magnatune for the bird

Wednesday, Apr 30. 2008  –  Category: Music, Songbird

I first heard of Magnatune at LUG Radio Live where they had a booth setup. I didn’t get a chance to check them out until yesterday, and it’s a pretty cool site. There’s some neat electronica up there along with the other usual genres. Their business model looks pretty interesting too, along with their CC friendliness and promotion of music sharing.

I started mucking about with a Songbird add-on last night and got something working a few hours ago that builds an additional “Magnatune” library in Songbird to represent all the tracks available on Magnatune. You can play them directly from the remote track (yay open web!) currently. I plan to add a way to purchase the track so it can be added to the local library as well (which should also allow it to be sync’d after purchase then too). It’s been an interesting challenge… and I’m still running into a few hiccups, I suspect because of the way I now effectively have two local libraries (which shouldn’t be that big a deal since devices, etc. all have their own libraries from Songbird’s perspective).

Anyway, it’s been a fun project so far… and I have to say, there’s something cool about having all 7600+ Magnatune tracks available for direct play within Songbird. I’ll definitely post this to the addons site when I’m done.

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4 Comments to “magnatune for the bird”

  1. Kim Sullivan Says:
    May 1st, 2008 at 04:55

    What I’ve always wondered about, with regards to Magnatune (because Amarok supports it too…) – why can’t you just provide a way to download the free versions? I mean, the 128k versions are CC (by-nc-sa), which means that everyone is free to download and share (and even redistribute) the music, including modifications (like, stripping the spoken text from all the sample mp3s).

    What i find especially amusing is that magnatune states “please do not post … the mp3s below on another web site or a p2p network.” – thereby restricting the rights given to you by the by-nc-sa license. Either they provide the songs under CreativeCommons, but they try to discourage you to actually use the songs under that license, or they are not providing the songs under Creative Commons, and just use the CC label as a marketing trick.

    Can they do that?

  2. Stephen Lau Says:
    May 1st, 2008 at 07:38

    I probably could provide a way to do that for the 128kbps MP3s, but I’d rather try and encourage people to buy them. It’s a matter of supporting and encouraging the business model, not finding the cheapest way out :)

    Regarding your second point – I’m not sure, to be honest. If it’s a “please”, then it’s not a strict requirement meaning it’s not a restriction of your rights. It’s a request. Whether you choose to comply with it or not is up to you, your conscience, and your karma I suppose. (But IANAL, so don’t take my word – best to ask Magnatune)

  3. John Buckman from Magnatune Says:
    May 2nd, 2008 at 16:21

    Yes, the “please” is a request, and not a legal enforcement, and just refers to p2p distribution.

    I have no problem with people sharing the creative commons 128k mp3s with everyone they know, and lots of sites do distribute them. There’s even an XML-based API to help other sites build their own interfaces to them, and offer downloads.

    For example, Rhythmbox lets you simply drag a song you’re listening to with their Magnatune plugin, onto the desktop to save it.

    Rather, the “please don’t post them on p2p networks” has to do with my feeling that most p2p companies are sleazy, have often had malware connections, and aren’t businesses I want to support.

    Hope that makes sense…

    -john

  4. Kim Sullivan Says:
    May 3rd, 2008 at 01:47

    Wow, John, thanks for your reply! I should have asked directly, instead of drawing conclusions on my own. I’ve been wondering about this ever since I tried Amarok and found out that it doesn’t support saving the streams without buying the songs, and then I found that Stephen also doesn’t plan for this feature…

    I had no idea that there are players that actually support saving the CC version, and that not providing this feature is a conscious choice by the programmers to support magnatunes, and not some kind of restriction by magnatunes.

    Thanks for clarifying this!

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