Jamendo has — after previously cancelling it due to financial problems — again started to support Ogg/Vorbis downloads and streams.

The catch is that now the Ogg/Vorbis streaming and downloads are handled by the community. Jamendo provides the software, while the community provides the hardware, hosting and administration of the Ogg/Vorbis servers. If that tickles your fancy, check out (or even join) the appropriate group on Jamendo.

Yaaaaaaaaaaay, now I can again listen to the Jamendo albums direclty from Amarok and feel warm and fuzzy inside :3

That being said, if you haven't yet, listen to:

• Hungry Lucy — an amazing electronic duo that covers many styles of this broad genre. One album can be a very delightful electronica, while another can already flirt with darkwave (e.g. Just Imagine on the album Pulse of the Earth) and trip-hop (e.g. Storm (Carried Away) on Before We Stand... We Crawl). The female vocals are great and the blend into the nice multi-layered music perfectly. I'm particularly fond of To Kill a King with all its remixes on the album To Kill a King. IMHO Hungry Lucy can very well compete with more known artists like Lamb or Hooverphonic.

hook out >> meh, study-wise wasted day ...off to bed and in hope of a better tomorrow :P

P.S. Word on the street is that Jamendo will start using HTML 5 audio tags.

This came as a shock — (World Famous) Audio Hacker seems to have disappeared from the face of the internet!

I've already posted about his music and interesting projects (Tron.FM being just one of many), but now that I wanted to download some of his tracks again, it's all gone — his website is gone, Tron.FM's website is gone, his Last.FM and MySpace profiles are almost empty, his Fairtilizer page is gone ...everything!

If there weren't any backups on Archive.org, you'd think it never was there in the first place ...very odd. It seems some people didn't like him making mashups O_o

hook out >> grieving for lost albums and tracks, trying to start the OpenHeads emoticon set

Having listened to quite a few tracks of music (free and otherwise) and tested quite a few of music playing applications, I decided to comment on those that I used the most.

This being said, what I look in a music player is organising music, scrobbling (i.e. sending track info) to Last.FM, integration with remote resources as much as possible (e.g. Jamendo, Magnatune et al.) and obvously playing music ;)

Herrie — a minimalistic CLI media player with a simple ncurses interface and is able to scrobble. So far this is my favourite CLI player and quickly took over mp3blaster's role. No integration with any netlabels though.

SongBird — I used it via PortableApps when I was forced to use Windows XP on a borrowed laptop and frankly, I don't like it much. The interface is borrowed from iTunes and just doesn't work for me (or big collections in general!). On several occasions I had minute-long lags during playback and even crashes! It does have a Jamendo plugin though, but I find its behaviour odd — it opens up Jamendo's website within the player and then only plays the tracks within its own player instead of the Flash player. The huge downside is that you can only have one album in the playlist; on the other hand it does enable you to rate and comment the album directly on the website. It does sport many plugins because of XUL though and scrobbling works as well.

Rhythmbox — although the interface is very much not to my liking, I was happy to switch to it from SongBird when I got myself an Ubuntu LiveCD (yes, I'm still laptopless! XD). Scrobbling works. Jamendo and Magnatune plugins are included (by default?) and work. There are two problems that I have with its Jamendo plugin though. Firstly, the plugn is handled as separate collection and you cannot mix online tracks with those on your local collection. And secondly, it loads the whole Jamendo music repository into the playlist and then you can only filter through it using the iTunes-esque system.

Amarok 1.x — Scrobbling works. Interface is OK and is very power when it comes to organising (especially huge) collections. Jamendo support is missing, but Magnatune is there. Plugins to add other remote resources also exist.Mixing the remote tracks with local ones was possible.

Amarok 2.x — I absolutely adore this player! The interface is amazing with tons of extra information at hand. In the latest release both the interface and the playlist info can be pimped out to the maximum. Scrobbling, of course works. What I particularly love about it, is that it doesn't differentiate a remote from a local collection — meaning that I can simply combine tracks from my HDD with those on Ampache, Jamendo, Magnatune, Free Music Charts, Last.FM recomendations and even streams and "podcasts" in the same playlist. The Jamendo plugin is not the best yet though — it could use some spit and polish to come at least on par with the Last.FM plugin.

In my time I've used other players as well (Juk, XMMP and its clones, etc.), but that has been so long ago that I won't bother spilling pixels over them...

hook out >> @faculty & birthdaying some more ..."die mauer muß weg!" ...oops, have to run I'll miss the lectures otherwise!

P.S. This is the last TGJE post that will be promoted to the front page. TGJE will continue in my blog section.

Lately I've been thinkin of what's keeping me hooked to free music — and I found the answer: the joy of discovery!

What I mean by that is probably best explained by examples.

In the MTV era that we (still) reside in, "discovering" an artist means pretty much being the first bloke or lass in your class who saw the video on the music channel. Then you can brag: "Aye, I've been a fan of Bloc Party even before they were hip — I saw the video to Banquet just when it came out on MTV" ...yeah, I've been like that as well ..and, yeah, it's not really thrilling.

Now let's see how I find new free artists nowadays by looking at two examples that lead me to discover uncharted seas of music.

First, a (for me) very typical "Jamendo" scenario:

1. I was browsing along the Jamendo website when I saw an interesting cover randomly appear in the player applet.
2. I clicked "play", I liked the song and clicked on the album's link, which lead me to Team9's profile page.
3. Listening to the rest of the album I fell in love with it and wanted to learn more about it and see if there's more! Sure enough there was a link to the band's/artist's website.
4. On the website I found a huge amount of awesome mashups, which of course they couldn't publish on Jamendo. I listened to them and downloaded some ...but more importantly for this example, I looked at their links to affiliates and artists they (actually Team9 is just one guy) like(s).
5. A name cought my eye, I followed the link and landed on the website of World Famous Audio Hacker.
6. There I saw even more mashups (including the famous 8 Minutes of Madness) and a link to a brand new project/album — Tron 1.5. Seeing the movie as a kid, it brought up nostalgia and I checked it out
7. Needless to say, I checked out the (surrealistic prank) album and amongst the artists listed and linked I saw Solcofn, Tiger Mendoza and Lilith the Kitten, all of whom I liked a lot on Tron 1.5.
8. More link-clicking and more great music revealed — Lilith the Kitten has some mean remix of Prodigy's Invaders Must Die and some very nice tracks completely of her own as well (I adore Jewelbox); Tiger Mendoza also has some nice tracks on his self-titled EP on BandCamp; while apart from his music Solcofn has lead me to discover a new netlabel — Corpid, which I'm still dicovering.

The next example goes around BlocSonic — another netlabel I frequent:

1. While checking out the (then) newest release of NetBloc — BlocSonic's regular compilations of music from other free netlabels — I heard an enchaning pop song called Animals.
2. BlocSonic offers direct links to both the artists' and their netlabels' (if they have one) websites, but at that time I just wanted to see if Entertainment for the Braindead (that was her name) has any other songs available and if they're equally as good.
3. Sure enough on her website there was a videospot and a short discography — it turned out that she hand-crafts every single CD's art, making it unique and doesn't want in return anything more then enough money to cover the material costs of the CD and the cover. Wow!
4. Browsing around on her website I found a link to her netlabel (because I didn't bother to click on it on BlocSonic) — Aaahh Records. Surprisingly it's a netlabel that specialises on acoustic pop/rock, which is not easy to come by nowadays.
5. On Aaahh Records I also found The Wind Whistles — not my favourite, but very good acoustic pop/rock all the same.

And least, but not least, how I discovered one of my favourite artists in the world — Jimmy the Hideous Penguin:

1. I was bored and, being a Linux geek, searched for "penguin" in Amarok (it uses Jamendo API) and Jimmy popped up. Imagine the chances! I laugh a little inside by only thinking about it :]

Yes, it takes some more work (although less time) then sitting hours on the couch gawking at MTV and being fed the latest ads and fads. But, boy, was it worth it! Not only is there (again) the thrill and joy of discovering completely new artists and new music, but you have more control, make your own choices, find out what you like and what not. And, yes, being able to talk with the artist instead of only about his/her music, is a lot more fun!

Bottom line: finding free music is a lot more thrilling and gives a lot more joy of discovery! Not because of the (lack of) price, but because of the artists' freedom of speech, the listeners' freedom of choice and the freedom of both to communicate.

hook out >> happy birthdaying and going to bed

P.S. I've decided to slowly stop promoting TGJE blog entries to the front page and keep them in the personal blog area only. Both to keep the front page cleaner and to keep TGJE more personal by being less tied to (self-imposed) rules by which I try o keep the front page more serious.

Many geeks will remember Tron to be a nice great movie from the 80's.

A few, will not be surprised that there is a new Tron movie scheduled for 2010, called Tron: Legacy.

Even less people will know that this is actually not the second, but third Tron movie Disney and Pixar planned. The sad truth is that at the end of the 90's there were already plans to make a sequel, called Tron: Rise of the Virals, but eventually funding for it stopped.

What's awesome though is that the (unfinished?) OST — Tron 1.5 — is therefore available for free (as copyleft, I suspect) on Tron.FM ! There is even some commentary and links about the failed attempt of Tron: Rise of the Virals. Of course, the soundtrack is at times lively and at times ambiental electronic. What else would one expect from a Tron movie ;)

What surprised me is that I found on the track list some familiar artist like Team9 and World Famous Audio Hacker (of 8 Minutes of Madness fame with 54 tracks in a single mash-up).

An(other free) artist that I have not previously known of has surprised me quite a bit though — namely Tiger Mendoza or Lilith the Kitten.

Another fine find of free music and a great example why freedom matters. If the artists were not into copyleft, we would all be depleted of this album, just because Disney stopped funding a movie ...as absurd as that sounds ;)

hook out >> lectures, here I come

For quite some time I missed (i.e. did not find any) proper garage rock on Jamendo.

Today, by randomly looking at the site, I stumbled upon just what the doctor prescribed:

69 Club & Station — I cannot say a lot about this band, because on Jamendo their account is still empty of any information whatsoever and their so far only album Tokio Proprio has been uploaded only two days ago. This EP consists of only three tracks, so I will take the time to dissect all three:

• Nuvole Viola — starts out pretty funky and promising, but to me the vocals on it and the speedy bridges just make it sound too much like high school rock. This track has quite potential with some polish, but as it is it's my least liked on the album.
• Brian — sounds the most like oldskoolish garage rock on the whole (erm) album. The vocals on it sound a bit like Kurt Cobain trying to sing to the Ramones, which although is not polished out, sounds pretty good. I like it a lot!
• Card on Cello — reminds me somehow of early the Hives but with a little less spunk. On this track (at least in the second half) the drums feel too powerful. Also the organ(?) and the clapping are a very nice touch. Although both would feel better louder.

I sure hope to hear them perform live someday in a small open air festival or a small smokey club. From what I can judge, that would be an awesome evening/night out for me. :]

hook out >> studying bites, but has to be done :P

Extra extra! Read all about it!

Jimmy the Hideous Penguin reaches Overall Top 10 Artists on Hook's Last.FM charts!

That's right. Since today on my Last.FM charts the first free (CC licensed) music artists stormed the Top Overall played/scrobbled Artists chart. With over 550 scrobbles (there's been quite some more plays if you count my portable media player), Jimmy the Hideous Penguin took the 10^th place from the Pixies and is biting the tail of Lamb for the 9^th.

Additionally, his track Fucking ABBA just toppled Portishead's Glory Box off the 5^th place on Top Overall played/scrobbled Tracks charts and is a strong contender to reach the very top in the next months.

To put it into perspective: I've been scrobbling to Last.FM since 2005 and am a proud contributor of well over 48K scrobbles/plays. So, reaching the top 10 in under half a year is quite an achievement!

And last, but not least:
Thank you, Jamendo, and thank you, Jimmy Penguin, for all the nice music! I love you guys! :D (in a strictly platonic way that doesn't involve any sexual intercourse, of course)

If you haven't yet, do read this awesome interview of Jimmy the Hideous Penguin on Analogue Magazine.

Cheers mate!

hook out >> listening to my favorite tracks of Jimmy the Hideous Penguin and studying civil procedural law

First off, I want to apologise to all the readers who follow me on Jamendo. A module caused my RSS feed not to be W3C valid anymore and therefore Jamendo did not aggregate it. Today I fixed the problem by removing the troublesome module and it should work again.

Now, if you followed my blog you noticed that my laptop died again, meaning that I am still depending on borrowed hardware and PortableApps.

The good news though is that I started using SongBird (packaged as a portable app), which means that my basic needs in music — scrobbling to Last.Fm, streaming from Jamendo and rating tracks — are met and I can write again about my musical discoveries from the land of the free. Although both its interface and Jamendo plugin are not nearly as good as Amarok's and the lag caused by running it from an USB key is sometimes driving me up the wall, it is bearable.

To keep up with my promise I will also try to post more often, even if that means shorter posts (e.g. only one or two artists per post).

Right now I am too tired to write a longer post, so I will just conclude it with what I am currently listening to:

• The Morning Light and their (first?) EP — The Morning Light EP. The album was released on Jamendo only yesterday and, truth be told, I found it at the bottom of the page. Their style is a mellow mix of post punk with electronic elements, which takes me through the whole history of the post punk genre, without going too much into the noise rock section. At certain moments (e.g. in the track Troubles and the Low Profile remix of Scars) there are some more trashy or even industrial touches, while others (e.g. Scars) include some riffs that remind of surf rock and UK underground. The vocals are mediocre, but all in all I really really liked the EP and it seems like perfect music to walk around at night to. Mellow, yet powerful at times. Can barely wait to hear more from them!

hook out >> trying to study a bit, going to bed soon, in dire need of a new laptop...

Recently I have got my old laptop back and therefore being back on my own box with my trusty media player, I can write again about free music.

Truth is, what is holding me back now is the three exams I have very soon and other obligations (e.g. to ELSA), so I do not have much time to listen to music, let alone comment on it this month.

What I can and will do today though, is to comment on my changed usage of Jamendo and free music in general. In my last TGJE report I complained about the lack of Ogg Vorbis seeds on Jamendo. Well, I decided (as I usually do) to help out the best an end user can — by seeding.

I started seeding every Jamendo album that I have on my disk.

This means I had to change my behaviour pattern with it comes to music quite a bit, but I think it's worth it if this means more people can download high quality free music via P2P!

What I did until now:

1. I downloaded the album via KTorrent (my favourite bittorrent client) and when the share ratio hit 1.0 moved the album to my /music/ folder and therefore I could not seed it anymore;
2. renamed the album folder to have a clean Artist — Album name;
3. ran normalize on the album to normalise the volume levels between tracks

What I do now:

1. I download the album still via KTorrent, but when the download finishes I use the move data option to move the album to my /music/ folder without the need to stop seeding. There is the downside that the album folders are less cleanly named, but it's a small price to pay.
2. In Amarok2 I do not need to run the normalisation tool, because it already has a built-in reply gain, which is supperior to normalising tracks because a) it is automatic in the player b) does not recode the file and therefore does not lose quality and c) has more options.
3. If/when I have to delete an album because I need more diskspace (not uncommon now that I lost my external HDD), I can safely delete it and know all my tags will still be there when I download it again, because of Amarok's new AFT.

So, with new technology in KDE it is actually less work to get a better result when listening and sharing free music. Kudos!

Of course there is always place for improvement, so here is my list of possible improvements:

• For quite a long while I have been using categories in KTorrent to tell which albums I've already moved to my music folder/partition, but after thinking about it a bit, I figured out that it would be awesome if it was possible to automatically assign categories to torrents which are e.g. all from the Jamendo tracker and when the torrents in that category finish to download let KTorrent automatically move their data to a specific folder (and keep on seeding). [KDE brainstorm idea #76363]
• There currently a bug in Amarok that produces a corrupt torrent file when you try to download an album via Amarok. Solving it would greatly improve its usability.
• Slightly off topic, but while Amarok does have a native implementation of the Jamendo API, there is still a lot room for improvement — Jamendo has so many options that Amarok currently has not implemented (yet) [KDE brainstorm idea #50950]

So, there you have it — listening to free music and sharing it with others has never been as simple as now. I hope at least some of you follow suit and seed the free music you like as much as possible!

hook out >> making recycled tea and studying again ...boy, is it hot today!

Due to my laptop being dead I am not behind my regular desktop and thus not seeing the statistics what I have listened to the most in the past weeks. So I will take this oportunity to reflect on what I dislike on Jamendo. There is not much, and its mostly just annoyances, but it is only fair to say it out loud and hope things improve.

For starters, I dislike the Flash player. There less volatile and more open technologies out there — e.g. The Yahoo! Media Player that is also being used by BlocSonic seems to be written in JavaScript/EcmaScript and feels nicer to me. I am even thinking of implementing it on my page.

The OGG/Vorbis torrents are sometimes seedless, which makes it sometimes a bit of a drag to wait days or even weeks for an album to finally download.

Already after my first TGJE report mareviq suggested to me Rob Costlow — a great pianist who offers his music under a CC license. Sadly though, his music can be heard on Jamendo, but not downloaded. After I contacted Jamendo with that problem, they responded that Rob Costlow is an exception. As someone who does have some idea of IP law, I find this really odd. Considering Rob Costlow has published his works under a CC BY-NC-SA license at least on Magnatune, it should not have been any problem with anyone who got the music legally to share it with others.

But even graver then the above case is HYPE — a french band whose music is not available on Jamendo anymore at all. From what I could gather from e-mailing Jamendo, is that HYPE got a record deal and the label gave the band an ultimatum to get all their free music offline. If anything, this looks like a school example of a copyright violation. Sure, an artist has a right to revoke his work under certain conditions, but a better commercial exploitation is hardly one of them. Again, since they (most probably) had their work on Jamendo under a CC license, it is a violation from their part to take back the rights that they already gave away to the public.

This brings me to free singles of non-free albums — lately I have found a lot of singles on Jamendo and when looking at the artists' sites I usually found out they have full albums released as CD's and nowhere any notice of any CC. Quite a lot of these I found were promoted by Open Music Wire. After looking at the Open Music Wire website it seems to me that in some cases both Open Music Wire's and in turn also Jamendo's services are being misused for promoting non-free labels and artists, by CC'ing just one track. This gives me very mixed feelings. On the one hand it does promote some lesser known artists. But on the other hand, it (ab)uses free services to tease people into buying non-free content. Moreover since CC is not mentioned anywhere on the artists' homepages, I wonder what would happen if, e.g. a user would get sued for copyright infringement of a track that is under a strict copyright on the CD, yet freely available under a CC license on Jamendo or Open Music Wire.

In other news: Since I started this experiment I have listened almost exclusively music from Jamendo. This will probably change a bit in the future, not because there is much wrong with Jamendo, but just because after proving that one can survive for a month of listening only to music served by Jamendo, I will go on with a normal life and expand TGJE over other free netlables non-discriminatory. This way I will try to make a user case of a normal, internet-savvy music lover.

hook out >> listening to Jamendo Radio on my dad's laptop and slowly going to bed