC would at least allow to limit their profits in the long term.

Quick googling shows that there are already some aggregation points for the CC-licensed music (apologies for "trance bias" - but it's my plat du jour lately)

• Gratisvibes
  
• OPSound
  
• Just go to the archive
  

In short - whining to senators is one thing, but I think a much better move would be just to lure the musicians away from those who want the royalties to those who promote freedom.

"No music - no royalties". And the problem solved for good.

upd: Transfer One + Magicdust EP does sound pretty neat (to my taste, that is). Taste it.

live music: Bonfire, tres bon!

I've been to a nice music event today - Bonfire 2007 festival, made on the sim of the Colorado Technical university (Colorado Tech). It's still going on - 24h of live music!!!

Awesome atmosphere, and diverse music. The feeling was very much like that of a real event - very professionally built stage, and smooth mixing with some relevant blabla inbetween the artist shows :-)
Very nicely done, folks! (The only caveat was that I did feel thirsty the entire time, but maybe it is just my ill reflexes :-)

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And, speaking about the live music... a shameless plug :-) I'm gonna be playing tomorrow @10am PDT (which is 7pm CET, so euro-friendly) @Cherry - so feel free to drop by...

Dalien Fashionista and other random bursts of creativity

First, I've got a 1st Life picture in the profile now. I can really say that with my photoshop (well, actually, GIMP) skills, I can be proud of it.

Second - a new song. Took me a while to record anything sounding slightly less than catastrophic since the range of it is a bit too much than I normally have. So feel free to listen, but pay attention to the importance of the things:

1. Mood
   
2. Music
   
3. Words/Grammar
   

So if you have a better lyrics to place there... I will be happy to get rid of the default placeholder.

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And finally, the third but the most interesting one - is the LoopRez script in action:

First, the default script is very easy - it takes a prim (in the left-top), and makes an ellipse out of its copies.



Then I started to tweak the script - as a first step, I wanted the odd and even pieces to have the different angle. This caused the creation of something which looks like... hmm... I do not know how it looks like, you say it!




I am experimenting to get rid of the "messed up top sides" effect, but do not have a universal solution now - will post it when it is ready.

p.s. the last event for today is that I obtained a pair of cool sunglasses, which I did not forget to show off in the above. Now I can fearlessly work with the light-emitting prims! :)