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Music Media

P2P Internet Radio 99

Posted by michael from the need-tunes-badly dept.
fdsa writes "O'Reilly's openp2p.com has an article describing two programs for peer-to-peer audio streaming, Streamer and PeerCast. Streamer is currently Windows-only but GPLed, and desperately searching for somebody to port it to Linux. PeerCast was on slashdot before, but now runs on Linux and supports Ogg Vorbis. There's an impressive list of channels already. Planned features include video streaming and a "tip jar" system for paying artists. Setting up your own station is as simple as installing the oddcast winamp plugin or liveice for xmms."
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P2P Internet Radio More

P2P Internet Radio

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  • Possible security issues (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sneftel ( 15416 ) on Saturday September 28, 2002 @02:32AM (#4349197)
    While a treatment of security is obviously part of the "tip jar" model, I don't think that P2P networks have evolved enough yet to be easily graftable with actual money transfer. The scheme described uses GPG to sign the payment information so that middlemen can't insert their own paypal account for someone else's song (hmm... does this remind anyone of the earlier story about Kazaa hijacking affiliate payments?) but the authentication is through a "web of trust" which, frankly, is a poor excuse for security when actual money is being thrown around. If I'm going to drop a quarter in the jar, I'm going to make damn sure that some script kiddie isn't tapping it.
  • Notice that every single story title on the mainpage contains at least one acronym. Are we using jargon to keep our little club elite?

  • In case it gets Slashdotted... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here is the cache of it on Google [216.239.53.100]. :)

  • Bandwidth Concerns (Score:3, Funny)

    by saveth ( 416302 ) <<gro.sesirpretned> <ta> <wwc>> on Saturday September 28, 2002 @02:41AM (#4349214)
    With cable modem and DSL upstream bandwidth of, for the most part, 128kbps or, rarely, 256kbps, is peer-to-peer media streaming really a viable option?

    In streaming audio from webcasters, I always tend to use the 128kbps streams, simply because they sound much better than the alternative 64/56kbps streams. I suspect many others find their streaming audio experiences to be quite the same, in this respect. Thus, a 128kbps cable/DSL user would be limited to one outgoing stream, and even this is contingent upon the user not doing anything else with his/her bandwidth at the time.

    The summary notes that there are plans, also, for video streaming. This simply cannot be accomplished with decent quality, even with the best codecs current on the market, under such conditions.

    World economies are just now getting used to having broadband available to ordinary people, and I don't see the availability of a T1 to every household happening any time soon.

    For peer-to-peer file sharing, downloading a file at 0.5kBps is acceptable, but I certainly wouldn't want to stream media at that sort of a rate. I do like the idea of peer-to-peer streaming media, but I simply don't think the market is ready for it, yet.

    • Re:Bandwidth Concerns (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jilles ( 20976 )
      The whole point of p2p streaming is that you only serve one or two streams. I've used peercast a lot during the past two months and I can comfortably stream up to 100kbps using my DSL connection. Using ogg streams that means you I serve two 45 kbps streams that sound pretty good. People who tune into my peercast station propagate the streams to additional listeners.

      The nice thing about peercast is that the peercast network is self organizing. If some client tunes in that does not serve up enough bandwidth, that client is bumped and moves to the edge of the network where he is no longer a problem. Consequently, reliability is pretty good if you have enough bandwidth to pass the streams on. I often tune in to streams and I have found that they are just as reliable as regular shoutcast streams.

      Another nice thing is that it is in principle agnostic to the media being streamed. Right now it only works for ogg and mp3 but it is the intention to support additional streams in the future. Video streams require more bandwidth than audio but that is not a problem if there are enough clients with enough upload capacity to serve one or two streams. With my 128kbps upload capacity, high quality streams are not feasible for me currently. However there are plenty of people who do have the capacity to stream high quality video. Using peercast they can form a network without requiring a central server that serves a single stream for each viewer.

      It will be interesting to see how peercast handles a second round of slashdotting. Last time was a bit to early but it has improved enormously since then.

      • Re:Bandwidth Concerns (Score:4, Insightful)

        by turnstyle ( 588788 ) on Saturday September 28, 2002 @06:12AM (#4349527) Homepage
        Goodness, this topic raises all of my favorite rants. Background: I've been developing my own streaming software [turnstyle.com] for the last two years (it runs on top of web servers with PHP or ASP). It's not exactly 'radio', but instead it lets you browse and stream on demand. Anyways, here's some of my experience...

        Bandwidth: the asymmetric nature of most home-based high-bandwith networking options is intended to make it easier for us to be consumers rather than producers of digital content. This is especially bad because it quite litereally makes it harder for indepenedent voices to be heard.

        However, many of the high bandwidth providers, AOLTW for one, are also content providers, and are perfectly happy to keep the bandwidth deck stacked against independents.

        Tip jars: Don't work. In the context of discussing P2P networks, the concept of tipping the artists often comes up. People don't part with their cash voluntarily. That goes for software, and it goes for music. Sure some people do, some times, but the practical percentage is so small as to be negligable.

        Fairtunes [fairtunes.com] is/was the leading centralized tip jar, founded by Slashdot regular Matt Goyer, now sold to Musiclink. It got lots of great press and feedback. Go there and search for tips to your favorite artist.

        Personally, I think of myself (an independent programmer) as not entirely different from a independent musician. I tried for years to rely on a tip jar, but despite having tens of thousands of daily users it never paid for more than coffee.

        Potential: In any case, the new infrstructures bring huge potential for positive change, but in my opinion that infrstructure also needs to do much better job of getting money to change hands, in order to garner real power, and tip jars won't cut it.

        • Tip jars: Don't work... I tried for years to rely on a tip jar, but despite having tens of thousands of daily users it never paid for more than coffee...

          Hmm. that is depressingly true, but I don`t think we should give up all hope on it. People get more emotionally attached to music than software and the only thing missing from paying for music online instead of CD is that you get something tangible with CD - that shrink wrapped, glossy inlay, sparkling new jewel case feeling.

          Of course for most people that only lasts a day or so before its thrown in with the others, at which point it just becomes a collection of bits that you`d probably much rather have on your HD/iPod than CD..
          • "Hmm. that is depressingly true, but I don`t think we should give up all hope on it ...[snip]... the only thing missing from paying for music online instead of CD is that you get something tangible with CD"

            Well if my experience is any indication, I definitely think we should give up on the tip jar. In my opinion, it leads to the impression among users that it's working, and that impression helps to excuse them from giving.

            And as for 'the only thing missing from paying for music online' - it's not the lack of physical goods, it's that payment is optional.

            Yes, it would be nice if people voultarily gave, but it's not going to happen (indeed some do, but I'd say that it's no more than a fraction of 1%).

            As I see it, for there to be a real change in the power structure, there also needs to be a real change in cashflow. And in my opinion, the continued belief in the tip jar actually does us a disservice.

          • Well, it could be combined. If you look at the skinning community, the Stardock gives away free versions of their programs. While you get the latest and greatest by paying, I for one, feel that there is more to those guys than just the hunger for money. I'd say I'm emotionally attached. ;) ...and it doesn't come on a CD...
            • "I for one, feel that there is more to those guys than just the hunger for money"

              I'd just like to mention that sometimes people make the mistake of seeing a 'hunger for money' where there is no more than a hunger to pay bills.

              Personally, I love my software, and my goal is not only to keep improving it, but also to make enough money to cover my very ascetic lifestyle, maybe have a kid someday.

              I tried the tip jar for well over a year, and I'm telling you: it doesn't work. I had no choice, but to charge instead. Frankly, it's a bummer when people respond "you capitalist pig, you charge for software!" but hey, geez, it's just me, I work 70 hour weeks, and I require food.

              I'd would think that the slashdot crowd would support the idea of independent programmers being able to pay their bills by making software that people love, in just the same way that they support the idea of independent musicians being able to pay their bills by making music that people love.

              It's not so different, is it?

    • I've tried the LP2PN that are available and am convinced they are the future. Not just for audio and video but also for sites like slashdot.

      This is all still very new and has all of the growing pains still ahead. The overhead is one of the biggest problems.

      It's promise is so tantalizing. Just think, you could be as big of a media outlet as any BBC, NBC CBC, or CNN all for the price of a AOL subscription. Or run a website the size of Slashdot.

    • Cable and Broadband is all very well, and I'm enjoying it immensely, but 128kb streaming unfortunately is pretty much impossible if you have a 1.8gb cap per month.

      So, the smaller the better I say.

  • "It's for the artists" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Erasmus Darwin ( 183180 ) on Saturday September 28, 2002 @02:45AM (#4349223)
    There's a quote in the article that bothers me: "But the two men both feel that their programs can help music artists get their work heard outside of traditional radio broadcasting."

    Yet in that same article, they admit that the system is a way to get around webcasting royalties. This is just silly, as an artist who wants their work to be heard far and wide can offer it up for royalty-free webcasting. Similarly, there are quite a few artists who have placed free, legal mp3s of some of their songs up on the web.

    I really wish people wouldn't try and hide behind the rhetoric of trying to help the artists, when some of the artists don't want their copyrights forcibly violated. Personally, I support P2P as a means of circumventing bandwidth limitations, but not as a means of hiding liability when infringing copyright.

    (And while I'm up on the soap box, I also disagree with trying to directly compensate the artist for intellectual property that they've sold the rights to. I support more equitable recording contracts, but I also support the right of an artist to contractually sell his/her ownership of song rights in exchange for money. By insisting on tipping the artist at the same time as infringing on copyright, you're eroding the artists' ability to sell that copyright, regardless of whether or not it was a fair deal.)

    • Re:"It's for the artists" (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What you're ignoring is that the proposed webcast fees are meant to reduce the number of artists heard on the internet. Record companies want few super-popular groups, not lots of semi-popular groups. The benefit of avoiding webcasting fees is that smaller artists on larger labels will be heard, and hopefully gain some sales. Any large recording company is NOT going to give permission for free webcasting.

      The two ideas are not exclusive.

      Give us fair webcasting costs and they will be paid. Price it out of our range and we will break the law.
    • And while I'm up on the soap box, I also disagree with trying to directly compensate the artist for intellectual property that they've sold the rights to. I support more equitable recording contracts, but I also support the right of an artist to contractually sell his/her ownership of song rights in exchange for money. By insisting on tipping the artist at the same time as infringing on copyright, you're eroding the artists' ability to sell that copyright, regardless of whether or not it was a fair deal

      Apparently the artist would agree with you. [heraldtribune.com]

    • Re:"It's for the artists" (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually I think Peercast is just trying to find a way of making p2p-sharing benefit artists. Not force them to use give up their copyrights.

      What do you want to happen? the RIAA should eradicate P2P? the music industry should protect the artists with law suits against 15 year old kids sharing their music? Its not going to happen, so something like the Tip Jar has to work otherwise the artists will end up with nothing in a few years when the publishers go out of business.

      Its precisely this kind of thinking that has got the entire music industry (yes I`m in the industry so I think I qualify to speak) into the mess it is in at the moment. Copyright in its current form just doesn`t work on the Internet. Either we change the copyright laws or we adapt to the times, I prefer the latter.

  • Bandwidth (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rossy ( 536408 )
    Proliferation of Internet radio will be one possible way to fund the "lighting" of all the unlit fiber the telecom companies laid under the ground in the last boom. I'm not looking forward to the bandwith crunch or increased rates which may occur prior to the next expansion, but internet radio, could be a small contributor to the next wave of bandwith improvements. I consider all the stations but the ones I'm listening to to be bandwidth hogs.

    • Re:Bandwidth (Score:4, Funny)

      by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Saturday September 28, 2002 @03:55AM (#4349323)
      No. The next bandwidth crunch comes when Microsoft gets more serious about buffer overflows and sends out 30Mbyte servicepacks to everybody again and again. Internet radio can't compete with that, and Microsoft has more buffer overflows than the RIAA has songs :-)
    • "Lighting" all of the fiber? With all of the layoffs and crap that telecom companies have been going through (at least here in the U.S.), in 2-3 years we'll all be lucky to even have phones to use. I think bandwidth problems stemming from P2P and streaming media are the least of these companies' problems. My 2 pence on the matter.
      • What do you think happens to all the fiber that was layed by a bankrupt company. Somebody buys it for Penny's on the dollor if that much so. ATT or Version or X Company Has all that dark fiber now. IT may take a Year or Two for Fiber to change hands but it still is avaible for sometime to come.
  • PeerCast was on slashdot before, but now runs on Linux and supports Ogg Vorbis.

    Where's the source, Luke?

    • Re:Free? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ViGe ( 49356 ) on Saturday September 28, 2002 @03:24AM (#4349286) Homepage

      Where's the source, Luke?

      Exactly. There's no way I'm going to put this kind of software to my machine without the source available. Not that I would read through the entire source if it was available, but the fact that it isn't makes me think they have something to hide. Perhaps it's a DDOS tool? Perhaps it gives them shell access to my computer?

      They say they haven't had TIME to release the source! That's the lamest excuse I've ever heard!

      • Please consider source code as a gift rather than a right and maybe you'll realize you are being pretty rude right now. Now here's a guy who is putting all his spare time into creating a great tool and you are harrassing him for not giving you the source code quick enough. If I were him, I'd give you the finger.

        If you don't want to risk your mission critical 1337 pron/mp3 server, don't install any p2p software, disconnect from the internet and quit whining.

        • Obviously, the developers at Peercast haven't read ESR's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" [tuxedo.org]. It describes how the best time to open the source code is in the immediate stages of the product, so that it gets the bugs seen and fixed as soon as possible. If they have the code, and if they want to GPL it and make it available, then what's stopping them? Sourceforge [sourceforge.net] is available and wouldn't cost them a thing.

          • Whats stopping them? thier code is probbly very very hodge podged, messy and confusing

            • But, that doesn't stop them from putting it out there and having someone with a sense of style clean it up.

              • Why should they? Maybe they don't want to put it online? Maybe they want to keep their source closed so corperations can't steal their code and make money off their blood, sweat and tears?

                I don't nessassarly understand all this hysteria about "they may take over with shell access". Give me a break! What about all that other closed software you use? Wake up. Not every bit of software out there is open source you know. There are profitable/reliable/good software that isn't opensourced.

                • From the peercast website [peercast.org] (emphasis mine):

                  Our aim is to make the PeerCast client code open source (GPL) at some point in the near future so that it can be checked and ported to as many platforms as possible. Our main priority now though is getting the system stable and usable. One reason for not releasing the source code so far is literally because we haven`t had the time yet.

                  If they want to GPL the code anyway, why not do it sooner rather than later?

      • Yes, same here. I've been running Streamer for quite a while now, and it's UI is easier to use than Peercast by far. It takes less than 10sec to figure it out. (Just double click on a station's name and it will tune in and autolauch (you can turn this off) your player (i.e.: Winamp)
        Streamer is being ported to linux as we speak. There may even be a preliminary beta for it soon.
        And with Streamer, if you don't trust Iain (the programmer) enough, just compile your own version of Streamer.
    • Streamer was the one that was GPLed, it's source is right here [u-net.com].

    • Re:Free? (Score:3, Informative)

      by jilles ( 20976 )
      Peercast currently is programmed by only a handful of programmers. I often hang out in the peercast forums and the peercast irc channel. Giles, the guy who started all this has on multiple occasions expressed the intention to open source peercast's core. He just wishes to clean up the code base before he does so and have a reasonably well functioning tool. He does all this in his spare time so please be patient.

      The last thing he wants now is have buggy clones of peercast dominating the network. This is what happened to gnutella in the early days.
      • yeah sure, THAT'S the reason he's not releasing source. It has nothing to do with him wanting to make a few million dollars thru licensing.
        • you are right, you got it! A miracle!
        • I don`t know how much projects like MySQL get from licensing their source for commercial use, but I suspect its not a few million. Its more likely slightly less than enough to keep the project going.
  • Funnily enough I wrote my first live mp3 streaming system back in '97 - in the days before any players supported http streaming. So I hacked on the mp3serv daemon so that you could recieve a stream and send it to stdout. I never disabled the rebroadcast code so my first few braodcasts ended up with a few listeners who were automatically rebroadcasting....

    It would have been revolutionary to actually index the rebradcasters, but I guess my astronomy got in the way and it never happened.

    It was about 18 months later that Slashdot put up a headline about the release of shoutcast - 'live mp3'.... You know me... been there, done that etc ;-) So I ended up hacking bits of icecast for a while before abandoning my PhD on killer asteroids to work for internet music companies.

    Anyway.... Now that napster has imploded I'm looking for a job in the bay area - given my groundbreaking work on mp3 radio and p2p networks there must be someone out there with a job for me right?????

    Peace PPL

  • *loud cheering* (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chris Johnson ( 580 ) on Saturday September 28, 2002 @03:27AM (#4349290) Homepage Journal
    This is great! Bring it on. The more the better as far as I am concerned.

    I'm one of the people who's supposed to be concerned about this kind of thing. I'm a musician. I produce sounds as art, and I write songs which are copyright to me. You'd think I'd be like 'whoa, slow down' with this stuff, the p2p.

    Here's why I'm not.

    Music has long been an avenue for social commentary. From 'What's Going On' to 'For What It's Worth' and 'Ohio', not to mention stuff like Tom Lehrer's 'So Long, Mom' and 'Who's Next?', it's been a way to put across a perspective using art. It doesn't have to be really detailed- in fact, art that's really specific that way tends to suck, polemical to the extent that it's haranguing you. Some of the best art with political importance has been, like 'For What It's Worth', relatively vague. It paints a compelling picture in little words, the details can be filled in by real dialogue. It's about using music to open someone's mind to the POSSIBILITY of dialogue.

    Now currently in the USA, we literally have the authorities shutting down communications on the grounds of 'supporting terrorist activities'. These are the same people who spent government money to drape a statue tit- they are not oblivious to art, they are just determined to make it behave. We're now looking at a situation where it is a real concern- it wouldn't be much of a jump to see these guys categorize dissident art and music as 'aid to terrorists', and to see them methodically expunge it from the Internet wherever they find it.

    That's where it starts to get on my turf. I'm an American- 34, grew up middle class, normally you would think I would get to produce whatever art or music I wanted. Maybe. But the spectacle of a manufactured war with Iraq so appalls me (hell, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff are against it too, I don't think I'm alone there) that I can't sit around experimenting with instrumental music anymore.

    Like I said in an earlier post, I've cut a recent song, "Blood on the Sand" [ampcast.com], directly about the Iraq situation. I wrote it hardcore and kept it as simple as I could, I played it hardcore until I had blisters on my fingers, I mixed it and put it out, and now by Bush's own rules I'm aiding the terrorists- because if it's gotta be 'us vs. them' and 'us' means what he's doing, NO WAY am I getting behind that, and that makes me 'them' and yeah, I'm trying to support the point of view against this Iraq overthrow.

    How does that relate to streaming p2p? I would think it was obvious but the point can't be made too often. We are in a situation RAPIDLY approaching suppression of political dissidents. Already the government is shutting down web sites on political grounds- you cannot so openly express your support for those the government considers active enemies. How far away is the next step, suppressing stuff that doesn't actively support the government? That's where the rising tide begins to drown me- I don't specifically support anyone the government considers terrorists, but I can't condemn them as blindly as I'm asked to. I grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, considered the birthplace of American Revolution, and now I have to wonder whether the desperation shown by those New England patriots is now echoed somewhere in the Middle East- and even to think such thoughts is less and less permitted.

    I am unfamiliar with firing a gun, and I am unfamiliar with hand to hand combat. In a war, in a revolution, I'm not that much use to some things. But I'm an artist- and when I can no longer hide and entertain myself with purposeless artistic stuff, my art becomes my weapon, and the harder I work the better a weapon it becomes. It's my only recourse.

    So, I view all forms of p2p as samizdat- on the one hand, organizations like the RIAA consider they have ownership of a lot of art and their grounds for suppressing its communication is on the grounds that it's their property. It's important to remember that the government can consider art's content as grounds for suppressing it- we're 90% there already. At that point, p2p (including streaming) can be the only method for suppressed ideas to get a hearing. Doesn't mean the ideas will all be good or worthy- but to somebody expressing ideas in danger of being suppressed, p2p is hugely important.

    Like me. [ampcast.com] And I could go farther- and may have to if my conscience so demands, and it comes around with a song that needs to be heard.

    So, more p2p, please! :D

    Chris Johnson

  • so I went to his site and read his "hey you just have to know sockets" promise. Uh uh. The code is FULL of win32isms. Little things like the slash going the wrong way in #includes, bigger things like no #ifdefs around winsock code. Probably a good few days work with testing. It is GPL and he is willing to accept help though. Just be prepared for the worst (-:

  • multicast? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As an aside, can anyone explain what happened to IP multicast technologies on the internet router hardware level? They've kind of been pushed to the side with the whole P2P thing, when they could have been a much better solution to problems like streaming music and video.
    • IP multicast only works if it's enabled on all routers between the server and the client. Since most routers don't support multicast, no one uses it. Since no one uses it, most routers don't support it. Catch-22.
  • Be sure to drop by the Streamer Forums [streamerp2p.net] and tell us what's on your mind.

  • I agree (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    --this is a fantastic effort and development, and is truly one of the ways to beat the incredible high cost of bandwith and the dumb way of doing live streaming, ie, having a central server with a huge amount of fat pipes. I just this week started playing with streamcastp2p, but from the angle of people on slow modems and for low bitrates. So far the emphasis is on high bitrates and broadband, which is successful for the people doing it. The developers there have been very friendly and helpful in trying to get me up and streaming (howdy guys). So far no joy at the lower rates-this is mostly my fault I bet-, but I am assured this is happening, I'm just a noob windows lamer coming from a mac classic background, and now a smidgen of linux, and struggling with it still, but I know it's possible. I certainly hope some of ya'all ubergeek coders can help them out getting it ported to linux and mac soon and help with ogg as well. The compression codecs(to me anyway) are a big problem, mp3 is just slap fulla uncertainty now and license fees, etc.
  • What would really make this a killer app is the ability to connect to multiple sources for the stream simultaneously. Someone above already mentioned that most users are capped at 128kbps upstream - so you'll typically get at most 64kbps if you're streaming from another user. (If you're lucky).

    I just tried Streamer, which is a really cool idea. It's got A LOT of refining to do, but it does work...But the highest quality stream I could find was 64kbps, and it sounded like shit.

    Either get support from the Winamp folks for streaming from multiple sources, or create your own built in player.
    I suppose there would be issues with sync-ing the multiple sources - but nothing that couldn't be overcome (buffer all the streams until the slowest one catches up)

    -CySurflex

  • How many wonderful peer to peer systems are just pale imatations of MBONE?

    IF ISPs get their act together and switch on MBONE then broadband users will have their killer app. Like OO and GUI do we have to wait twenty years for this technology to be widespread?
  • Except for Great Britain. According to ISO 9166 and Internet reality
    Great Britain's toplevel domain should be _gb_. Instead, Great Britain
    and Nortern Ireland (the United Kingdom) use the toplevel domain _uk_.
    They drive on the wrong side of the road, too.
    -- PERL book (or DNS and BIND book)

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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