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Media Music

Public Radio Exchange Site Launches 106

Posted by simoniker from the punk-in-drublic dept.
TheSync writes "The Public Radio Exchange web site has opened its doors. Radio show producers can sign up to upload programming for peer-review and electronic distribution to public radio stations that like the content. Avid listeners can sign up (for free) to listen and review potential programming. PRX just received a $1.5 million grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and they are looking for a summer intern in Boston."
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Public Radio Exchange Site Launches More

Public Radio Exchange Site Launches

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  • I wonder . . . (Score:3, Insightful)

    by base3 ( 539820 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:43PM (#9422373)
    . . . if this will use a DRM laden, proprietary format like NPR does. Am I the only one that sees something wrong with donation and tax-subsidized radio being locked up in these sorts of formats?

    • Re:I wonder . . . (Score:4, Interesting)

      by the_2nd_coming ( 444906 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:48PM (#9422446) Homepage
      I'm sad that they do not use Quicktime. but I am sure you want Ogg or something like that.

    • Re:I wonder . . . (Score:5, Funny)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:50PM (#9422459)
      Am I the only one that sees something wrong with donation and tax-subsidized radio being locked up in these sorts of formats?

      No! For God's sake boy! What are you thinking?! Just because you pay for it either directly or indirectly doesn't mean you should have free access to the content.

      Remember, that would be communist.

      • Communist? (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Why, in Soviet Russia, digital rights manage YOU!

        Oh wait. It's like that here, too.
      • the current & archived content of is freely available. you just need to live with the use of their freely-provided client. Don't like the client? well, that might suck. But they're hardly abusing you.

    • Re:I wonder . . . (Score:4, Funny)

      by Mikkeles ( 698461 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:56PM (#9422522)
      'Avid listeners can sign up (for free) to listen and review potential programming.'

      So: with mods this is /Radio?

    • Re:I wonder . . . (Score:5, Interesting)

      by riptide_dot ( 759229 ) * on Monday June 14, 2004 @02:05PM (#9422608)
      What timing. Wired just had an article [wired.com] on Friday about the RIAA warning that digital radio needs to have DRM built in or it "could lead to unfettered song copying".

      I know it's not exactly the same thing, but what would happen if a garage band uploaded their song to the PRX website and then later signed a contract with the RIAA? What would happen to that song? Would it still be allowed to be played on PRX type sites?

      I imagine that the contract would spell stuff like this out for the band and the RIAA, but what about the PRX that already had a copy of it? How would the contract apply to them?
    • Whoopie! I'd love to listen to a stream, but it's in .ram format. I wouldn't install RealPlayer if you held my bare feat to hot coals.

      Please, sir, may we have our freely-available and donation/tax-funded audio in format that doesn't cotton to a giant media corporation, THANKS SO MUCH?

      Dammit.

      • You don't need to install realplayer if you use windows. Media player classic [sourceforge.net] with real alternative works with this site, I just tried it.

        Sites hosting real alternative seem to come and go. This link [free-codecs.com] looks legit though I havn't tried it. I'm really cautious about exe's from the web these days.

        Quicktime alternative is also worth getting. On one computer I had to
        experiment with the directx settings to get it to play video properly.
    • Real audio was a mature technology when they (NPR) first signed on for their service. It has served them well. If you want them to consider free alternatives, make a presentation to them.

      Only a small fraction of the total revenues of NPR comes from the government. I bet we spend more tax dollars for bush's monthly campaigning on Air Force One than the NPR annual budget.

      • Real audio was a mature technology when they (NPR) first signed on for their service. It has served them well. If you want them to consider free alternatives, make a presentation to them.

        Exactly. Look at what happened with Car Talk [cartalk.com] (story one [slashdot.org], story two [slashdot.org]). Click & Clack didn't like the way that Real tries to abuse their users either, so they reluctantly tried switching to Windows Media instead, knowing that this solution wasn't much better. After getting lots of complaints, they switched back to Real,

  • Clear Channel Dropped Stern.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by artlu ( 265391 ) <artluNO@SPAMartlu.net> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:44PM (#9422393) Homepage Journal
    Clear Channel dropped Howard Stern from my local radio stations. I used to listen every morning while getting ready at home. Maybe we can do live streams of radio from all over the country via this protocol, and I can get through Clear Channel's "indecency measures."

    GroupShares.com [groupshares.com]
    • Unfortunately Howard isn't about to allow his show to be given out free... but I know how you feel. Q107 in Toronto yanked him off the air a few years back. Sometimes I can pick it up off a buffalo station..

      BTW If you're in Florida... another station picked him up there.

    • Re:Clear Channel Dropped Stern.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:52PM (#9422488)
      and I can get through ClearChannel's "indecency measures."

      Please don't be confused. As much as I despise ClearChannel and what they have done to radio it isn't ALL good 'ol Red's fault.

      Remember what government agency that shouldn't have power over "decency" does and what they made CC do.

  • Huh. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:46PM (#9422419)
    This post seems a little too late. I work at a public radio station in ohio and have been using PRX for about 5 months or so now. I wonder why it took so long for this to be posted.

  • intern application requirements (Score:3, Funny)

    by Doomie ( 696580 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:47PM (#9422432) Homepage
    The application should contain

    "3) A suggestion on where Site Editor Brendan Greeley should live in Boston. He just moved here and needs an apartment."

    Funny ;-)

  • Why Did it Take So Long? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14, 2004 @02:04PM (#9422604)
    I have been working for the company for past half a year and you finally notice us? Damn...!

  • Online Radio Content? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fastdecade ( 179638 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @02:07PM (#9422628)
    A bit OT, but are there any indexes or search engines for online radio content?

    Seems to me online radio once had a lot of potential, maybe still does, but has gone nowhere in the past few years. I thought it would pick up with every man and his dog carrying an MP3 player, but apparently not.

  • Summer Intern position (Score:4, Funny)

    by AgentPhunk ( 571249 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @02:25PM (#9422794)
    From their site:

    Will introduce you to the high-powered, creatively satisfying, poorly compensated world of public radio. May compensate you. May also not compensate you. Will provide you with an immediate list of marginally interesting things to do, a list that will grow exponentially more interesting as we discover how competent you are. Will offer exposure to people who are famous, or at least as famous as you can be if you got famous by being on public radio.

    Subsitute /public radio/ with /your job here/

    Hey, at least they're honest.

  • Yes but more importantly can you say fuck, shit or bugger?

  • Nothing quite new (Score:4, Informative)

    by Platinum Dragon ( 34829 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @02:26PM (#9422801) Journal
    Hard-left radio stations have been using the A-Infos Radio Project [radio4all.net] and the IMC Radio Project [indymedia.org] for some time to distribute content. The quality of the productions range from excellent to useless, much like anything else. The productions are almost all politically-oriented, so not having read the article (a grand Slashdot tradition), I don't know if PRX also carries a larger proportion of music and PSAs.
  • Avid listeners can sign up (for free) to listen and review potential programming.

    I've seen a lot of comparisons to NPR, but from the description in the news bit (I can't load the prx.com website for some reason), it seems to run with a philosophy a bit more comparable to Pacifica [pacifica.org] - a public radio foundation that is run with active participation from listeners. With the level of listener involvement apparently available, I can't really see the NPR comparison.

  • bout time (Score:5, Informative)

    by akb ( 39826 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @02:31PM (#9422856)
    Radio4all [radio4all.net] and Indymedia [indymedia.org] have been providing space to upload radio programs for years. And they don't even charge stations to download the shows.

    I would estimate the yearly expenses of those projects to be an order of magnititude less than $1.5m. Oneworld Radio [oneworld.net] also offers upload space for programs and is networked internationally. I would guess their costs are a bit less than $1.5m but in a similar ballpark.
  • i'm having trouble finding information on whether they allow mostly-music pieces or if the site is geared mostly towards talk.

    i guess they're not going for the mixtape-trading aspect.
  • Finally we have an outlet by which we can mod those crap bands down into the center of the earth, where they will melt and contribute to plate tectonics. I am assuming that anyone who listens will have some kinda e-mail access to the various groups beaming music around, surely they'll want to collect some consumer data.

  • I want... (Score:4)

    by Niles_Stonne ( 105949 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @02:47PM (#9422986) Homepage

    Slashdot Radio!

    (Geeks in Space)

  • > Radio show producers can sign up to upload programming for peer-review

    How about letting us peer-review their lobbying efforts [npr.org]? For now, I'm voting with my (lack of) dollars.

  • ...now that you'll have to make your application stand out among 5000 resumes. It's hard enough to get internships these days without them getting slashdotted.

  • Coupla responses from PRX site editor (Score:4, Informative)

    by brendangreeley ( 788149 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @03:44PM (#9423443)
    While our tech guys are desperately trying to deal with a spike in slashdot-driven traffic, I'm going to try to answer some questions and dispel some rumors.

    1. PRX does not distribute music. As you all know, this is a sticky subject and thus conveniently outside of our brief.

    2. As befits a publicly-funded site, anyone [prx.org] can listen to pieces and offer a review. We encourage it. Like the great Soviet enterprise we are, we demand it. Submit.

    3. It is possible to believe strongly in both public radio and the free market. They are not mutually exclusive, nor is public broadcasting the sole province of liberals [wnyc.org].

    4. PRX is not Internet radio. We use a web platform to allow nonprofit radio stations to browse for content that they can license, download and broadcast.

    5. We're in the midst of rethinking how parts of the site work, particularly the search function and reviews/moderation. We welcome comments. The relationship between the popular vote and the judiciary may or may not be germane to this discussion but hey, it's your Constitution too.

  • If there is a Bob,Stang will upload old subgenius radio hours.This MUST OCCUR!

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