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Mandriva Linux to Offer Online Music Service

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sat Feb 25, 2006 10:47 AM
from the rockin'-penguins dept.
Businesses Mandriva Linux Business Media Music
dysfirkin writes "Mandriva 2006 is to be the first Linux distro to offer built in online music service. The service will compete with the likes of emusic.com for the music business of Linux users. I have not used Mindawn before, but the service is offered in Ogg Vorbis and FLAC."
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  • and annoying auto playing video with sound!

    Doesn't mention how much this will cost. I'm guessing from the text of the article that this is a pay-per-song service rather than a subscription model, but it doesn't explicitly say.

    Interesting that it will support Linux, Windows and OS X - is this the only music service that can claim this kind of compatibility?

  • DRM (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DaHat (247651) on Saturday February 25 2006, @10:59AM (#14800266) Homepage
    Given that they likely won't use DRM with their downloads (after all, a Linux distro doing DRM would be quickly abandoned by many of its users and be excommunicated by RMS)... that would seem to mean that the major labels would not allow their songs to be put on it, counting out the majority of popular music today.

    Shame.

    • Re:DRM (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      True, but on the other hand, if an artist happens to make it big with this service, perhaps it might send a message of some sort. One really good band has tracks available here, and on a DRM-restricted service, and market forces should take effect.
    • And this is bad?
      • There is no point in using a service in which you can't get songs from
        • There is no point in downloading a crappy song either which is what I consider most "popular music" nowadays.

          Besides, Linux is the "indy platform" of the computer desktop world. It has yet to appeal to mainstreamers who, for reasons unknown, like that music. Thus popular music probably ain't so popular for the linux crowd anyways.
    • "counting out the majority of popular music today"

      Thank god.

    • <time-travel epoch="middle ages"> This stupid Guttenberg is only printing Public Domain Bibles in crap quality ; what a shame his books are not fine hand written manuscripts of Plato, Aristotle and great scholars commentaries !</time-travel>

      Of course, it doesn't account for the fact that printed books created a massive upsurge in written production, from novels to new streams in philosophy. I sure hope that the music won't be mainstream to reach new levels of creativity which would have been s

  • Another $1/song service with absolutely no selection... It would be cool that they used ogg if I were ever disposed to use it.
    • I do like the feature on emusic.com where you can sample the selection.
      Try this one. [emusic.com]
      It's "I'm a disco dancer", you'll love it.
      They send you the song at 192 bps, so you need broadband.
      Wonder if Mandriva's setup can do that?
    • Another $1/song service with absolutely no selection... It would be cool that they used ogg if I were ever disposed to use it.

      "no selection" means no big-names that you see on MTV right? Now wait for a moment and think the analogy between music and software.

      The big-name in software is Microsoft and propriatary software in general. Of course nobody will give you a copy of windows for free, let you use it in whatever machine you like or allow you to make copies of it, right? So what do we do about that? Inst

  • Maybe... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by AusIV (950840)
    Maybe Apple will finally decide to port iTunes to Linux if they see that there's a market.

    • Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Timesprout (579035) on Saturday February 25 2006, @11:02AM (#14800279)
      Maybe this service will tank and Apple will say,"See we were right, theres no market there"
    • Maybe, just maybe.

      Yeah, and maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot. [imdb.com]
      • But that is the problem. Most Linux users are much more saavy and will not tolerate spending money for lossy, DRM-laden music.

        This is a nice way of saying "Nobody uses Linux at all, except a few wingnuts with wacko political beliefs".

        (Not that I don't have the respect for the Free Software crowd, but let's face it. market-wise Linux basically doesn't exist as a desktop OS.)
        • >This is a nice way of saying "Nobody uses Linux at all, except a few wingnuts with wacko political beliefs".

          It is true that the desktop use of Linux is small. But, by every reasonable estimate I have seen, world-wide desktop use of Linux is easily larger than that of Apple. So calling it "nobody" is inaccurate.

          You are trying to twist what I said. My point is/was:

          1) Technically saavy users are aware of the problems/issues with DRM.
          2) Technically saavy users typically don't want DRM or lossy encoding.
          3
          • But, by every reasonable estimate I have seen, world-wide desktop use of Linux is easily larger than that of Apple.

            This is plainly false. Web statistics (which are a "reasonable" way to estimate desktop installedbase) show Linux at around 0.5% and Mac at 2%-3% (in line with Apple sales statistics).

            [Yeah, yeah Linux users are so "saavy" that 80% of them are editing firefox config files to change their UA string. Whatever.]

            Not to mention, as the whole "Linux Gaming" experiment showed, most of those "Linux" us
  • Once again, DRM free - but no bands you've ever heard of.

    I already buy CDs from my local bands (that nobody else has heard of). I just don't understand how this marketing works. In fact, I think it wont.

    Crappy interface too.
  • TFA tries to put this up as a competing service to iTunes/Napster, but there's a pretty large gaping hole there.....content. While it looks like an interesting service, especially for people who like unsigned/indy type releases, that's not really competing with the other services. Their customers are buying mainly releases from "mainstream" sources (the big record companies). Saying that this is serious competition to iTunes is more a delusion of grandeur than a realistic statement.

  • I have basically stopped buying music for some time. It seems that noone wants to sell a reasonable selection of mp3/ogg music.
    CD's are not practical. DRM music has no value to me.

    emusic is pay-monthly. I just want to buy a few songs now and then.

    The only places to find mp3/ogg's to buy with a reasonably selection are Russian sites. But I don't quite trust my credit card floating around there.

  • iTunes killer? Of course not. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by whitespiral (941984) on Saturday February 25 2006, @11:45AM (#14800445)
    Some of you miss the point completely. Mandriva isn't after iTunes neck. It's trying to carve a niche market: That of Linux users. They add the other clients just to better their chances of profit. And the music offering not being the popular bands is no problem at all: Linux users aren't looking for gangsta rap, they have a brain, and use it.

  • Linspire did this over a year ago (Score:3, Informative)

    by One Louder (595430) on Saturday February 25 2006, @11:45AM (#14800446)
    Linspire has offered a music store (MP3tunes) in their Lsongs [lsongs.com] music client since last year.

    It's also non-DRM music from independent artists.

  • Isn't Mindawn already "built in" to every OS with a browser? How are they going to "integrate" it into Mandriva? Put a bookmark to mindawn.com on the desktop?
  • A service nobody will use. I give it a year tops.

  • But... but... but... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jpellino (202698) on Saturday February 25 2006, @02:13PM (#14801003)
    This is a revolting development - they're obviously subversives trying to torpedo Slashot.

    A (maybe) non-DRM music system;
    A non-Apple music system;
    A non-MS music system;
    A music system that supports Ogg and FLAC.

    Nothing left to talk about. *sniff* Cue crickets.
      • As long as by "every way" you mean "every way *except* portable player support". Ogg may be superior in every other way, but it your player doesn't play ogg it's useless to you.
      • Every way except being able to play it or anything. I'm not going to go buy another player so I can play a different format when I have no problems with MP3. I'm also not really hot on seriously limiting my choices of players because I'm stuck on using a non-mainstream format.

        I understand that Ogg is technically better. Lots of technically better solutions die. Ogg has had what, 5 years or more to make its mark, and it's still a backwater, supported only really as an afterthought on a couple of manufact
          • The Shit/Size ratio is exactly how "better" is defined in this argument.

            Once you get up to around 256kbps there's no huge difference between any of them -- the reason OGG/WMA/AAC are considered "better" is because you can get away with a 128Kps or less file in some circumstances.
    • Althought I couldn't get the source to compile (then again I didn't try very hard) the prebuilt binary works fine for me on Gentoo with only one minor bit of trickery. The binary is dynamically linked against libFLAC.so.6 I had to create a link to libFLAC.so.7 to fool it but other that that I had no problems getting online and downloading a demo file.
      • Translation: allofmp3 is not illegal in Russia for Russian customers. But we know it is illegal just about everywhere else. We pretend we don't know the laws, and we place the burden on you, the customer, to not do anything illegal (like using our site) if you are outside of Russia. So don't try and blame us for doing anything wrong.

        You just made that up. Evidence please?

        Try this:

        http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm#Is%20usi ng%20Allofmp3%20legal [museekster.com]?


        Title 17 Chapter 6 Sec. 602 of the U.S. Code covers "In

        • 602 doesn't apply (Score:4, Interesting)

          by bacchusrx (317059) on Saturday February 25 2006, @03:37PM (#14801357)
          Downloading music (from anywhere, foreign or domestic) isn't importation, so 602 does not apply. Even if 602 did apply, you would not have an exemption under 602(a)(2) because of 602(b).

          Importation is the act of taking copies or phonorecords across a border. Look at the definitions of "copy" and "phonorecord" in section 101. Copies are "material objects [...] in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." Copies are real, physical things. Copies are not broadcasts or transmissions. When you have a song on a CD, the CD is the copy. When you have a song on a hard drive, or in RAM, the hard drive (or the RAM) is the copy.

          When you download from allofmp3.com, or anywhere else, you're not transporting an actual copy, in tact. This is obvious because the copy is a physical thing: the copy of the song is the disk on which allofmp3 stores it. They didn't send you their disk. So, what happened? You made a copy of the song, and the new copy is the song fixed in your disk.

          So you didn't import the song. You reproduced it. Reproducing a copyrighted song without permission of the copyright holder, or an applicable exemption, infringes the copyright holder's reproduction rights. Just because allofmp3 has the right to make those songs available to you under Russian law, does not mean you are authorized under US law to make your own copies, which is what you're doing when you download music from them.

          For instance, let's say that merely "making available" does not infringe copyright. So, I put up a directory on a public webserver filled with music I bought from emusic.com or somewhere else. I may have a perfect legal right to place those songs online, merely doing so isn't distributing them for instance, but you still don't have a legal right to download them. It is no different with allofmp3.

          Now, in Canada, in constrast, it is probably legal to use allofmp3.com. The private copying provisions of the Copyright Act do not not require that private copies be made from legitimate or authorized sources, merely that they are made for personal use and that they are made onto a recording medium that isn't prescribed.
      • I don't know other European countries' laws but in Czech Republic allofmp3 is definitely legal - you're allowed to download any audio/video you want (even from "illegal" source) but you must not share the data with someone else. I call this a good law.

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