What's your vision of our future?
We've been thinking about social networking and how we might integrate it into Songbird moving forward, which naturally leads us to you. How do you currently use social networks? How do you share music? Do you see these things connecting?
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The best points from everyone
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When I think of the future, I think that Songbird has all the weapons to become a great reader of his.
I believe that the modularity of this software is its greatest asset. Software are becoming less rigid : http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t... ; http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
I also think that there should be more visual integration with the aero theme. The graphics and customizable should not be overlooked. I like certain features of MediaMonkey but the visual aspect of this software is poor compared to Songbird : http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
Of course some functions are essential as burning CDs, podcasts, cuesheet : http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t... ; http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t... ; http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
The functions of Internet connectivity will continually evolve and again songbird addons and is well placed.
I am also thinking of the dematerialization of music. Do you own your own Audio Library in a few years? Nothing is less certain, you will have access to free catalogs type Spotify. You can directly access catalogs free or paid through the web. Without the music you love : http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
I think the diversity of sources available from songbird will be a security for users. Do not trust a website that type lastfm is not a good strategy. Do not put all eggs in one basket : http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
I’m excited
3 people think
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I don't know too much about the legality of these types of things, but I think that, considering existing technologies, people couldn't get on Songbird too much for allowing file transfers and streaming. There are excellent legal uses for both features, and they aren't anything you can't already do with existing, common software. iTunes lets you stream music with other people over a wireless network, and if you use the public wifi in a city or college dorm building, that basically gives you access to listen to dozens of people's libraries for free. You can transfer any types of files with any email or instant messaging clients, so people can already easily send an entire copyrighted album to someone if they want to. I'm sure people would still be unhappy about how easily intellectual property could be distributed, but they were when iPods came out too, but I think people have gotten used to it. However, I think intellectual property is silly anyway, so I might be too lax about it =P.
I forgot to mention it in my previous post, but I think that torrent support would be one of the most essential - albeit also opening the potential for illegal use - social features in a web-music program. Torrents make up 27-55% of all internet traffic, which shows how important it is to providing bandwidth for people to distribute files. As an increasing number of artists use alternative methods of distributing music, I think torrents will also become the most important legal method. Nine Inch Nails had torrent links when they released their album The Slip for free, and Radiohead (most likely) recently released a new track via bittorent. Songbird's half-brother, Miro, is a web-video player, and one of its most important features is torrent support, as there are many legal ways to acquire videos from torrents. It would also work wonderfully in Songbird. After a torrent finishes in Songbird and you are done seeding it, you could just click a button that says "add to library", and the downloaded music could automatically be organized and added to your library. I think we are just handicapping the convenient, legal uses of software if we try to avoid any illegal uses that are made possible in the process.
5 people think
this is one of the best points
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I massively like the streaming stuff going down here but does there need to be a discussuion about features which make piracy way too easy? I mean, I don't know where everybody else stands on the issue, maybe its more important to some than others. Regardless of one's ethical stance, does POTI need to cover thier backs somehow? It won't do them much good if songbird gains popularity due to ease of illegal file sharing. Streaming/sharing etc features will always be really useful even with purely legal usage - but is that enough if it only accounts for a small amount of actually usage?
3 people think
this is one of the best points
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This post is so gigantic. I'm deeply sorry.
Sharing and recommending music with friends
One of the main things that the web makes possible is sharing files and information with friends. In Songbird, this could come in the form of sharing your music files with people or by recommending music to them. I mentioned some of these ideas in an old topic. You and your friends could all have Songbird accounts (part of a spiffy Songbird social network that is), and they could show up in the service pane. I think the Social Streaming add-on mockups show it perfectly.
To share something with a friend, you would select whatever you wanted to share, be it an artist, album, song, playlist, or website. Then you could either right click it and go to "send to" or "share", or you could just drag it to a name in your friends list, and a prompt could ask you how you want to share it: it would give you the option to send the files (if your friends were currently online to accept a file transfer), or just recommend the music, and whenever your friend receives the recommendation, he or she would be able to stream it from some online service or store. You could select multiple friends you want to send it to and attach a message with it.

In this mockup, friends could be dragged or typed in the "send to" field.
To send websites like a music blog or a band myspace to your friends, you could drag a website's favicon or url onto a friend's name, or likewise, right click it and go to "send to". When someone is sent something, they could receive some sort of notification, either as a pop-up window, a non-modal pop-up, or just a notifying icon somewhere that says how many shared items are in your queue.
Collaboration
When I was reading an article about Spotify one day, I was most intrigued reading that it allows you to share and collaborate on playlists with friends. Working collaboratively with friends is a great way to be social on the web. Apart from just sending a playlist to a friend like making them a mixtape, you could set them as a collaborator to the playlists just like on a Google Doc, and then you could both add songs to it together. This could be a great way for people to make a mix together or plan out a playlist for a gathering. If either person is missing a song, it could either be retrieved from his or her friend or streamed from the web.
The collaborative idea that I am most excited about would be having listening parties with friends in Songbird. It is easy to listen to the same music with people when they are in the same room as you, but when you are far away from each other, it can be difficult to listen to music in sync without having to perform frequent count downs. People might not go through the trouble of listening to music in sync with each other manually, but if Songbird could do it automatically, I think there could be a sort of magical feeling knowing that you and a friend or several friends are listening to the same song at the exact same point. This would also be a great way for members of music fan sites to get together every once in a while and listen to an album or artist with a group of people. You could just right click on a friend's name or have an option in a menu that says "Invite users to a listening party". The person who makes it could choose if they are the "leader" - able to choose the music and pause/play it at will - or if every person will have control over the playback.
The trickiest part of this functionality would be a way for people on different computers and with potentially different audio files to listen to it in sync. Perhaps they could stream the music from a website or from one user so that Songbird could be sure they are listening to identical files, or it could just make sure that everyone's songs are the same length. While you are having a listening party, you could discuss the music with your friends in Songbird in a sort of irc-like interface, and it could show you the playlist that the group is listening to.
Songbird social pages
Finally, when someone creates a Songbird account, it would also create a profile page, accessible by clicking on friend's names, or from a web address. As has been suggested, it could be a customizable page that primarily displays your listening history, and could also feature a small blog where you could post about new artists or music websites that you have discovered. All of your play counts, song ratings, and last.fm-style tags could be stored on the Songbird server with your profile, and the best part about this would be that you could easily keep your library information synced in the cloud. This means that if you have Songbird installed on multiple computers and want to keep their playcounts, tags, and ratings synced, or if you ever lose your library database file, you could easily retrieve all of your important library information.
Maybe one day, if Songbird and Spotify or a similar streaming service teamed up, you could even load your library information into Songbird on a computer (such as a netbook) that has no music files on it, and you could stream any track from your library that is available on Spotify. Any of your artists, albums, or songs that it doesn't have could just be grayed out so that you know that they are not available.
I’m so, so sorry
6 people think
this is one of the best points
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* sharing playlists amoung friends would definitely be ace, but what about publically? There could be a central bank of playlists, tagged by users which you could search through by tag, track, artist, genre etc etc in order to find a good selection. Then maybe an option to provide spotify links to tracks which you don't have locally. Option to build playlists colaboratively with people you've given access to.
4 people think
this is one of the best points
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6 people think
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Please make it very easy to create and share playlists. There may even be a few games that could be created based on playlists
3 people think
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?Please make it very easy to create and share playlists. There may even be a few games that could be created based on playlists
3 people think
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Definitely a required feature :) -
Inappropriate?I've been giving it a bit of thought, and come to the conclusion that I can divide my own social networking on the web in two parts;
The first half consisting mainly of some Facebook action and instant messaging. I use services like these to connect with friends, family and working colleagues - all persons who I have a meet in real life or got to know under different circumstances. I share rather personal information with them because I know these individuals are trustworthy.
I can choose to let everyone take part of what I share the Facebook style, or have somewhat private conversations over an IM network.
To summarize part one, this is where the depths of social networking take place - with a butt load of conversations, private as public, but often only with already established contacts.
The second part would for example be Last.fm, Wakoopa, Twitter where conversations more than often are made with unfamiliar faces who share a common interest as the user. All of these social networks in this "second group" have one thing in common; their goal is to gain and exchange information among people in a way that makes it fun to do so.
Last.fm is a nobrainer, you keep track of your playcounts and get new artists recommended automatically while you're given the opportunity to join various groups of people listening to the same music as yourself. Eventually you end up at a shoutbox, it can be at an artist, an other user or maybe a fan group of some kind.
Wakoopa basically works the same way, but focus more on product reviews & exploration than auto recommendations, even if they do handle stuff too.
Some might think that Twitter is kind of the odd man out here, but think about it. What is your ultimate goal when typing those precious tweets? Perhaps you think that your 140 character messages bring joy to the world and wish to spread them as far as possible ( in other words, get as many followers as you can. ), But those people isn't of much importance here so lets fast forward a bit. Some of us, myself included, use twitter to catch up with and share the latest news, what's hot or not.
That being said, the summary of this second part is information exchange, both in entertaining and educational purposes, maybe even equally important to fully enjoy the other. And this my friends, is where new connections are born - from the exchange of information of mutual interests.
If integration of social networking integrates and become a part of the Songbird experience, a process that I'm very much looking forward to, for starters all users will have two great things in common; their passion for music and their endless love for the bird itself.
All that's left to do is to provide the tools needed to engage in the depth of social communication.
I’m a son of a preacher - or so it seems...
2 people think
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Dusty will be after you, lenny! -
Inappropriate?Would these social interactions be add-ons because like i'd assume some people just want a media player. Personally completely integrating social networking into songbird without the option of having it or not would ruin it for me because i listen to music when I want to get away from all that and just relax.
I'd like the idea of been able to directly share play lists within songbird (with friends and maybe a few people with the same music tastes). But I don't like the idea of always been connected.
2 people think
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Yeah, i think that would be really important, you'd definitely have to be in control at all times, which means the ability to contorl what you share and/or turn off social features at the touch of a button. Good call :) -
6 people think
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That looks awesome! I'm real found of that mother bird thingy, great work Michael -
here, here :) -
Who's that suspicious-looking bird giving a presentation on a listening history page mockup...
=D -
Inappropriate?I definitely think social networking addons are premature. My library is still too big for Songbird, and cleaning it up still requires a bunch of addons that do linear scans of 50 thousand song databases. I loooooove social networking features, but Songbird isn't ready. In my opinion of course. I still love you guys for making Songbird as good as it is, and I'm still a zealot who will use it as a primary media player :)
I’m silly
2 people think
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Inappropriate?There was a breif discussion of public user profile pages before Isan came out...
http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
I've got some random ideas but I'll be a pain and post them seperately so people can comment on specific ones if they like. -
Inappropriate?* Integrated feature to tweet/set status to/post current song and/or spotify/Last.fm link to current song
1 person thinks
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Inappropriate?* Add on to rip videos and rip audio from videos - similar to tubemaster if anyone's used that?
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Inappropriate?* sharing playlists amoung friends would definitely be ace, but what about publically? There could be a central bank of playlists, tagged by users which you could search through by tag, track, artist, genre etc etc in order to find a good selection. Then maybe an option to provide spotify links to tracks which you don't have locally. Option to build playlists colaboratively with people you've given access to.
4 people think
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Maybe as well as the spotify link, the ability to buy that song or listen to the preview directly through the 7Digital music store which is integrated by the official add-on. -
oooh good call, like it! Bet they would too ;) -
That's a great idea. A site called Muxtape used to be a really cool place where you could make public mixtapes, but I think they shut down because it didn't have rights to stream the songs that it hosted. Here is a screenshot of what it used to look like: http://www.subdrivemedia.com/muxtape.png
And I just found this demo of a site in progress that is very similar: http://opentape.fm/mixtape/ -
Inappropriate?* Option to share ratings and play counts with the community so we can see collective statistics? eg, if a star is worth 1 point, it would be aweosme to see which tracks came out rated the highest. Similarly with artist/track playing data, I suppose similar to groups on L.fm
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Inappropriate?* Having profiles in the cloud would be amazing, like what Mike was saying about the Mother Bird. If we could store playlists, playcounts, ratings, bookmarks and add on lists in the cloud then it would be awesome for setting up new computers or if you have to reformat, not to mention ridiculously helpful if your bird hits the deck and you need to nuke your profile becuase you didn't treat it so good...
2 people think
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Inappropriate?Pleeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaase make any social networking features optional.
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I think it'll be like the recommended add ons on first run - you can easily uncheck the boxes or remove them whenever. -
Inappropriate?With LiveTweeter you can already share what you are listening to on Twitter and Identi.ca
I may add more social networks, if you want you can vote (using stars) in the issue list here :
http://code.google.com/p/songbird-liv...
Also it would be great to be able to share/sync playlist on social networks :)
I’m confident
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what about now listening to for instant messengers like Trillian Astra? -
Inappropriate?last.fm floats my boat as a music oriented social network. I don't like the facebook concept of all the (bird's) eggs in one basket so I'd prefer that Songbird concentrates on the player and leaves the interfaces open for plugins to be developed by 3rd parties. My big ask is that you'd get together with the Rogue Amoeba guys to integrate a source for Airofil right into Songbird (ok, maybe Puleaudio should do that but...)
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?This post is so gigantic. I'm deeply sorry.
Sharing and recommending music with friends
One of the main things that the web makes possible is sharing files and information with friends. In Songbird, this could come in the form of sharing your music files with people or by recommending music to them. I mentioned some of these ideas in an old topic. You and your friends could all have Songbird accounts (part of a spiffy Songbird social network that is), and they could show up in the service pane. I think the Social Streaming add-on mockups show it perfectly.
To share something with a friend, you would select whatever you wanted to share, be it an artist, album, song, playlist, or website. Then you could either right click it and go to "send to" or "share", or you could just drag it to a name in your friends list, and a prompt could ask you how you want to share it: it would give you the option to send the files (if your friends were currently online to accept a file transfer), or just recommend the music, and whenever your friend receives the recommendation, he or she would be able to stream it from some online service or store. You could select multiple friends you want to send it to and attach a message with it.

In this mockup, friends could be dragged or typed in the "send to" field.
To send websites like a music blog or a band myspace to your friends, you could drag a website's favicon or url onto a friend's name, or likewise, right click it and go to "send to". When someone is sent something, they could receive some sort of notification, either as a pop-up window, a non-modal pop-up, or just a notifying icon somewhere that says how many shared items are in your queue.
Collaboration
When I was reading an article about Spotify one day, I was most intrigued reading that it allows you to share and collaborate on playlists with friends. Working collaboratively with friends is a great way to be social on the web. Apart from just sending a playlist to a friend like making them a mixtape, you could set them as a collaborator to the playlists just like on a Google Doc, and then you could both add songs to it together. This could be a great way for people to make a mix together or plan out a playlist for a gathering. If either person is missing a song, it could either be retrieved from his or her friend or streamed from the web.
The collaborative idea that I am most excited about would be having listening parties with friends in Songbird. It is easy to listen to the same music with people when they are in the same room as you, but when you are far away from each other, it can be difficult to listen to music in sync without having to perform frequent count downs. People might not go through the trouble of listening to music in sync with each other manually, but if Songbird could do it automatically, I think there could be a sort of magical feeling knowing that you and a friend or several friends are listening to the same song at the exact same point. This would also be a great way for members of music fan sites to get together every once in a while and listen to an album or artist with a group of people. You could just right click on a friend's name or have an option in a menu that says "Invite users to a listening party". The person who makes it could choose if they are the "leader" - able to choose the music and pause/play it at will - or if every person will have control over the playback.
The trickiest part of this functionality would be a way for people on different computers and with potentially different audio files to listen to it in sync. Perhaps they could stream the music from a website or from one user so that Songbird could be sure they are listening to identical files, or it could just make sure that everyone's songs are the same length. While you are having a listening party, you could discuss the music with your friends in Songbird in a sort of irc-like interface, and it could show you the playlist that the group is listening to.
Songbird social pages
Finally, when someone creates a Songbird account, it would also create a profile page, accessible by clicking on friend's names, or from a web address. As has been suggested, it could be a customizable page that primarily displays your listening history, and could also feature a small blog where you could post about new artists or music websites that you have discovered. All of your play counts, song ratings, and last.fm-style tags could be stored on the Songbird server with your profile, and the best part about this would be that you could easily keep your library information synced in the cloud. This means that if you have Songbird installed on multiple computers and want to keep their playcounts, tags, and ratings synced, or if you ever lose your library database file, you could easily retrieve all of your important library information.
Maybe one day, if Songbird and Spotify or a similar streaming service teamed up, you could even load your library information into Songbird on a computer (such as a netbook) that has no music files on it, and you could stream any track from your library that is available on Spotify. Any of your artists, albums, or songs that it doesn't have could just be grayed out so that you know that they are not available.
I’m so, so sorry
6 people think
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you win for that mockup alone... but all your other points are spot on also :-P -
I'm so glad I'm one of your firends dude! :) Yay! -
Wow, i made it into a mock up! this must be how ya'll feel when you get in the BB. :0) -
Inappropriate?I massively like the streaming stuff going down here but does there need to be a discussuion about features which make piracy way too easy? I mean, I don't know where everybody else stands on the issue, maybe its more important to some than others. Regardless of one's ethical stance, does POTI need to cover thier backs somehow? It won't do them much good if songbird gains popularity due to ease of illegal file sharing. Streaming/sharing etc features will always be really useful even with purely legal usage - but is that enough if it only accounts for a small amount of actually usage?
3 people think
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Inappropriate?I don't know too much about the legality of these types of things, but I think that, considering existing technologies, people couldn't get on Songbird too much for allowing file transfers and streaming. There are excellent legal uses for both features, and they aren't anything you can't already do with existing, common software. iTunes lets you stream music with other people over a wireless network, and if you use the public wifi in a city or college dorm building, that basically gives you access to listen to dozens of people's libraries for free. You can transfer any types of files with any email or instant messaging clients, so people can already easily send an entire copyrighted album to someone if they want to. I'm sure people would still be unhappy about how easily intellectual property could be distributed, but they were when iPods came out too, but I think people have gotten used to it. However, I think intellectual property is silly anyway, so I might be too lax about it =P.
I forgot to mention it in my previous post, but I think that torrent support would be one of the most essential - albeit also opening the potential for illegal use - social features in a web-music program. Torrents make up 27-55% of all internet traffic, which shows how important it is to providing bandwidth for people to distribute files. As an increasing number of artists use alternative methods of distributing music, I think torrents will also become the most important legal method. Nine Inch Nails had torrent links when they released their album The Slip for free, and Radiohead (most likely) recently released a new track via bittorent. Songbird's half-brother, Miro, is a web-video player, and one of its most important features is torrent support, as there are many legal ways to acquire videos from torrents. It would also work wonderfully in Songbird. After a torrent finishes in Songbird and you are done seeding it, you could just click a button that says "add to library", and the downloaded music could automatically be organized and added to your library. I think we are just handicapping the convenient, legal uses of software if we try to avoid any illegal uses that are made possible in the process.
5 people think
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?yeah, I think you're making a really good point. I think that crippling features becuase they could be put to illegal use would have to be a mistake. I mean, you could potentially drown in milk or choke on a cookie but that doesn't make either inherantly wrong. I guess that if people are going to break laws then that is completely up to them and between them and the authorities in their respective juristritrictions. As you say, there are already very simple ways to copy and distribute any sort of copyrighted files. If people choose to do that, it's their business.
Personally, I'm a bit oldskool about owning a CD, an activity I do a lot of...but I understand that I am in a somewhat dwindling minority. That said, I do apprecaite the application of these sorts of features as there is plenty of good free music out there.
I’m like, cookies and milk! COOKIES AND MILK! ....w00t.
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That is one nice looking CD collection! How many years has it been brewing? I do sometimes enjoy playing around with physical music formats; I have even gotten a few of my favorite albums on vinyl in my life to spend some quality time with them.
P.S. I really enjoy cookies and milk as well. -
I don't think there should be components which allow the user to potentially break the law, POTI should have the users best interest in mind (and one which doesn't result in their users been disconnected from the Internet like which is been proposed in the UK). We need to remember while users may be knowledgeable about copyright law in their countries, some people may not (for example teenagers who's parents end up getting sued). -
But I think the point is that there are already easy ways to practice piracy if you are so inclined. The question of whether supplying the means to commit a crime makes you in some way culpable or an accessory is pretty much the difference between supplying explosives to terrorists or selling a shovel to some guy who then happens to kill his wife with it. In the first instance, explosives generally aren't used for very many constructive things and it's clear if you're an arms dealer when dealing with terrorsts that they probably want to blow stuff up with it. If you happen to work in a gardening store and a bloke comes in to buy a shovel, its a different story: shovels have plenty of constructive uses in the garden and it's only a tiny minority of shovels and people which when combined result in murder.
My point is that the proposed sharing/streaming features have plenty of constructive legal uses; they are the shovel rather than the explosives.
Did that make any sense at all? I might be slightly crazy. -
oh and @Murphy - since i was about 14? and I'm 21 now so that's 7ish years :) And it's great fun, just a bitch to move house with!! Yeah, I've got a stack of some pretty funky vinyl but lacking in decks at the moment sadly. Will rectify this one day!
Milk & Cookies ftw :) -
I understand that we wouldn't want to enable people to unintentionally break the law, but with all products that have both legal and illegal uses, it is the responsibility of people who use them to know the laws where they live and not break them. After all, a digital audio player like Songbird is probably being used by the majority of users to play some illegally-obtained copyrighted music in the first place, but it shouldn't be Songbird's responsibility that the program can be used in this way.
If we are worried that not enough people are familiar with their country's copyright laws and might unintentionally break them, the best solution would be to prompt users with a message the first time they share or stream music. It could just let them know that it is illegal in some countries to share or stream music that is copyrighted, and that they should be aware of what they are doing. Instant messaging and email clients don't even bother showing a message like this when you are sending files, even ones that are clearly digital audio and video files, so I think it would be a good gesture.
As far as actually getting in trouble for unknowingly sharing a copyrighted files through direct transfer, it is extremely unlikely that it would happen. Programs like these make encrypted file transfers from one person to another, which means the only other party that could even know that the transfer took place would be your ISP, and they might not even be able to see what file was actually transferred. I don't believe anyone has ever been sued for sharing copyrighted files directly through an instant messaging client. People, such as those getting disconnected in the UK, generally get in trouble by using public P2P programs like bittorrent clients or Limewire, since it is easy for anybody to see what files you are publicly sharing.
Yet if torrent support is added to Songbird, it will probably present even less of an opportunity for someone to unknowingly get caught committing a crime. To download illegal files through the bittorrent protocol, the user would have to seek out a torrent file in the first place from sites that are clearly not shining examples of legal music distribution. Those who plan on using the torrent features for legal uses would know to get files from the musician's own websites or websites that share public domain work and most likely don't feature advertisements for adult friend finder =P. -
Absolutley, really well said. I tip my (sadly fictional) hat to you, sir :) -
oh, perfect timing Radiohead: http://radiohead.com/deadairspace/ind...
And thanks Tim. Maybe they will have hats in the Songbird store one day and you can have a non-fictional one. =D -
Speaking of Songbird store, I think they should make this print come true some day. You know, sharing files and all that ;) -
Inappropriate?I would really like Lala integration. Most of these features can be done on lala. Including streaming the entire library from the web, playlist sharing etc, music recommendations. (No music sharing, but with the way lala works the other person should be able to stream it once for free anyway.)
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?One idea that could help sharing songs, making collaborative playlists, listening parties - anything that requires multiple people to somehow have access to the same songs - would be the ability to have songs in your library that link to files on the web rather than local files. It was suggested in this thread a while ago: http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
When you go to a website with audio files on it and Songbird shows them in the bottom service pane, in addition to the "Download" button, it could have a button that says "Add stream to library".
Basically, it would show up in your library just like any other song, but when you double click it, it would be streamed instead of played off of your hard drive. When you have the "source" column showing in your song list, it would have a URL for the audio file of the song instead of a location on your hard drive. It could always have a little download button next to it in your library in case you ever decide that you want to store it locally.
Linking to tracks stored in the cloud would help people play their libraries on netbooks with small hard drives, and also make it easier for people to collaborate and share songs, because they could both work with files stored externally.
I’m feelin' cloudy
1 person thinks
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this would be great, it would mean you could store ratings and playcounts for tracks you don't yet own, and if you then did acquire them locally, the metadata would already be there :) -
Inappropriate?Hello
About sharing of music with other users, the AllPeers software that had been developed then abandoned a few years ago was very promising to me...
Part of it was open-sourced, and it was based on Firefox 2 + BitTorrent. The business model or the marketing went wrong and the software and its very useful services disappeared.
But I like their features a lot. Basically, the approach was "Sharing for dummies, dummies being your friends, family,..."
1 person thinks
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hehehe :P -
sharing for dummies sounds right up my alley! -
Hi again
Just forgot to mention that one key feature of Allpeers, preserving the law, is that the sharing takes place within a closed circle of peers (friends, family).
Currently, what I really miss since Allpeers died is the ability to share my music/video with my friends in a very very easy way (the "for dummies" side of it), like when I was recording tapes or CD for them and would send them by physical mail in the (very) ole times!
Of course, there might be other software that do that, but I haven't found any that was as easy as AllPeers within Firefox (and in French and other locales...).
So, finding such a feature in Songbird would be the acme (after über-intelligent podcast support of course :D) -
Inappropriate?When I think of the future, I think that Songbird has all the weapons to become a great reader of his.
I believe that the modularity of this software is its greatest asset. Software are becoming less rigid : http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t... ; http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
I also think that there should be more visual integration with the aero theme. The graphics and customizable should not be overlooked. I like certain features of MediaMonkey but the visual aspect of this software is poor compared to Songbird : http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
Of course some functions are essential as burning CDs, podcasts, cuesheet : http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t... ; http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t... ; http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
The functions of Internet connectivity will continually evolve and again songbird addons and is well placed.
I am also thinking of the dematerialization of music. Do you own your own Audio Library in a few years? Nothing is less certain, you will have access to free catalogs type Spotify. You can directly access catalogs free or paid through the web. Without the music you love : http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
I think the diversity of sources available from songbird will be a security for users. Do not trust a website that type lastfm is not a good strategy. Do not put all eggs in one basket : http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
I’m excited
3 people think
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?If your going to have torrent and sharing support why not have it presented properly like a catalogue of albums, a bit like a layout of a online music store that way people can choose the different file formats and bit-rates they have in each others library's
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Inappropriate?Import AAC Album Art is a must.
Waiting for a release which will support that. As soon as it's there I'll promote Songbird to all my friends (but I know none, who doesn't use AAC)...
I’m waiting
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