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PC Mag Reviews Mercora P2P Radio 105

Posted by michael from the all-i-hear-is-radio-gaga dept.
prostoalex writes "PC Magazine reviews Mercora peer-to-peer streaming radio. It's not a service which allows anyone to download songs, however you can listen to any of the top 20 million plus songs available on the network from more than 2000 private radiostations. Mercora supports keyword search by genre, song name or artist name, but does not allow to listen to more than four songs from the same artist to avoid copyright issues. Any Mercora user automatically becomes a broadcaster, when the app scans the drive for digital music and then suggests creating an ad-hoc Internet radiostation."
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PC Mag Reviews Mercora P2P Radio More

PC Mag Reviews Mercora P2P Radio

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  • How does this get around ASCAP the royalty fees that are causing headaches for internet radio broadcast stations?

  • Hope you've got ecclectic taste... (Score:3, Funny)

    by pedestrian crossing ( 802349 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @09:08AM (#11527323) Homepage Journal
    A random sample of music on my system would put Dead Kennedies next to Phillip Glass next to James Brown next to Keith Jarrett, etc.... Some songs just don't play well with others.

  • Too bad it's bundled with adware (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Spic ( 650131 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @09:09AM (#11527331)
    I just downloaded and installed Mercora and as soon as I did, my Microsoft Antispyware flagged Grokster as trying to install. Just a bit or warning.

  • How's this different from Live365? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, 2005 @09:10AM (#11527332)
    Live365 has done this for years, plus Live365 uses standard technology so I can listen with Linux, PalmOS or even an internet-enabled stereo.
    • Also Live365 is legally licensed, so your broadcast is covered by them (it is not free however), unlike with Mercora P2P which isn't. Mercora would only be legal if you owned the broadcasting rights to the mp3's i.e. you made them or you have all the necessary rights (probably expensive).

  • My experience (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dracil ( 732975 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @09:10AM (#11527334)
    I used it in the past. It was fun for a while, but the problem of course is bandwidth. Most home connections don't really have the bandwidth to have more than a couple people really, and so I moved on to Peercast, although the legality of this is less clear (depends on where you're at and all that). Now, if they could actually make use of the Peercast technology within Mercora, and allowed Ogg streams, they might be able to get me back.
  • Allowing users to listen to music they haven't bought? Without commercials, even? Who is paying MPAA for this? NOBODY?!??

    "Joe, is that lawyer who handled the Napster case still available? Give him a call, will ya?"
    • My guess it the ads in the client and the "ads" to buy the song from amazon are paying for the royalties. And they are paying the RIAA, not the MPAA.
    • Who is paying MPAA for this? NOBODY?!??

      I would hope not. I know the MPAA is new to this sueing customers thing, but I think they've got enough of a clue to not go that far.

    • Re:Legal? Not for long! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ripper ( 26784 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @09:43AM (#11527479)
      MPAA will get their share after Mercora has collected information on all the mp3's the users share + their IP adresses and forwarded this information to the hordes of lawyers that MPAA has harnessed for their newest try on busting mp3 distributors. You have been warned!

      • Allowing users to listen to music they haven't bought? Without commercials, even? Who is paying MPAA for this? NOBODY?!??

      As mentioned above the the company is paying fees right now. I suspect that when they reach a certain user level base, they would move to a subscription format, perhaps by having a free level at a certain bitrate, and a paid level at CD quality. Kind of like Digitallyimported.com did some time ago. I don't really see anything wrong with that - people get a decent free service, o

  • I CALL SHENNANIGANS! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Asprin ( 545477 ) <gsarnoldNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Monday January 31, 2005 @09:11AM (#11527342) Homepage Journal

    Furthermore, over the course of an hour, the service won't let you stream any more than four songs from the same artist, or any more than three from the same album. Such are the vagaries of digital-rights laws. Again, this isn't a huge problem if you're in a radio frame of mind. When you tune into the radio, you don't expect to hear song after song from the same artist.

    Clearly, this guy's never heard of ClearChannel.

  • Avoid copyright issues? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheIndividual ( 812531 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @09:13AM (#11527350) Homepage Journal
    I don't see the difference between offering an MP3 or offering a stream to allow instant realtime listening.
    Technically it is the same thing from the sender's point of view. It sends out bytes of copyrighted material. Just because the client software isn't saving those by default (think hacks, direct recording...) doesn't mean it isn't possible.
    This software will probably result in new laws which will trouble normal webradios...
    • I don't see why new laws are required. If it's illegal under current copyright law, it's illegal. If not, then it's not, so what's the problem?

      Of course, I understand that legislators (and especially politicians) generally like to be seen to be "doing something about the problem", and that making something *even more illegal* is a nice, easy way to achieve that...
      • I understand that legislators (and especially politicians) generally like to be seen to be "doing something about the problem"

        Their shareholders constituents demand no less. Unfortunately in a capitalist society, their constituents are often those that bribe them the most offer the most profit. It's more profitable to lie your way into power and then use your position to profit.

        All of those that do otherwise often can't afford the big ad-campaigns.
    • Is anyone aware of some easy utility to catch the downloads? I haven't tried Mercora yet, but that's definitly the first thing that popped to mind.

      I read the relevant webcasting law some time ago. The people at Mercora have to offer it as a "stream", but the end users can certainly make the effort to keep the broadcasts. Exactly the same way it's perfectly legal to record from regular radio.

      -
      • If you don't mind the degradation of going from digital to analog back to digital again, just connect you audio out from your sound card to the audio in, and press record.
      • There's a software called total recorder that captures anything that gets played on your computer. However there's an even easier way: some sound drivers (like my Nforce2) offer the ability to use the output of all active sound sources (e.g. Mercora) as input for any recording tool (e.g. Adobe Audition). In the case of nvidia's audio tool the input is called "stereo mix".

      • Re:Avoid copyright issues? (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        streamripper [sourceforge.net]

  • No thanks (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SlashCrunchPop ( 699733 )
    Let me be the first to say that I find this idea incredibly stupid. First of all, you are not very likely to find the song you want when you want it and there is a very slim chance that you will find a station that you would want to add to your favorites due to the random nature of the broadcasting selection process. In the end you just end up wasting a lot of your time listening to nothing and you begin to think that maybe you should just buy the CD. This smells like a RIAA sponsored project to me.

    • Re:No thanks (Score:1, Troll)

      by aussie_a ( 778472 )
      I agree. I hear the radio industry is just about ruined as well.Silly radicals.
    • Yup, if I want to listen to radio I tune in radio. Most college and indie/community stations are certianly not top 40 so you get the wierd sampling with gems.

      Personally, I'm looking at buying an old empeg or Rio-car and installing it. I can easily have music I want, listen to the talk radio I want (podcasts of good NPR shows and off the hook) and not pay for anything but the wireless connection gear. (those playstation and Xbox ethernet to wireless adapters are freaking cool. 802.11b is certianly fast
  • Good, I hope it's available for OSX so that I might use it to broadcast all the contents of the http://gnuart.net/data/musique/ [gnuart.net] directory :)

  • Listening but not downloading... heh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lanc ( 762334 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @09:30AM (#11527421)

    Erm, ever heard of tools that allow dumping streams?

    Or is the quality that bad? Then why would I listen to it?
  • ...except it doesn't spread through e-mail.

  • Sounds like a stupid idea... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joto ( 134244 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @09:53AM (#11527535)
    So basically we can now choose between 3000 random users random 10-song playlists streamed over inadequate bandwidth without the ability to find any songs beyond the typical top-40 songs, or to save them. Add to that weird claims of legality, and privacy concerns from the scanning of the harddrive, and it suddenly doesn't sound so nice anymore. Not that it did sound any nicer in the first place. Most p2p apps already suck, making it even more artificially restricted doesn't really help.
    • inadequate bandwidth

      Of 3000 random users many or most of them will be on broadband. Ample bandwidth for serving live MP3s to multiple people.

      without the ability to find any songs beyond the typical top-40 songs

      If you want to find a specific song, yeah, it would pretty much have to be top-40 to be highly likely to be currently offered. However of 3000 random users I'm sure you will be able to find plenty with various kinds of non-top-40 collections. Doing an artist or genre search will probably pull up
      • Of 3000 random users many or most of them will be on broadband. Ample bandwidth for serving live MP3s to multiple people.

        My experience of using other P2P-apps tells me otherwise. But then again, you could be right.

        However of 3000 random users I'm sure you will be able to find plenty with various kinds of non-top-40 collections. Doing an artist or genre search will probably pull up general matches, and at that point there's fair chance their other songs are similar.

        Most typical p2p-users will have lar

    • Have you tried it ?

      I am now and I like it :

      1. (near) Instant music. You don't need to wait for a download.

      2. Excellent audio quality : no "buffering" wait, until now.

      3. You can't find any song, but you can find a lot of artists.

      4. You can browse other users music like in good old napster days. Yipee. BUT each user only broadcast one song at a time so you can't listen to them. Unyipee.

      We'll see if I still like mercora in a few days.
  • and then suggests creating an ad-hoc Internet radiostation.
    Ok, but only if I get to make announcements: " aaaand nooooooooooow, a ssssspesjial request from Sophie in dorm three,...."
    • Ok, but only if I get to make announcements: " aaaand nooooooooooow, a ssssspesjial request from Sophie in dorm three,...."

      Mercora is fully Ed Sullivan compliant.
  • I just tried installing the client on my WinXP box, and the Microsoft Antispyware Beta running on it immediately detected an adware bundle (starts with a "G", I forgot the exact name) being installed. I'm not sure if it was a false alarm, but I sure wouldn't install it again! I'd rather go for Peercast, if I must.

    • Re:Adware!!!! (Score:3, Informative)

      by number11 ( 129686 )
      Microsoft Antispyware Beta running on it immediately detected an adware bundle (starts with a "G", I forgot the exact name)

      Grokster. Mercora. Compare the two. They both have the matching string "er" preceded by an "o". Yup, same thing. And after all, who knows more about insecure programs than MS?

      Yeah, it's a false alarm. Try AdAware [lavasoft.de]. Maybe eventually MS will get their antispyware program working properly, or maybe it will follow the path of Microsoft AntiVirus (remember that POS? Granted, it was

  • 20 million? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 192939495969798999 ( 58312 ) <info AT devinmoore DOT com> on Monday January 31, 2005 @10:10AM (#11527645) Homepage Journal
    There's just no way in hell they have 20 million different songs on there. We have all heard the numbers, and there are not 20 million different songs across 2000 radio stations. Even if each station had a playlist of 500 songs, which is very high, that would only be 1 million songs. I'm not even sure if there have been 20 million professionally recorded and available different songs in existence, can anyone else back me up on that?
    • It is possible if songs in languages other than English are considered.

      There are probably more of those songs than songs in English.
    • There are more than one million songs on iTunes Music Store, and if you've ever shopped there, you'll find that their catalog is quite sparse in anything other than songs that have been on the billboard charts.

      Once you consider music available from independent artists, DJs, and the various versions recorded of each song -- remixes, live versions, radio versions, album versions, etc. -- I'm guessing that iTMS may only cover 1 percent of what has been recorded in the US by real artists.
      That said, a large

  • Why, oh why, don't newsites put actual links to the product's (or company's) website when writing an article or review. News.com is bad enough, but PC Mag also does it. When you click on one of the suggested story links at the bottom you get another review of the software [pcmag.com]. They actually have an url to the website, but it's not a link, one has to copy and paste to go to the website!!

    Do these news sites want the companies to actually pay for a direct link? What is the motivation? I've had several articles on

  • If I have a live or unreleased track on my computer, will their software still broadcast it to others?

    Anyone know?
  • Message from the install :

    Some microsoft updates that mercora needs [...] are not installed [...]. Mercora is dowloading and installing the necessary updates [...].

    And then "setup_wm.exe" (windows media player) is trying to access the internet.

    What is it ? DRM ?

  • Security Issues (Score:3, Insightful)

    by yelohbird ( 658476 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @10:28AM (#11527795) Homepage

    Seems like more than one /.er has reported spyware being bundled (specifically Grokster), contrary to the PC Mag reports. Whether or not the spyware was intentionally bundled, this type of technology creates many security issues.

    Desktop search apps have recently been under much scrutiny for privacy issues, such that the content read by the apps could be revealed to outside sources. However, desktop searches could theoretically operate without a connection to the internet, which means that a simple block of the program's access to external IPs should be able to prevent this from happening.

    The whole basis of Mercora, on the other hand, is that it automatically searches the hard drive and streams the content to a public network. First off, I don't understand the business model of distributing free software to the public and then offering to pay royalties on every song broadcasted. No revenues & high costs = doom. Therefore, it appears likely that the company is operating on the premises of bundled spyware, as reported by some users. Needless to say, spyware itself creates enough privacy and security issues, but that is not even the worst of it.

    Say some kiddie hacker reverse-engineers the technology and uses it to create a worm that searches computers for sensitive document formats (e.g. *.doc, *.xls, *.pdf come to mind) and broadcasts them to the public domain? Will Mercora's parent company pay for the damages done with this kind of scenario?

    I am deeply disappointed that a reputable source like PC Mag gave this a 4/5 rating without alerting the public of the possible security issues with this technology.

    • Seems like more than one /.er has reported spyware being bundled (specifically Grokster), contrary to the PC Mag reports.
      First off, Grokster is not spyware, it is an application that comes bundled with spyware. Second, just because Microsoft's anti-spyware software identifies something as possibly being Grokster doesn't mean anything. The Microsoft software has a pattern list like virus software. It saw something in Mercora that looks similar in design to Grokster and warned the user that he might be i
  • "over the course of an hour, the service won't let you stream any more than four songs from the same artist" ...I won't become "Radio Corrs" if I use this...:-)

    Maybe I'll become "Radio Tori Amos and the Corrs"...

    I know - I'll become "Radio Transhuman"...:-)

    What do Clannad, Enya, the Corrs, Tori Amos, Enigma, Loreena McKennit, Peter Gabriel - and the Sisters of Mercy have in common?

    • >"What do Clannad, Enya, the Corrs, Tori Amos, Enigma, Loreena McKennit, Peter Gabriel - and the Sisters of Mercy have in common?" Those are the people whos songs will be on the RIAA lawsuit after Mercora scans your hard drive?
  • Why would I install spyware to scan my hard drive with the claim that it will play some stupid random selection of what it finds, with limits on content, annoying DRM, and an unclear business model that you know is more sinister than it's letting on? Services like Shoutcast (http://www.shoutcast.com/ [shoutcast.com]) have been around for years, work very well, and have no spyware or content issues that I know of. This is why I never waste my time with P2P apps.

  • Ooops - Here Are The Rules (Score:3, Informative)

    by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @11:18AM (#11528249) Homepage
    3. AUDIO PLAYING AND STREAMING
    You agree to use the Service to only play and stream audio content for which you have acquired the legitimate legal rights for use. You agree that when using the Service for audio streaming, you will not:
    Stream sound recordings that are inappropriate, profane, defamatory, obscene, indecent or unlawful
    Interfere with the Services audio selection for streaming mechanism which adheres to the public performance of sound recording guidelines of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
    Publish advance program guides or use other means to pre-announce when particular sound recordings will be streamed or the order in which they will be streamed
    Stream specific sound recordings within one hour of the request by a listener or at a time designated by the listener
    Disable any identification or technological protection information included in the sound recording (if any)
    Violate any applicable local, state, national, or international law (including without limitation the DMCA)

    I guess that takes care of that...

    If you stream your illegal MP3's - and what else do most people have (leaving out legally ripped MP3's), you're in violation of the law - and if you breathe on their software, you're in violation of the DMCA...

    Doesn't look like such fun now, does it?

  • 13. ELECTRONIC NOTICES
    You consent to Mercora providing you any information regarding the Service in electronic form. Mercora may provide such information to you via e-mail at the e-mail address you specified when you registered for the Service, by instant message to your account, or by access to a Mercora web site. As long as you access and use the Service, you will have the necessary software and hardware to receive such notices. If you do not consent to receive any notices electronically, you must discont

  • legit Streaming audio (Score:4, Informative)

    by andrewzx1 ( 832134 ) on Monday January 31, 2005 @11:23AM (#11528305) Homepage Journal
    I provide IT support for a community radio station that provides streaming audio through www.live365.com. First of all let me say that Live365 provides excellent service and hosts many, many wonderful radio stations. We pay something like $1500 for 150 simultaneous listeners at 20 kps. Which is roughly FM quality. It sounds different than FM, but roughly equivalent.

    The radio station used to archive all its programming for people who wanted to do time shifting. This was put to an end by the RIAA and the record industry. We came to a settlement with the RIAA and agreed not to their terms in order to provide any streaming at all.

    There are a lot of great radio stations streaming programming now but the RIAA put 90% of them off the air with the threat of litigation. There used to be thousands of home/hobby stations broadcasting from homes and dorms. The RIAA theatened them with litigation regarding royalties and poof they were gone. This included a lot of great college radio stations unfortunately.

    For anyone who wants to record streaming audio I highly recommend the Windows shareware program TotalRecorder. Don't know if a Linux version is in the works or not.

    - AndrewZ

    • We pay something like $1500 for 150 simultaneous listeners at 20 kps

      You're paying $1500 for a 3Mbps upstream line? I'm sure Live365 offers great services, but isn't that pricey? Any alternatives, especially something based on multicast?

    • This price is actually very attractive compared to other SA servives. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think multicast packets route very well, if at all. - AndrewZ
  • What systems do you support?
    We currently support PCs that are running Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Some might even work on some Windows 98 and ME machines but are still working through issues on these platforms.

    What, no Linux?

  • Where I work, shoutcast is blocked, so I use this instead. I don't know about spyware, that is certainly an issue I will keep an eye on.

    I feel bad for whoever tunes into my broadcasts though. Must be strange going from Tribe Called Quest to Cannibal Corpse.

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