Mandriva Linux to Offer Online Music Service

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."

Incredibly annoying popup thingy alert!

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?

BETTER news link HERE:

http://www.mindawn.com/news/34?PHPSESSID=109de8547 5f3274709a8bd0cb78e05d0 [mindawn.com]

DRM

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

"counting out the majority of popular music today"

Thank god.

oh great...

Another $1/song service with absolutely no selection... It would be cool that they used ogg if I were ever disposed to use it.

Maybe...

Maybe Apple will finally decide to port iTunes to Linux if they see that there's a market.

Re:Maybe...

Maybe this service will tank and Apple will say,"See we were right, theres no market there"

Been done

There are already similar, browser based services that allow you to download content in Ogg or MP3. The biggest reason they're not massively popular is the same reason this won't be - no 'big name' labels.

1E9 Downloads?

What nifty freebies will Mindawn be giving away to the lucky recipient of their billionth download?

Selection, selection, selection...

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.

Competition to iTunes/Napster?

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.

No MP3?

I'm all for supporting open source and free software, but without MP3 support nobody is going to use this.
As far as being multi-platform, how hard would it be to make a service like this web-based?

Russia MP3 sites

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.

iaudio

I'll be able to play whatever I buy in my iaudio x5 http://eng.iaudio.com/ [iaudio.com] in ogg / flag - cool

Isn't diversity a good thing?

"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." So then they'd have to rely on selling music from among the rest of million os musicians on the planet? That's a positive in my book. Using the FLAC format means they could sell classical music, something we classical lovers hadn't considered before, since any other format previously available sucked for such hi-end purposes. Mandriva, that's a brilliant move.

iTunes killer? Of course not.

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

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.

Built in?

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?

Cart before the horse

Of all the things I'd like to see in Mandriva, this isn't it. I'd like to see them automate and decentralize the system for obtaining new and update packages. Nothing irritates or wastes my time more than having to manually resolve the urpmi BS every other week. I'm also not interested in hearing any jawflapping from linux fans about how it's just a couple of lines. They are the most annoying thing about the OS and, as an average joe home user, the very first reason I would look to some other OS. ...the lines, not the users.

Sweet!

A service nobody will use. I give it a year tops.

I thought bundling with the OS was bad?

I've seen long diatribes about how it is "evil" for Apple to bundle Safari with the OS but all of a sudden it is not a bad thing to bundle a single store music player with linux? I don't consider either to be evil since every OS needs some form of browser to easily "download" other software and it is not a bad thing to have a usable music player included with your OS either.

Having said that, I find the hypocrisy of certain slashdot reader to be quite entertaining.

This is Nothing New....

Magnatune.com [magnatune.com] has been doing the same thing for a while now - minus the extra player. They work on an "honor" system. You pay what you think the artists are worth, and you can make as many copies as you need, even give 3 away to other people.

And if you must have major label stuff, Real Rhapsody [rhapsody.com] has a beta version FireFox plugin that allows you to use the entire jukebox service. Given, you can't download and keep it, but at least you can listen to the service, and Real is doing something for us Linux users.

If there's no God, Why do people keep asking Him to bless and damn everything?

No Spiggy, no deal

If Spiggy Topes and the Turds were on Mindawn, I might be interested. But alas they aren't. I guess that as a "popular singing group" they could be too expensive for your average Linux user. Like Spinal Tap, really. I'm afraid that Mindawn doesn't conform to my free noise principles if they are not prepared to support the Turds or the Taps, and so I won't be using the service on moral grounds. However, I might make an exception if Mindawn invited RMS to make a two-hour speech at their billionth-download party which can surely be only a short time away.

But... but... but...

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.

Poor selection but interesting service nonethless

I agree with everybody who says that the selection is lousy. I'm a true indie-music geek (and proudly so) but none of my favorite unknown/lesser-known bands were in there. NONE!! I searched for more than a dozen bands ranging from tiny Los Angeles groups to National headliners (like Pinback and Belle and Sebastian). Not a single one came up! So obviously this is of no interest except that...

..except that it is an interesting business model for the online music industry:
-It's the first time I see a service offering lossless downloads. This is valuable for those of us with real stereo equipment in their living rooms (I find mp3s sound a little "empty")
-pay-per-minute of music downloaded pricing. That's interesting because it annoys me when I have to pay the same price for a 30 second song as a 10 minute song when I am trying to get a full album. FYI:

0.99 per 10 minutes of lossy compression (Ogg Vorbis format) (each 10 minutes in length is another $0.99)
$1.24 per 10 minutes of lossless compression (FLAC format)
$6.99 per album for lossy compression (Ogg Vorbis format)
$8.99 per album for lossless compression (FLAC format)
So note that this is NOT a 99c/track type service as has been mentioned above.

Oliver / http://www.treasuretunes.com/ [treasuretunes.com]

"Poor Selection" is an understatement

I'm far from major-label only - I've been a subscriber to emusic for, um, 6 years next month minus the one year they had kicked me off for d/ling too much before switching to the limited subscription model.

But Mindawn seems to have a bit over 1000 albums in ogg, including duplicates, total. (Note that they list ogg and flac albums seperately). That's just ... 1000 albums for a music service? Emusic has a relatively weak selection, and it has 102939 albums.

What I am wondering..

Since Mandriva is French and thus almost European, maybe they will have a decent selection of music? I mean, I'm fairly standard and mainly listen to rock with the odd goth / goth-metal band thrown in, and I have a seriously hard time finding music I like on itunes. It's all r&b, rap, hip-hop and other stuff which barely qualify as music in my ears...

Re:Cheap good music service

Using allofmp3.com is illegal in almost every country. They are essentially stealing the music and then charging "customers" for stolen goods.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to just set up a nice website, buy a whole bunch of CD's and DVD's, and then sell copies of them to everyone?

BTW- In their own legal mumbo-jumbo, they practically admit it is illegal to use outside of Russia, right in their FAQ:

" [blah blah blah license this and license that...] The user bears sole responsibility for any use and distribution of all materials received from AllOFMP3.com. This responsibility is dependent on the national legislation in each user's country of residence. The Administration of AllOFMP3.com does not possess information on the laws of each particular country and is not responsible for the actions of foreign users."

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.

When something seems to good to be true (or "right"), then it probably is...

602 doesn't apply

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.

Re:WOOT!

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.

Re:If Microsoft did this...

That would be because they're the incumbent monopoly in the desktop operating system market. Much as we (Mandriva) would like to be, we're not.

Re:It Has Been a While Since I've Posted...

Ogg Vorbis is a LOSSY format. It doesn't matter WHAT bitrate you encode at or what your variable bitrate range is. It is LOSSY meaning that it LOSES (sic). Vorbis is akin to the old wire recorders of the 60s that were the scourge of audiophiles like myself.