magnatune mostly complete

worked some more on the magnatune store interface for Songbird. got the following up:

it’s neat. you can browse the 7600+ tracks available at magnatune and play the full length of the song exactly as if it were a local library. right now clicking the “buy this track” button pops up a new browser tab and takes you to the page to enter your info to purchase the MP3 (without the magnatune nag voice at the end of each track that you hear when you play directly from the store)

they have an API for doing purchases directly, but it involves transmitting a credit card number via a URL. ick. i need to test to see if it accepts those variables via POST instead of GET to make it a little more secure. if that works, then this would be pretty neat. if i can get a better integrated purchase experience, then i’ll consider this complete.

update: uploaded the add-on here

1 comment May 1st, 2008

magnatune for the bird

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.

4 comments April 30th, 2008

french celtic rock?

bizarrely intriguing.

i came across Bézèd’h’s Ton jour viendra album clicking through Jamendo yesterday and have found it pretty catchy.

the french celtic rock sound is definitely unique. and hey, it’s creative commons licensed with 192kbps MP3 and Ogg Vorbis torrents available. now this is what we’re always harping about as the Open Media Web.

rockin’.

i sent $10 their way. the best part?

Donation to the artist Bézèd'h       9.50 USD
Promotion on Jamendo.com    0.44 USD
Tax     0.06 USD
Total with taxes    10 USD

how awesome is that? Bézèd’h gets $9.50! that shit ain’t happening on iTunes, i can tell you that much.

3 comments April 16th, 2008

the timeliness of the Open Media Web

Songbird has been pushing the concept of the Open Media Web for a while now, and openmediaweb.org’s first interview with Lucas Gonze is now live.

The issue of open-ness and captive data is especially timely given Scoble’s Facebook-ban. Granted, Scoble’s case is more around who owns what data - but it boils down to the same idea: it’s never as easy to get data out as it is to get data in. Web services should capture audiences and users through continuous innovation, not by holding our data usage.

Gonze’s primary message is that all media on the web should have canonical, authoritative URLs. This is not too surprising a message from the creator of the XSPF playlist format. I guess I’m conflicted here since protecting and charging for content is a reality of life. I’d love nothing more than to see album tracks by artists published for free with revenue coming from fan contributions and tours, but the reality is that isn’t happening. So music stores and publishers/labels will continue to charge for content. But notice that Gonze’s message doesn’t say that content should be free. In fact, expanding upon this, I’d love to see platforms that provide canonical URLs with standards-based APIs for basic media functions and commerce, e.g. a way for all music stores to provide:

1. an authoritative canonical URL to each artist, album, and track
2. a standard API to preview a 30 second sample
3. a standard API to authenticate (OpenID/OAuth?) with another ecommerce/financial site (PayPal, Bank, etc.) to purchase track
4. a standard API to download said track to media library

This same API would be applied (only without step 3) to free/CC-licensed/etc. content on the web thus enabling media players like Songbird to provide standard and uniform ways to interact with, sample, purchase, and acquire music thus freeing up labels and music stores to focus on innovation and creativity rather than the dull drudgery of running an ecommerce store.

2 comments January 3rd, 2008

girl talk - night ripper

heard a few tracks from the night ripper album by girl talk last night, ended up being compelling enough to go buy and wow. what a great album.

i don’t think i’ve ever heard an album with so much sampling, it’s fantastic. the mixing of all the different samples is genius. to hear some old Stevie Wonder overlaid with DJ Funk transitioning into Elastica is just brilliant.

highly recommend this album.

Add comment December 24th, 2007

If Asimov produced electronica….

… it would probably look something like Hexstatic’s “When Robots Go Bad”

I’ve been listening to this all morning and it’s thumpingly cool. Makes me want to bang on things.

1 comment October 12th, 2007

voices of the lifestream

ocremix has always interested me… what can i say, i’m a fan of video game music i guess.

what kid from the 80s/90s can’t remember their favourite video game songs? everytime i went paintballing in college, strains of Contra went through my brain. i remember wandering through a dark castle in Switzerland and the Castlevania soundtrack seriously popped into my head. and everytime i smashed my head into a brick wall, Super Mario wafted through my ears.

okay, maybe not the last one - but i did have the SMB themesong as my ringtone for quite a while.

anyway, 1997 was memorable for a few things for me. graduating high school was one i guess. but much more memorable was Final Fantasy 7. probably one of the best Final Fantasies ever, and it had a truly amazing soundtrack. Square has always had good soundtracks, but for me, FF7 was the best. so i was super-psyched to see ocremix announce its Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream remix album, a whopping 4 CDs of video game musical goodness.

what video game geek can’t love that?

anyway, after finally grabbing the 2.3 GB torrent, i’m just finally starting to check it out now. so far, it’s been great. Deliverance of the Heart is a great track.

Add comment September 20th, 2007

hanako oku

on our honeymoon, wendy and i spent a couple of nights in tokyo. on one of the nights, as we passed through the Shinjuku station, we heard a really innocent female voice singing. and innocent is probably about the best word i can describe it with… especially as it floated across an insanely busy metro station.

in the middle of the metro plaza she’d setup an speaker/amp, hooked up to her electric keyboard and microphone and she was singing and playing away. we were absolutely mesmerised by her voice and ended up staying for about 25 minutes or so listening to her perform.

after she was done, she sold a few CDs (which we bought), and that was about the end of that. i ended up looking her up on the net and ended up downloading a few more tunes and buying another CD.

her name is Hanako Oku, you can see one of her music videos here on YouTube.

2 comments June 11th, 2007

it shure is quiet

so i’ve had my Shure E2c headphones for a while, and have consistently held them to be the best headphones i’ve ever had in my life.

turns out, for $10 - they just got even better.

thanks to a tip from dan, i picked up 5 pairs of foam inserts made by this guy on eBay for $10.

wow!

the install was a pain in the butt to get them on the posts. now that i’ve figured out how to get the first set on, i’m anticipating an easier time with the future ones. anyway, on to the fit. damn, these are coooooomfy. they definitely fit better than the yellow foam Shure inserts. they’re softer, and tapered at the end, so it fits more naturally into the ear canal. i don’t know if it’s a result of the foam (Howard Leight “MAX” foam earplugs according to the maker, with a NRR of 33), or the fact that they sit deeper into my ear canal - but they definitely isolate better than the Shure foam. and don’t even get me started on the Shure grey inserts - these are worlds better than those.

anyway, sound quality is superb. i’ve listened to some korean pop, and the high vocals sound great. popping in some trance and D&B, and the bass response is definitely better as Dan said when he first recommended them to me.

anyway, if you have Shure headphones - definitely order these… you can’t beat them for $10.

if you’re near me, hit me up - i’m willing to spare a couple of my sets (since you get 5 pair for $10, i don’t need all 5) if you want them.

3 comments December 8th, 2006

a cross-disciplinary productive day

i’ve had a fun day catching up on all sorts of little odds and ends i’d had on my to do list.

• finished the final step in my migration of all my users’ home directories and web-space to ZFS.
• setup drupal and started building the portal for my neighbourhood. our neighbourhood improvement association was blowing away $45/month on crappy webhosting for a phpBB installation that kept getting hacked, and a mailman list. it’d frustrated me long enough that i finally volunteered to be the webmaster. i’m in the process of building a new website from scratch that will be a full portal to our neighbourhood and provide blogs, message boards, mailing lists, and web space to any resident, organisation/club, or store in our neighbourhood
• did lots of research on various brake pads for my A4. i’m planning on replacing my front brake pads tomorrow. it’s been tough finding a good recommended brake pad that has a firm bite, not-as-much brake dust, and a proper connection for a wear sensor. i’m finding that it’s hard to find a good firm sport brake that will endure my, shall we say, vigorous, driving that also has a wear sensor.
• installed bugzilla on grommit. i finally got tired of hearing about our bug database sucking, and the points about project bug-tracking for externally driven projects (like ksh93) are perfectly valid. yes i realise there is much to be done on b.o.o., but due to the process, policy, and implementation of Sun’s bug tracking system, there are lot more constraints of b.o.o. i do intend to help internally anyway i can to make it better; but in the meantime, hopefully the bugzilla install will let external projects start tracking bugs and just make progress

my random thoughts for the day:

• the new vienna teng cd is incredible. her voice has definitely matured since her first two CDs. the music is less raw now, a little more polished/produced. this is neither good, nor bad… just different. the CD is brilliant. highly recommended.
• there’s nothing quite like a freshly bathed beagle as your soft/plush pillow when you’re taking a nap. lovely.
• it’s getting colder and gloomier out now. i took the dogs to Pt. Isabel, and actually had to wear a beanie. this was also my first official soft-shell-jacket wear of the season. it’s definitely fall.
• i’d always known Pt. Isabel was big… i didn’t realise it was the largest off-leash dog park in the nation. wow. go east bay parks
• the chili/sourdough baguette at the cafe at Pt. Isabel rocks. highly recommended.

Add comment September 9th, 2006