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Media Software

Oboe Offers Portable Playlist 105

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-need-more-pervasive-internet-access dept.
Chiggers writes to tell us that Mad Penguin has an interesting look at Oboe, the new music service from MP3Tunes. For a monthly fee Oboe allows you unlimited space to create a cross-platform music playlist available anywhere you have an internet connection via their AJAX-enabled GUI. The audio player still needs a little work but overall it is an interesting idea.
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Oboe Offers Portable Playlist

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  • Two sides (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Knight Thrasher ( 766792 ) * on Monday January 23, 2006 @04:41PM (#14542707) Journal
    This is an interesting idea. For those of us with nazi-port-blocking ISP's, who can't just open a secure server from home, this would be nice.

    However, I see mucho problemos in this sites future. In short, I'll summarize them all into 4 letters:

    RIAA.

    • Re:Two sides (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rwven ( 663186 )
      i'm not sure that's going to be a problem. There's nothing illegal about storing and accessing your own music online. (as long as only YOU can access it...) Honestly I would see the problem being the usage of their standard locker playlist idea of linking to other sites streams. A lot of sites rely on the ads that display in a special window while listening to their stream...and this does away with that. Uploading your own music to store and play from a third party site shouldn't be considered illegal.

    • Re:Two sides (Score:2, Informative)

      by chris macura ( 899109 )
      I'm not sure the RIAA is going to be such a big problem.

      http://www.radioblogclub.com/ [radioblogclub.com] for example offers alot of pop music for free: all you need is a browser with flash. There are advertisements, granted, but otherwise, there doesn't seem to be any catch.

      I'm not sure how they make money, and how they keep the *AA's happy, but they're doing it. So I don't think Oboe will have too much problems.
    • I'm being pedantic but it's "muchas problemas", as in: "Los gringos tienen muchas problemas con espanol"

  • tin hat on! (Score:4, Funny)

    by kalpol ( 714519 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @04:43PM (#14542723)
    1. Create MP3 storage service

    2. Wait, rubbing hands and cackling evilly, for everyone to upload their pirated music.

    3. Show up at the door and demand to see the CDs the music came from...in fact, forget the CD, just sue.

    4. ???

    5. Profit!!
    • They should protect their customers

      1. Offshore the servers.

      2. Use billion-bits encryption (something that is illegal in the US)

      3. Say to the court "We don't really have any data of the users. Here are copies of ours servers, good luck with them", so they are in the safe side too.

      But, nah, you are right. I don't think they are doing anything of this.

  • My.mp3.com? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jwilcox154 ( 469038 )
    Isn't this similar to the service that mp3.com provided and got into trouble over? If I recall correctly, because mp3.com provided the same service, Vivendi-Universal got to buy them out at a discount price.

    • Re:My.mp3.com? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dotpavan ( 829804 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @04:48PM (#14542766) Homepage
      this mp3tunes.com is brought to you by the same people that were behind mp3.com
      • this mp3tunes.com is brought to you by the same people that were behind mp3.com...which means someday they will sell out to a huge corporate conglomorate, and the website along with your music will just disappear without warning. Sounds great. Sign me up.
        But seriously, until I can get it in my car...you can't say "anywhere".

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The mp3.com service didn't actually upload your audio. It just checked to see if you had the CD in the drive, then it linked you to their copy they had already made on their server. That was why they got shut down -- the initial, unauthorized copy on the server. The new Music Locker supposedly physically uploads all of your files to your own storage space. Think of it as purchasing a combination of online storage and a media streamer.
    • Last.fm [www.last.fm] do it in reverse in that they play you back *their* legally owned MP3s based on your playlist. They're licensed as a radio station I believe, but allow you to effectively choose your own playlist. You need to use their player, but it's open source, BSD licensed and runs on Windows/Mac/Linux.

      Best of both worlds, 100% legal, and untouchable (especially since they're UK based so the RIAA can't touch them).

      Bob

  • grab an old machine and slap linux on it (Score:5, Informative)

    by aurelito ( 566884 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @04:45PM (#14542736)
    ampache [ampache.org] can do this:
    http://www.ampache.org/ [ampache.org]

    kplaylist [kplaylist.net] is a bit more lightweight (i use it):
    http://kplaylist.net/ [kplaylist.net]

    jinzora [jinzora.org] is a bloat beast, but a nice one at that:
    http://www.jinzora.org/ [jinzora.org]

  • Filesize limitations (Score:3, Funny)

    by thaerin ( 937575 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @04:45PM (#14542741)
    20 MB audio file limit per song

    So I'm guessing that means I won't be able to take some extended Iron Butterfly tracks with me then?

  • online radio? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dotpavan ( 829804 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @04:46PM (#14542747) Homepage
    how different is this from online radio? I could customize my station, pay a small charge (say for Yahoo music) and get to rent most of the artists! and I dont need to upload (imagine gigs of upload) anything nor worry about their servers.

    anything new here? except for that I might have to spend some time customizing my playlist on my radio, but it sure is shorter than uploading

    byw this Robertson (CEO/prez) is the same guy behind Linspire.

    • I don't know about what you listen to, but much of my music is kind of hard to find on Yahoo! or iTunes. Especially local bands. Also when you rent an artists music you can no longer play it after you stop the monthly fees. Here if you pull out you still have your entire music collection (and maybe it will work as a backup in case you have a fire/drive failure/flood/wraith of God/etc.) and the only thing you lose is the ability to stream it.
    • how different is this from online radio? I could customize my station, pay a small charge (say for Yahoo music) and get to rent most of the artists! and I dont need to upload (imagine gigs of upload) anything nor worry about their servers.

      As long as all your music is relativly mainstream...

      On the other hand, I just searched ITMS for 4 of my favorite bands, and was 0 for 4.

      Deadbillys, Black Monday (a /. reader's band!), Luck of the Draw and Logos Eye. Sure, they're all local and fairly small, but AFAIK, they

  • MP3 webs (Score:4, Informative)

    by Life700MB ( 930032 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @04:46PM (#14542756)

    If you're into music playlists webs you really have to check Pandora [pandora.com], a great page that creates playlists based on genetic algorithms that relate an entire collection of songs to the one you describe as your favourite.

    --
    Superb hosting [tinyurl.com] 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95
    • If you're into music playlists webs
      That's the problem with accepting summaries under poor titles, you get tons of off-topic posts from people who didn't RTFA...
    • Same idea, multiplatform (yes, Linux), open and more mature. I'm not trying to knock Pandora, but LastFM (who is an off-shoot of the Audioscrobbler project formerly reported here [slashdot.org]) has a much, much larger database of well known and extremely hard to find music. Along with artist decriptions, previews and amazon links to buy its a nicely designed, decently planned out service (although I'd prefer if they sold the tracks themselves or partnered emusic.com style, but hey, I'm impatient like that).

      I spend a go
    • Pandora with an OBOE in her box...
  • Create a small portable device with either a hard drive or flash storage, a battery, and maybe a screen that displays the song title, album name, artist name, and album art. That way people could bring their playlists anywhere, even if they are behind facist firewalls or even (gasp) away from a computer.

    Oh wait, I seem to have one right here. It's called "Photo iPod 60Gb". Come to think of it, I think my wife has one too - hers is called "iPod Mini 4Gb".
    • I love the way people who don't have a need for some product or service love to talk about how little they need it on slashdot! It makes such a refreshing change from the people who, when they realize they are not the target market, say nothing, or even occasionally make some sort of insightful or interesting comment. Slashdot is getting too intellectual for me, and I'd like to see more pissing, whining, bitching, moaning, and complaining.
      • Slashdot is getting too intellectual for me, and I'd like to see more pissing, whining, bitching, moaning, and complaining.

        There's always fark, somethingawful, plastic and k5. But if you really do like idiot posters, you should try browsing the imdb comments for a while.
      • Personally I like the way that Slashdot announces this amazing new service that is exactly like 47 previous announcements of previous implementations of the same idea, most of which failed as business models or were sued out of existance, none of which did a clear job of explaining why anybody would want such a service. Yeah, that's much better than hearing about alternatives that work and which are not going to get you sued or fired.

        Enjoy your RIAA lawsuit.

        • Yeah, that's much better than hearing about alternatives that work and which are not going to get you sued or fired.

          Storing YOUR music files and giving only YOU access to them doesn't seem like much of a lawsuit waiting to happen. Of course, storing only one copy of a song and serving it to everyone as if it were theirs could be a big problem, which is about the only way I can see them providing "unlimited" disk space.

          However, you are not seeing this story instead of "alternatives that work" - you

      • It may seem like the parent to your post was just being a smart-ass, but he actually raises a legitimate question.

        What does this service offer which you can't accomplish with greater ease by toting a personal MP3 player (such as the iPod) in your jacket pocket and/or handbag?

        Anyone who springs for an iPod can already hear their music anywhere, anytime. Who would find it better to pay a monthly fee to be able to only hear their music some places, some of the time?

        • What does this service offer which you can't accomplish with greater ease by toting a personal MP3 player (such as the iPod) in your jacket pocket and/or handbag?

          The ability to play (or otherwise access) music when you visit any web-connected computer, without having to carry anything around with you.

          Who would find it better to pay a monthly fee to be able to only hear their music some places, some of the time?

          People who don't want to carry a bunch of crap around with them, but tend to go plac

          • So, you're willing to pay a monthly fee to avoid carrying a couple ounces of gadgetry with you?

            Hey, tell you what. For $15 a month, I'll offer a service that let's you know what time it is, any time you're near a phone. That way, you don't need to worry about a wrist watch putting all that strain on your back.
            • Shit no, I have no intention of getting an iPod or using this service. The only time I need music on the go is in my car. An iPod might actually be a good way to handle that but I don't want to pay the premium, but since I'm in my car I can handle having a bunch of CDs full of mp3s...

  • Fishy (Score:1, Interesting)

    by saboola ( 655522 )
    I don't know if I would be comfortable with the idea of having all my music hosted by someone else. Obviously with local security you can only do so much, but for people that thought apple suggesting songs via itunes as a breach of privacy, having some service house your whole music collection surely shoots up the red flag and makes this thing a tasty target for the RIAA. Who needs logs when you have the whole collection.
    • their privacy statement goes like this:

      "Non-personally identifiable information MP3tunes uses non-personally identifiable information, such as your IP address and the pages that you visit on our Site, to help diagnose problems with our servers and to administer our Site and improve Site-related services and features. Your IP address and other non-personally identifiable information also may be used to gather broad demographic information and to recognize customer traffic patterns and Site usage trends. Thi

    • Not only that, but after an all-nighter or two of uploading my 5GB of MP3s, how long will these people be in business? Will the transfer even complete before they're gone? What happens to my MP3s when they are bought out by a larger fish? (Do I cede my ownership of the CDs? I've seen crazier EULA terms...)
  • I guess it's cool. Just not for me.
  • I have a great service for my music collection. It works on multiple hardware and software platforms. I can even use it in my car, without being tied to a network connection -- or monthly fee. That's right, I have a CD-RW drive. It's great! With RW discs I can burn new playlists anytime I would like. Mind you, I can't use the service anywhere, but I certainly couldn't use the online service at work either. I think these CDs are really going to take off soon. Yep, they are super fantastic. [/sarcasm]

    The id

  • muse.net (Score:3, Informative)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @04:53PM (#14542819) Homepage
    does anyone here remember muse.net, the failed startup venture started by a bunch of the original winamp guys? it seems like this is a more expensive, less open version of that....

    I still wish it took off. would have been a very convenient service...
    • We sold it to Y!.

      ian
      • ah, wow. Didn't expect you to reply to this :-)

        I hope you folks got a good price for it. It was a marvelous service while it lasted (the APIs were particularly fun to work with). It's a shame Y! never launched something equivalent......

  • O Boes! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Orrin Bloquy ( 898571 )
    How is this substantially better than Launchcast or Pandora?

    • How is this substantially better than Launchcast or Pandora?

      It is substantially different from Pandora. Users do not upload music to Pandora, nor is Pandora a playlist in the true sense of the word. For instance, you can not go back and hear a song that has just played on Pandora. You have to wait until Pandora plays it again. You can also only skip a certain number of songs per hour on any Pandora station.

      Pandora is much closer to an online radio station than it is to any type of playlist.

  • Finally! (Score:3, Funny)

    by RandoX ( 828285 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @04:55PM (#14542832)
    Nice to see the Oboe finally getting the respect it deserves!
    • Reminds me of a joke:

      What is the definition of a major second?
              Two baroque oboes playing in unison.

      Oh, you say it's a music service? Hope it fares better than two oboes playing together.... :)
    • finally? Their website says it was launched on November 30, 2005, that is hardly 2 months
    • If this really were about the Oboe, the service would:

      1. Never quite work correctly (out of tune)

      2. Would have a very small internet pipe (just like the oboe)

      3. It would be down for maintenance 4 hours a day (making reeds)

      To make matters worse, the music service would send out email each day complaining about how much maintenance they have to do.
    • Nice to see the Oboe finally getting the respect it deserves!

      Why exactly is that?
      Simply because you heard it from bunch of Chiggers who heard it from a Mad Penguin?

  • Several Problems with this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cualexander ( 576700 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @05:02PM (#14542907)
    1.) 60 Gigs of Music would take a good while to upload at 32k/sec.
    2.) This assumes you always have internet connectivity.
    3.) Just seems like a huge pain really, and for what gain?
    4.) I can do the same thing right now if I wanted to with my broadband connection.
    5.) This is more convienent than my iPod how? Cheaper in the short run maybe, but not more convienent.

    Someone needs to explain the need for this. Maybe for a small segment of the population that has internet access and a computer attached to their hip 24/7 this would work. The review says he has problems carrying around an iPod, even an iPod nano, because he would forget it.

    Come on people. I don't see how this can possible last, or take off and the capital investment involved on the company's side as far as storage and bandwith costs doesn't seem at all to be covered by $40/year?? How does the company make a profit off that? That seems a bit ridiculous to me. I'd be leery of uploading my entire collection of music to a third party. Especially one of questionable staying power. So I spend hours and hours uploading my entire collection and then what happens when it all goes down?

    Just don't think this was well thought out.
    • Actually, your last comment brought another issue to mind.

      I'd be leery of uploading my entire collection of music to a third party.

      The next question would be who is behind this company? I would bet that RIAA will pop-up and request a neat inventory of your music collection. Excuse me, that will be $xxx,xxx dollars for each song. They are electronic, so they MUST be pirated. No, I'd rather drop off a Harddrive at RIAA's door, at least they would have to plug it in to take an inventory.
    • 1.) 60 Gigs of Music would take a good while to upload at 32k/sec.
      No arguments there, except that not everybody has 60 gigs of music, particularly legal music (I only have about 10 ripped from CDs I own, and that more than meets my needs).

      2.) This assumes you always have internet connectivity.
      It assumes you always have Internet connectivity when you want to listen to your music. I'm near a computer surprisingly often throughout the day, and I always have access to broadband at those computers.

      3.) Just seem
    • My iTunes library contains over 140 Gigs of music (mostly live widespread panic, dead, phish shows).. they will let me upload 140Gb ??

  • Time waste sorting music on iPod? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by corvenus ( 931206 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @05:03PM (#14542922)
    From the FA:
    Even though the iPod Nanos and other similar MP3 players are very small, it still is a bit of a bother to have yet one more device in my brief case.
    So, how the heck am i supposed to listen to my music on my way to work with this thing? Oh right, on my laptop with an antenna! Sure. Of course, i also want to take the time to upload 35Gb worth of music on some server i'm not even sure will still be there 1 year from now. Damn right... Honestly, except for being inexpensive, i can't any advantages to subscribing to thing service instead of having an MP3 player.

  • The REAL story.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sierpinski ( 266120 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @05:13PM (#14543043)
    You know there's just going to be some guy sitting at the big 9-screen display at the company HQ watching as the hard drives fill up with music, shifting his hands in that manical way saying: "MINE! THEY'RE ALL MINE! ALL THE MUSIC I COULD EVER WANT!!! MINE!!!"

    He'll download all of it to his 500TB iPod Mega-edition and never listen to the same song twice in his life.

  • I run Slimserver [slimdevices.com] at home that accomplishes the same thing, minus having to upload all of your music to a remote site. Just create a playlist and point any player capable of streaming a URL at it and you're done.

    It also has the cool feature of being able to sync up multiple players on your LAN (using Softsqueeze [sourceforge.net] or their hardware [slimdevices.com]) for music that goes throughout your house..very cool stuff.

  • This was done 5 years ago on myplay.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by szyzyg ( 7313 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @05:27PM (#14543169)
    Well except without all the Ajax goodness - but myplay was fun while it lasted. They wanted to get in on the whole internet music scene but like everyone else they couldn't get licenses from the music business, so they let users store their music online and make it accessible wherever they went. The money ran out before the music industry started doing deals.
  • Business model: I pay them $40 a year to listen to my own MP3s? Can't quite see the must-have attraction of this. You could buy a flash MP3 player for about that much. Or burn your MP3s to a DVD to take with you for much less. Is the sock puppet involved in this?

  • Customary Historic Use (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @05:45PM (#14543363)
    Since this is not customary historic use of music, it hasn't got a chance.

  • DVD Jon worked on this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Psionicist ( 561330 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @05:45PM (#14543365)
    From DVD Jon:s blog http://nanocrew.net/2005/10/21/moved-to-san-diego/ [nanocrew.net]

    As you might have read, I've moved to San Diego. I've joined a great team at MP3tunes and will be applying my expertise to a project called Oboe. That's about all I can say at this point.

    On my way to San Diego I stopped by San Francisco. I met up with some of the people at the EFF and Seth Schoen demonstrated the research they've been doing into printers that spy on you. Unfortunately I did not have much time in San Francisco, but I did get to visit the Exploratorium.

    I will try to get back to everyone who has emailed me recently. If you haven't received a response by Monday, feel free to resend your email.

    Interesting.
  • Is there software out there that streams music to networked computers at the same time? For instance, I have a computer in each room of the house. I want all the computers playing the same thing.
  • For $60 a year, you can get music on any computer supporting WMA, plus load it onto any mp3 player supporting WMA. Of course no iPod support (thanks Apple). So for a little more you get free music, instead of just a place to store it.
  • With the PSP firmware adding streaming media client capabilities, I might be persuaded to part with some cash if they integrated with that...

    Anyone know how feasible this would be? (I've avoiding upgrading to post-2.0 firmware in order to leave open the downgrade route, so I'm not very clued-up about what's currently available...)
  • The FAQ says you can upload to a free account from your PC via their software client, once you register you find out that you can only 'sideload' from content that's already Web hosted...

  • What makes Oboe unique (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What makes Oboe unique is that you can store all of your music online and then access it from anywhere or sync it to multiple devices. There are 3 primary uses which make Oboe useful:

    1) Backup all your music. You've probably spent a lot of time digitizing your music collection and making playlists. Or maybe you've bought lots of music from iTunes store. You can very economically and easily back that up with a single mouse click using the Oboe Sync software for Mac/Win/Lin. I'm surprised to hear slashdot rea
    • I didn't read the FA, but how will they ensure it's ONLY MUSIC being uploaded? Do they have some algorithm running to sample the files? How do they encrypt the music or tag it with a token to ensure that YOU and ONLY YOU, the "storer/licensee" of the music tracks aren't going to get Oboe to blow their own oboe like a hobo on the sidewalk?

      They'd better cover their butts nicely to keep the riaa and the others from strokin' too close to them, salivating, waiting to bust into uploaders and downloaders. They'd b

  • Nothing new (Score:3, Informative)

    by danpsmith ( 922127 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @06:48PM (#14543924)

    Services like these have been around for a long time. In fact, so long that I was dissatisfied with the few existing services and decided to try my own hand at something similar for my senior seminar project.


    I'm quite sure that this service is more complicated and sophisticated and things, but I needed a simple solution for listening to music from my home PC while I was commuting to school with my laptop. I looked at existing solutions but they seemed to either be too sophisticated, not work, or cost more than I was willing to pay for such a service.


    I always thought it was a tad bit redundant to host another whole collection of MP3s when all I really wanted was to listen to my own music while away from the computer. I didn't need a lot of bandwidth to pull this off, because it was only me listening.


    My solution was a program I wrote that is basically a HTTP server modified to send playlist files containing the URLs of music, and will also zip up files if you have to get a whole album during a visit somewhere.


    I know that most broadband has not enough upload speed for a real server, but if you are just serving yourself your own files and you don't mind leaving your computer on, why not just do it that way? I noticed that the 30k/sec I get in upload speed is more than enough to stream most MP3 files without a hitch. You definitely don't need a dedicated service to accomplish these goals.

  • From the terms of service:

    You agree that you will not upload music and content, and will not request that any music or content be uploaded to your account maintained on the Site, that infringes the copyright or other intellectual property rights of any third party.

    And so on. Sounds like their big change from the "other" service they originally ran is that they're offloading the legal burden on the users -- planning to throw up their hands and say "hey, we TOLD them not to do that!" when the RIAA comes knock
  • So I always felt sort of like I had a system like this (only generally I don't build playlists on the fly because I've got it programmed for listeners). But I do like the idea of having the ability to listen to my music from any browser (most of us work at a computer now anyway) and the off-site back up is a great benifit.

    If they throw shared playlists or any kind of relational system into the mix it could be a pretty neat system.

    But personally I've got over 15 thousand mp3's (yep, most of them are paid

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