Mandriva Linux to Offer Online Music Service

dysfirkin writes "Mandriva 2006 is to be the first Linux distro to offer built in online music service. The service will compete with the likes of emusic.com for the music business of Linux users. I have not used Mindawn before, but the service is offered in Ogg Vorbis and FLAC."

DRM

[DaHat]

Given that they likely won't use DRM with their downloads (after all, a Linux distro doing DRM would be quickly abandoned by many of its users and be excommunicated by RMS)... that would seem to mean that the major labels would not allow their songs to be put on it, counting out the majority of popular music today.

Shame.

Maybe...

[AusIV]

Maybe Apple will finally decide to port iTunes to Linux if they see that there's a market.

Been done

[Anonymous Coward]

There are already similar, browser based services that allow you to download content in Ogg or MP3. The biggest reason they're not massively popular is the same reason this won't be - no 'big name' labels.

Competition to iTunes/Napster?

[NiteShaed]

TFA tries to put this up as a competing service to iTunes/Napster, but there's a pretty large gaping hole there.....content. While it looks like an interesting service, especially for people who like unsigned/indy type releases, that's not really competing with the other services. Their customers are buying mainly releases from "mainstream" sources (the big record companies). Saying that this is serious competition to iTunes is more a delusion of grandeur than a realistic statement.

Re:Incredibly annoying popup thingy alert!

[onebuttonmouse]

Yeah allofmp3.com is damn good, I do all my music stea^H^H^Hhopping there. Seeing as I've got a Mac (well, some Macs) and I'm your basic Apple fan boy, you'd think I'd use the iTunes store, but not at 128k AAC and $0.99 I won't.

Re:Incredibly annoying popup thingy alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Doesn't mention how much this will cost..." You can look at the site and see the prices on the songs. Looks like $1.24 per song although it looks like some go lower or higher. There is one running at $3.96(akacia\The Brass Serpent).

iTunes killer? Of course not.

[whitespiral]

Some of you miss the point completely. Mandriva isn't after iTunes neck. It's trying to carve a niche market: That of Linux users. They add the other clients just to better their chances of profit. And the music offering not being the popular bands is no problem at all: Linux users aren't looking for gangsta rap, they have a brain, and use it.

Re:Incredibly annoying popup thingy alert!

[networkBoy]

" illegal as a bonus! (at least outside russia)"

I'm sorry, but that statement is not true.
There are several loopholes that exist making it legal. It may be against the spirit of the law but the letter permits it (at least in the US). The RIAA has even grudgingly admitted it (indirectally).
-nB

Re:Incredibly annoying popup thingy alert!

[swv3752]

http://allofmp3.com/ [allofmp3.com] is no more illegal than ordering a foreign produced CD.

Re:Russia MP3 sites

[swv3752]

Many banks allow you to generate one time use CC numbers. I know MBNA does. I wouldn't trust 'em with my real card either.

Re:Incredibly annoying popup thingy alert!

[swv3752]

http://allofmp3.com/ [allofmp3.com] acquired and distribute the music legally according to Russian law. This has been proven in a Russian court. A US citizen that buys music from http://allofmp3.com/ [allofmp3.com] is not breaking any copyright statutes. You are toeing the legal line, but I do not have any moral or ethical problems with it. I do have moral and ethical problems supporting companies that employ a group to commit barristry to extort money. I also have problem with these same companies buying laws that twist our copyright laws into a mockery of what they are suspose to be.

eMusic is still on of my favorites..

[msimm]

They've been in the game longer then just about anyone. Changed hands about half a dozen times and still offer fair (I pay $19.95 for 90 tracks a month, DRM free and mine to keep, play, etc forever). While I appreciate sites like Bleep they are somewhat limited in their scope (which can be a good thing) and E/M's cataloge is big enough that I end up finding a lot of music I wouldn't have found otherwise. For the big bands allofmp3.com is still a pretty good bet (not so much my thing, but good to fall back on) and they have a nice new iTunes-like (Windows) application that makes finding and buying music dangerously easy. Of course if your a 'believer' you can't fail to mention Magnatune for being probably the most moralistically upstanding label/service going. But their catalog hurts, probably proportionally.

I'll still fall back on iTune's if I have to, but the trouble of the DRM and their pricing make them my last choice. I'd love to see Last.fm do something other then partner with amazon.com. I'm too impatient to order music I just fell in love with when 90% of the time I don't have to.

602 doesn't apply

[bacchusrx]

Downloading music (from anywhere, foreign or domestic) isn't importation, so 602 does not apply. Even if 602 did apply, you would not have an exemption under 602(a)(2) because of 602(b).

Importation is the act of taking copies or phonorecords across a border. Look at the definitions of "copy" and "phonorecord" in section 101. Copies are "material objects [...] in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." Copies are real, physical things. Copies are not broadcasts or transmissions. When you have a song on a CD, the CD is the copy. When you have a song on a hard drive, or in RAM, the hard drive (or the RAM) is the copy.

When you download from allofmp3.com, or anywhere else, you're not transporting an actual copy, in tact. This is obvious because the copy is a physical thing: the copy of the song is the disk on which allofmp3 stores it. They didn't send you their disk. So, what happened? You made a copy of the song, and the new copy is the song fixed in your disk.

So you didn't import the song. You reproduced it. Reproducing a copyrighted song without permission of the copyright holder, or an applicable exemption, infringes the copyright holder's reproduction rights. Just because allofmp3 has the right to make those songs available to you under Russian law, does not mean you are authorized under US law to make your own copies, which is what you're doing when you download music from them.

For instance, let's say that merely "making available" does not infringe copyright. So, I put up a directory on a public webserver filled with music I bought from emusic.com or somewhere else. I may have a perfect legal right to place those songs online, merely doing so isn't distributing them for instance, but you still don't have a legal right to download them. It is no different with allofmp3.

Now, in Canada, in constrast, it is probably legal to use allofmp3.com. The private copying provisions of the Copyright Act do not not require that private copies be made from legitimate or authorized sources, merely that they are made for personal use and that they are made onto a recording medium that isn't prescribed.

allofmp3 question

[jmorris42]

Got a question that the allofmp3 site doesn't answer, since a lot of users are probably in this thread... are the tracks they sell tagged? They list insertion of id3 tags as a feature of their Windows front end so it makes one wonder. If I have to tag everything manually it would certainly be a reason NOT to use them.