Indy: Auto-Discover Free Music to Download

Luyi Chen writes "Indy is a free p2p music download system, which is a new way for independent musicians to find their listerners. From Buzzsonic News, "Indy uses collaborative filtering, a system similar to that used by Amazon to recommend books, etc, to prospective buyers, to learn about your musical preferences in relation to other Indy users." The author of Indy is also the creator of the Open Source P2P platforms Freenet." (That would be Ian Clarke.)

RIAA

How long until people start using this as a way to transfer non-independent songs?
That, and after that, how long would it take the RIAA shuts it down?

Re:RIAA

Does it matter? You could come out with a new-fangled widget and say "How long until the stoners figure out a way to smoke pot out of this?"

Who cares??? It's primary use is, and probably will be for the forseeable future, sharing of indy music. Besides, since when has the RIAA shut down anything? Their M.O. is lawsuits, and you can't sue if there is no traffic going.

Re:RIAA

Maybe they should just shut it down right now. Clearly, "Indy" "artists" are cutting into their members' sales by producing music that is luring away members of the teenage demographic target market and does not generate profit for... Anyone? This erosion of the teenage demographic's core values of purchasing and consuming represents a serious threat to member record labels, enterprise at large, America and the entire world! Nefarious uses of a so-called P2P "sharing" scheme are of secondary concern.

SAVE THE MUSIC! Share your favorite music by buying it for a friend!

Re:RIAA

I think they should do something like having the artists register which songs they are distributing. There then could be a master list of all available songs that the user side would look to to see if the song they are downloading is supposed to be on the network. It would also be a good idea to make it so that users cannot add files to the network. Probably there's a much better way of doing this that might already be imped, but that's just the concept that I was thinking about.

Re:RIAA

How long until people start using this as a way to transfer non-independent songs?
That, and after that, how long would it take the RIAA shuts it down?

Furthurnet.net has been supplying free artist authorized live recordings through p2p quite successfully for several years. They use a band whitelist, but with a supportive community it's kept pretty clean. And why wouldn't it be? We know we've got a good thing going, why would the majority risk losing it?

Amazing!

The results show that the two most recommended "indy" artists are Green Day and 50 Cent! Never saw that one coming.

Wrong...

listerners.

I believe the correct spelling is list-turners. When with the editors learn? SIGH.

Finally..

I've been predicting the rise of indy music for quite some time now, and I believe this is a great tool that will further the movement. The state of the music industry and its bastardization of the art of music is in dire straits, and I believe it is only a matter of time before listeners will no longer be able to be "brainwashed" into listening to cookie cutter music.

Hooray!

Re:Finally.. - Like indy music, try Weed

WeedShare [weedshare.com] is my current favorite way to find new music.

I think it's actually a brilliant way to distribute and promote music. You get three free plays of each track you download. If you decide to purchase it, you can put it on three PCs, burn it, put it on a portable device and even share it with someone else as long as it remains in the original file format.

I just looked at their site [weedshare.com] and now it looks like they will give you $5 to buy music with for creating a free account. As far as I know, they've never had a sub fee. You just buy the tracks.

Pricing is totally up to the artist. I've seen tracks as low as a qaurter, but most are right around a buck.

Now for the "different" part. The artist always gets 50% of the track price. 15% goes to Weed and the balance is split up among the people who distributed the file. This is fucking brilliant, you can actually make some money by sharing someone else's music.

Check it out here [weedshare.com].

BTW- if you're an artist, they tell you how to get your music in their system. Sweet.

meh

"Clarke is also the designer of Dijjer, a distributed P2P web cache, meant to reduce the bandwidth load on slashdotted websites." - From wikipedia

http://www.indy.tv/ [www.indy.tv] is already not responding :\

Since we all know...

...that this will eventually house RIAA music, why doesn't this, or any new p2p, encrypt the data?

Re:Since we all know...

why doesn't this, or any new p2p, encrypt the data?

That might slow them down a bit by preventing network sniffing, but the Powers That Be would just dummy out clients to act like client software and get the same information. Unless you went private, they'd still be able to see what you were sharing.

Heck, that might be what they are doing now. It'd be faster than grep-ing through network logs...

WOOH!!!

At leat this software is being created with good intentions. I'll be sad to see the RIAA take it out. :/

Is it honest?

What I mean is if no one wants to listen to an artist's music, will it tell that artist, "I'm sorry but you suck, have a nice day". Or will it instead find pity listeners.

iRate

This sounds pretty similar to iRate [sourceforge.net] which is a front end for downloading freely available songs from artist web pages and letting you rate them which in turns find more songs to download.

It seemed like a good idea but the interface was annoying enough that I gave up using it when I tried it out several months ago. Hopefully this project can take the idea and run with it and couple it with an interface that's more flexible.

Indy is based on Irate..

Indy is based on Irate.. see Ian Clarks page [locut.us]

System similar to that used by Amazon

People who didn't buy Death Cab for Cutie also recommended anything by Elliot Smith.

Sounds interesting

Apparently, the article is already slashdotted, so you'll have to forgive me for following tradition and not R(ing)TFA, but I have to say, I'd love to get my hands on this.

I use iTunes quite a bit (yes, in conjunction with Jhymn so I can listen to the music I buy on the CDMP3 player in my car), and while I appreciate iTMS' decent selection of indie and less-known bands, I have to say that their suggestion system sucks.

I find most iMixes to be abhorrently bad, and iTMS' recommendations as to what other users bought are, quite frankly, nuts. I'll be looking at an indie rock/screamo band (like Sparta), and I'm getting recommendations to buy, and I'm not kidding, opera, elevator muzak, and some christian metal. What the hell?

Hopefully, Indie will work a bit better than that. Can't wait to try it out - I'm running out of suggestions on Gnoosic and Music Plasma. ;)

Re:Sounds interesting

I'd love to get my hands on this.

So would I.

Unfortunately, I got through, and its only available for Windows. No Linux or Mac support. Bleh.

~Rebecca

Encrypted?

Please tell me it is an encrypted P2P network. A legal application of P2P technology concealing the participants is sorely needed to finally stop the bullshit arguments that a) only criminals encrypt and b) P2P is only used for illegal purposes.

Local paper has some free download music

it's at NW Source [nwsource.com].

Haven't used it much, as too many of my friends are musicians, so I mostly buy the CDs direct from them at shows or at the local Sonic Boom that gives local indie musicians a higher cut on CD sales.

Yet another garage band site

There are already too many sites with free music by bands that suck. [soundclick.com] Endless archives of bad techno. "Collaborative filtering" won't help if the content isn't there.

And why not just use a web site? What does "peer to peer" add, except inefficiency?

And..

And its slashdoted, when will the madness stop.

How about Indy Movies and Videos

I would love to see something like this for indy short films and flash movies. You could input your favorite hollywood movies and get a list of the best small independant films or videos that are in that same genre. Think it would work?

Compared to Gnomoradio?

Can an Indy contributor or user compare it to Gnomoradio [gnomoradio.org] or other prior work in this area?

Audioscrobbler

I have found the implementation at http://www.audioscrobbler.com great for finding new music, no P2P attached.

looks like an ipod/ buggy/ submit your music

I submitted this monday, so was surprised to see it today. That aside.

This article [weblogsinc.com] has a review of the player. Not ready from prime time software buat a great idea though. As another poster pointed it its based on the open source Irate software [locut.us].
It also looks like an ipod shuffle sideways with a screen.

When the page is done with its slashdotting, you can submit your music [indy.tv] to the indy page

This is the reason that the RIAA...

Wants away with P2P, not the "pirating" as pirating is a part of marketing to your stuff well known...
They can't stand other distributors because that would really mean the end.
Even the richest companies can go down, mainly because lack of daily revenue can cost millions a day.

I hope the indies out there in the world will be in high numbers and pluriform to keep off the RIAA.
I for one wish them all success in the world.

It won't work...

just like Freenet.

Good idea, bad implementation.

Doh!

I think I remember the Indy site suggesting that perhaps it's a bad idea to post to /. because server-side Indy shuts up shop and goes home if the traffic gets too heavy.

So what's the first thing that someone does?

I suggest: if this interests you, imagine you are Ethernet. You've just had a collision. Put a todo item in your list, with a random-ish number of days until you do it, then try again. That should spread the load.

Sounds like iRate

Check out iRate.sourceforge.net. Sounds like a vaguely similiar idea....

Site text

Indy is a music discovery program that learns what you like, and plays more of it. And it's free.

Indy makes it easy for you to find great new independent music. Just download Indy and double-click: as it plays songs, you rate what you hear. Indy quickly learns what you like and gets really smart about sending you more music you'll like. Let Indy help you find your place in the collective conciousness as you help other people find theirs.

DOWNLOAD NOW - Windows 98/2000/XP

Latest News
19th April, 2005, Build 3 Released - Read more...

Why Indy Rocks
You aren't just a target market - Indy can help you find your own path to the music you like. There are tons of great bands out there that don't have big labels promoting them; Indy helps you find them. And once Indy downloads a track, you can add it to your music collection, listen to it whenever and wherever you want. For musicians, Indy gives you a chance to reach a whole new audience that's excited about what you're playing. Best of all, it's free for everyone!

How Indy Works
Indy uses an advanced collaborative filtering system to predict what kind of music you'll enjoy hearing. As you rate songs, Indy finds out what you do and don't like. It compares your preferences with the ratings of all the other Indy users. For example, if you rate a song highly, and another user also likes the same song, Indy guesses that you'd probably like other music that they enjoyed. As you rate more songs, Indy will gets better and better at picking songs that you'll really enjoy.

Indy contains no adware or spyware.

Back in The Day

MP3.com had a similar setup and there was a lot of stuff on there that completely sucked, but there were some good bands too. If you were willing to poke around in the categories a bit you could find some real gems (I personally was a big fan of Gossamer.) All in all it was about the same level of crapshoot as going to a music store that lets you listen to CDs before buying and much less of one than going to a music store that doesn't. And of course a CD from mp3.com was usually about half the price of one from the music store. I thought that was a great business plan but I haven't been back to them since their legal troubles. Lately I just listen to the old CD collection and maybe add a new CD about once every two or three years. I guess the Industry's shannagans(sp?) has just burned me out on music in general...

Media Distribution

We were concerned that even with all of the advancements with online media in the past few years, it was still pretty difficult just to find new independent music that you liked.
It sounds like all the elements have finally come together for this kind of program. This kind of software could be used one day to share other independantly produced media - ie books, movies, and really fancy flash stuff :). Basically whatever we can produce for the medium can be shared and evaluated by others, ideally with cream floating to top.
The article also mentions this is based on iRate [sourceforge.net] with a cleaner interface.

iTunes

FWIW, and I guess this could be considered a shameless plug, but I really do like it, I have found lots of good stuff via the radio links in iTunes. Indy Pop Rocks!, Radioparadise, and all the DI.fm. Yes, there is also lots of RIAA crap available on other stations offered.

first rule of indy, don't tell slashdot.

From Ian Clarke's blog [locut.us]


Check it out here, let me know what you think (PS. the website will shut down automatically if it starts getting too many hits, so tell your friends, but don't tell /. ;-).

linux version

Where is the Linux version of Indy ?

So let me get this straight...

This is a p2p service focussed mostly on a genre of music in which your status raises with your obscurity? So in effect by joining this service Indy artists are "selling out"...

Not only are they using p2p ...

but they also are using a technology that Amazon uses.

They are just trying to provoke IP lawyers.

As an independent musician, this is excellent!

We've been looking for something like this for a while now. Up until now we've been using MySpace [myspace.com], but it's kind of clunky and not very band-centric. This will no-doubt be an invaluable tool for us! Our music is also available through our website [lykachamp.com] but that doesn't seem to be nearly as effective a means of reaching out to people who otherwise wouldn't have heard of us.

Plugins?

Instead of a separate program/interface, why can't we have a plugin for winamp or wmp or something? I'd love for a way to find new music, but browsing shoutcast and its billion and a half techno stations that don't interest me is a pain in the butt. Plus I don't necessarily want to be limited to just indy rock music...I'd like to be exposed to new or underground rap/hiphop, rock, maybe even country, who knows? But I'd also like to not have to download a new media player for all of these.

Indie Music

I always thought it was Indie - as in Independent... My favorite music site of the moment is Last.FM [www.last.fm]. It's a streaming service, and they ask for a small donation, but the beauty of it is that they match your preferences with others who have similar tastes, (using Audioscrobbler [audioscrobbler.com])so you can listen to new music that you might not otherwise hear...

I'd love to submit my music to give away

But all of the links, including the "how to submit your music" link, return 404 errors. Sounds like they really got it together over there.

Audioscrobbler?

I think Audioscrobbler [audioscrobbler.com] works pretty well for this kind of thing. No intrusive 'rating system'. No isolated file downloading network (Gnomoradio, iRate) to divide the potential pool of artists. Just download a plugin and play the music you would play anyway. Go to sites like 3hive [3hive.com] for freely available indie tracks and check your recommendations [audioscrobbler.com] every so often. Simple.

Discovering music: Audioscrobbler

IMO the best way to discover new music is with AudioScrobbler [audioscrobbler.com]. You install a plugin in your favorite audio player and it records your musical habits. Beyond WinAmp, iTunes, and Windows Media Player, here are open source plugins for xmms, amarok and other linux players.

The pro of this system is that their recomendations are based in what you really hear. It won't count that bad albums you have in your hd but just heard once.

The problem is that it looks like they don't have a very smart algorithm for discovering music. I'm starting to build my musical profile and they just recommended me famous musicians. What is really fun is to browse your network of people with similar tastes.

I alson believe they are having some problems with their servers, since some features, like the group charts, aren't working.

I'm not affiliated with them, but it is a really cool system.

Clinko Music...

My site does collaborative filtering for Music [clinko.com] and Movies [clinko.com].

Granted this is sorta spammy, but I think that the Music part of my site has some really good recommendations, especially for indy artists...

Sigh, download application.

Wish this was implemented server side with web access and downloads so that everyone could use it.

Clarke was begging to be slashdot..

On Ian's last blog entry he wrote:

Check it out here, let me know what you think (PS. the website will shut down automatically if it starts getting too many hits, so tell your friends, but don't tell /. ;-).

Classical? No seriously!

One problem I often have with some of the indy sites is that a large portion of the music is rock, punk, electronic and their derivatives. I don't mind that so much when that's what I'm looking for but I have always wanted a good source for indy classical musicians. Mp3.com was ok but of course there was a lot of crap to weed through. Magnatune is a good site (although it's not p2p) but again not a ton of classical artists represented.

It seems to me there's plenty of unheard violinists, pianists and even small chamber orchestras just playing for weddings and bah mitzvas and many of them are quite talented. Ok so maybe I'm the only one who's interested in this but it would be nice to find.

Download mirror?

Can somebody that has already downloaded the client put it up on a mirror somewhere?

Please?

The Problem with Collaborative Filtering

It only really works for people attached to a single genre. I'm in the minority of people because I listen to just about anything but rap - and there are exceptions there as well. So if I click on Portishead, I'll get a bunch of acid jazz lookalikes, but when I click on Raymond James it'll probably get confused and kick me over to bluegrass, which would be swell...but Wind River is not folk.

Only for Windows

No program to download for any other OS. From the FAQ:When will Indy be available for operating systems other than Windows?
Our Mac and Linux versions of Indy will be ready for summer 2005.

Sounds like iRate Radio

I used irate radio a while back, and it worked pretty well, I burned a couple CD's of free, legal music. It gives you some songs, you rate them on a scale of 1 to 5, and it recommends some more based on those ratings.
See the link: http://www.irateradio.com/ [irateradio.com]

Virus Found In Installer

I just downloaded Indy, AVG Free edition detected "Trojan Horse Downloader.Istbar.8" in the installer!!

AVG detected a trojan

I downloaded it, and AVG detected it's got the trojan called downloader.lstbar, or something like that??

Re:Who cares?

yes because the nsyncs and britney spears of the world are super talented

(yeah i know you're a troll, but i just like to bash nsync and britney =P)