ATRAC Bit torrent site?

[evilmutent]

Now that sonic stage allows for atrac files to be encoded without copy protection, wouldn't that mean we can share them between each other? I've searched, although not extensivly, for a bit torrent site sharing either exculsively or not, Atrac3plus files. I know it is a relativly small niche, but i'm sure we'd all love to have it. I dunno, is anyone inerested in putting one up?

[JSP62]

Would be nice, but as you said it is a small niche

[pata2001]

If I'm looking for music on BT, I would be looking for those using lossless compression. I don't think people would even care for Atrac, considering what the majority of people use (Sony players now support MP3s anyway).

[JustAnUnCoolCat]

Well, talking from the point of view that i do, still.. now and then, do some studio production for some small (unsigned) bands, yes i would consider a BT type distribution to be a nice idead for legitamate sharing of materials you are legally and contractually entitled to share.

For certain, a lot of ATRAC users could potentially use such a method and the lossless choice of sharing is equally ok since we can produced non-protected ATRAC Lossless content if you target the file sharing specifically aimed at ATRAC users (but that does not discount use by non-ATRAC users, since they can convert the LSL's to WAV or burn to Audio CD and image/extract from there to a preferred format).

Personally, i'd suggest FSing using a more general (if you are not narrowing down to ATRAC users only participating) lossless format that SS can import and convert - which really, would point the choice to WMA LSL since all legit stable and proper SS installs (aka ones working within spec equip and OS) can handle WMA LSL with the install of WMA9 runtime codec install (i know some people dont want WMP9/10 installed on their kit).

But either can work.

But in fairness to both the people who will be FSing, or BT users relaying via their BT setup, LSL's are a big old bandwidth hog and damn ferking painful slow to get hold of if people end up limiting bandwidth to transfers to stop their overall bandwidth being stuffed up by BT demand.

I'd say we'd be better off in fairness to all, to produce multiple copies of any content we want to share in SS transfer ready formats.

It takes not long to produce five sets of files, covering the main supported ATRAC variations from 48K through 132K - and then people can obtain via BT transfer ready copies of the content at whatever transfer ready rate format is offered.

That'll keep the bandwidth issues under control, and it's still feasible (if a provider gets a request) to make LSL's available if desired.

I was going to put some of the demo's i cut for the bands i deal with, out on ATRAC, if i could get their blessing - but they weren't interested.. words to the effective of..

'ATRAC, oh you mean the sad gits who own MD players.. not the kinda people we target at'

That, by the way, was a polite interpretation of a quote - i'd be kicked off this forum for good if i posted the literally untainted version. Hell, little shocks this old cat spirit, but the literal version was so out of order.. and so offensive, even i had to resist the temptation to put the poor offensive git out his sorry miserable existence. Well, i had a right to be offended.. being still an MD user when i need to be

Keep the BT, and DCC and other FSing routes, in mind - who knows, maybe we can work some deal out to get the unsigned and indie bands involved, release with their blessing...

After all, we aint talking mega mass pirating potential here if we target ATRAC users specifically, and given that ATRAC users tend to favour their permanent encoding source material as being from commercial media or maybe lossless encodings such as SHN (popular for the live performance recordings sharing) after conversion - there is a damn sight better chance that after getting a good sample demo recording from a band via whatever source in lossy form, that a user interested will go obtain the legit commericial item and everyone wins :oD

When noone is losing, everyone who shells out money to make it possible (be it at the recording/production level, the distribution level, the royalties levels) gets a return on their effort (break-even works for me, when i talk about a commercial involvement - since i dont really produce to make money re unsigned bands) - then i am happily interested to take part.

Freeloaders who contribute and add ferk all, and mass 'harvest and flog at xxxxx% profit' downloaders who shared ferk all - those kinda people and their schemes for file sharing and abuse of recorded works, i never deal with nor have anything to do with their 'scams'.

Sadly, despite the fact i know the current breed (who are fairly veteran in their time of being involved) of ATRAC users who get their FS'ed lossless content (often live material) do tend to play fair and put back into what they take out - we need to remember that a lot more less fair-minded people have swelled the ATRAC community lately (now there is much more choice of decks of many forms) and whilst they aint mp3 user masses of size, enough unfairness from the expanded community could end up rendering a goodwill FS venture being a 'contribution by the few, raped by the selfish many'.

Sad really.

But hey, keep talking this over folks.. will be happy to talk seriously if the interest is there and people are ready to do the right thing over fair play.

If i was into blanket fashion sharing, with no regard to rights and wrongs and fair play, i'd have started the ball rolling back when SS 3.2/3.3 came along and made my entire analog-restored HQ collection available (and a lot of it, you cannot get commercially these days in digital form).

Be Cool Always

'Tom Kat'

[Guest Stuge]

Nice idea ,but i will prefer to download mp3 from net .As i can exchange mp3 files with my friends easily .

[JustAnUnCoolCat]

Well, if my experience of trying to interest bands in letting me release demo's to ATRAC users is anything to go by, i would favour quitting whilst i am ahead..

With 'harvest and exploit for cash' freeloaders not keeping the faith (as literally is the case in almost any P2P network.., and the NNTP sources) and grab.. grab..grabbing and putting nothing in to the chain, i guess i can't blame the more enlightened musicians who shy away from promoing their works via P2P..

The kind of freeloaders who exploit commercially, are as guilty in my eyes of keeping commericially released audio downloads favoured to DRM protected form as those who make the 'protecting thy ass' decision to release in DRM'ed form.

Well, i gotta see it from the creative's point of view too .. kinda two-faced to help them on the level i can, then con them into playing into the P2P-harvester commercial freeloaders hands. That is one thing the cat spirit will never do...

'Tom Kat'

[aznbro85]

Nice idea ,but i will prefer to download mp3 from net .As i can exchange mp3 files with my friends easily .

I agree.

Though the only thing I don't like about MP3s is that when I play it on my walkmans, there's the gap between songs.

So because I'm so anal about that, I end up buying CDs and ripping them twice (320kbps MP3 for home/ 64kbps ATRAC3plus for my portables)

On a different subject... even though when you rip you can choose to do it DRMless, has anybody noticed that transcoded OMA files that were from MP3s/WMA/etc are DRMed?

Or is there a way to disable that too? Thanks in advance

[kerfuffle]

You can disable it. When you're converting your MP3 file, the box pops up asking you what file format and bitrate you want, right? And underneath that, there's an option called 'Add copy protection after completing conversion'. By unchecking that box, your converted MP3s, etc. will be DRMless OMAs.

[aznbro85]

You can disable it. When you're converting your MP3 file, the box pops up asking you what file format and bitrate you want, right? And underneath that, there's an option called 'Add copy protection after completing conversion'. By unchecking that box, your converted MP3s, etc. will be DRMless OMAs.

thanks for the tip kerfuffle!

I havn't tried converting MP3's to OMA in a while, but if i ever decide to, I'll take a look into that

I'm still not liking how if I decide on MP3s (or convert from MP3 to OMA) I dont get gapless. But then again i only have a few CDs that include tracks that go from one to the next

but anyway, thanks again for the heads up!

[kerfuffle]

No problem.

I have a lot of dance music, which sounds much more better played gaplessly. Espeically Ministry Of Sound CDs.

I wouldn't mind an ATRAC bit torrent site.

[aznbro85]

No problem.

I have a lot of dance music, which sounds much more better played gaplessly. Espeically Ministry Of Sound CDs.

I wouldn't mind an ATRAC bit torrent site.

Yeah, me neither

I guess if we really wanted, we can all band together, rip our CDs in 352kbps Atrac3plus, and then share em with each other

[kerfuffle]

O.O All my music's in Atrac3plus 64kbps. And not all my music are on CDs.

[pata2001]

BT is about numbers. The more people seding, the better the system is. If there is only 1 or 2 people, it's useless. Might as well have somebody set up an FTP server or fserve in IRC.

[JustAnUnCoolCat]

Agree totally there about the numbers bit about BT.

It's only when stuff gets diverse spread and more available (aka more people have obtained and made available further, via BT) that BT works well and then also reduces the chance of any one contributor getting their machine and bandwidth hammered.

A friend of mine suffered that, a friend i worked with at a past radio station.. way way back before 'podcasting' existed. He had gone to the effort of taking all his past shows log recordings.. edited them for legal compliancy, and tried making them available by BT (originally he used to do limited quantity releases by NNTP til he got hassles about that) - which if fair play had been honoured, would have worked.

However, about 90% of those who downloaded his stuff, never remade the stuff available.. so guess who became the main source (the few who did make their local copies available... were online so infrequently, they contributed bugger all to the distro side) and guess who's valuable bandwidth got hammered to infinity..??

The only thing he could do, after trying all the tricks like bandwidth limiting uploads.. which had a negative effect on stuff he was collecting himself, was to give in and go back to the old fashioned method - aka he used to burn CD-ROM collections on request instead.

At least he could rely on the people who requested burnt copies to play fair - 'harvesting freeloaders' aint interested in spending money on paying postage costs

I believe, if i recall right, on one of the MD related forums, some people were sharing MD content on a disc swap basis.. and from what i recall, that kept fair play in check on one level anyway.

'Tom Kat'

[ncl]

how about we upload to rapidshare.com?

[JustAnUnCoolCat]

Rapidshare (just one of a few public uploader sites) is NOT a good option.

For a starter - 'free' downloading is limited to a fixed amount and when you have downloaded x Mb (i forget the actual limit now) you are prevented from downloading via the IP you were downloading via, for an hour or so (the timer used is kinda variable, but it's a min of 1 hour).

To get unlimited download access (aka as much as you like, as often and without transfer amount limits) then you need to get a Premiun account.

So i would definately not give Rapidshare a vote of approval really on the sheer grounds of the non-Premium users download limitations.

Haven't tried any of the other upload/share providers yet, so can't say if any of the others invoke similar limits.

However, if you know of one or more other than RS that don't penalise non-subscribers and is equally accessible internationally (some of the sites aint equally transparently accessible regardless of where you are in the world), then this is possible answer.

Mind you, you must remember, if using one of those sites to :-

1) Obscure the filenames.

2) Put in an ambigious 'content' reference in where the uploader page asks for some content info.

Ok, if you are uploading self-created content or other's work that you have been given the ok to share (aka the creator aint gonna go ape over copyright issues if you share, i mean) - then those two can be pretty much made redundant and forgotten about.

But for sure, if you are stupid enough to post files to such sites with clear and obvious filenames that show the content is audio and ties up with copyrighted material that's commericial in origin (aka ripped music) then you can bet safe kit-e-kat funds that the files will disappear rapidly particularly is someone complains etc.

I remember someone who posted a lossy-compressed set of audio tracks to RS, and by concidence the names of the files sort of looked pretty similar to some that tied up with commercial music releases.. and some short-sighted idiot naturally assumed he had obscured the names of some illegally distributed audio files.

As you can imagine, that friend was pretty much not a happy person when that happened - given that the person he had posted them for was gonna go collected them from RS to go promo the stuff for in the other country. His words, i'll spare you from reading

The only real alternative i can think of, outside of P2P and share-sites, where we suffer neither bandwidth issues or stupid limits, is (and bear in mind i would only take this on for self-created content or CCL/PD content ... not for commercial content sharing) to set up a physical library where contributed content can be sent to for central storage, then whoever wants to re-offer localised distribution could then request the required part or whole of the current library.

That way, initially, whoever acts as the first point of distro will have their work cut out.. but as people take on parts of that more locally, the workload gets shared.

DVD-R, or CD-R, allows (if you keep to say common MD-LP and comparable Hi-MD/ATRAC3Plus ready encodings, aka the ones that are low-medium sized resulting files) for fairly cheap physical distro to get the library distributed to those who wish to act as local library providers. If it was worked on a basis of 'i want xxx, out of yyyy % of the library, i provided the required number of CD-R's/DVD-R's for the purpose and shipping costs' or the modifed version where the receiver then provides blank media in return and bears the shipping costs (aka no charge associated with the content itself), then that can also work.

The real best-case, regardless of distro method, would be the concept i outlined somewhere once before - where we aimed to go and be totally legit... so we exploited P2P or other methods to share content - but instead of leeching, the library contributors each donated either x number of commericial releases (either lossless or actual release media) at their cost (aka they buy the original media releases) and what the library (distributed or centralised) would do is fulfil requests at a mere cost of breaking even over the cost of distro media (where used) and any royalty payments to make it really legit (assuming such an agreement could be sorted with the record companies).

Maybe that's way too 'uncool' or simply a demonically horrific concept.. to do it legit and play fair - but i was thinking about it at the time on two levels..

1. General purpose (back when i was an mp3/mp3pro/wma user).

2. A good way to make MD releases (SP or MDLP.. or HiMD in todays terms) available where they aint commercially viable due to low demand (in the eyes of the commericial distributors and record labels) and likewise for pre-cut ATRAC-CD's.

After all, if we who put in the time for the good of the ATRAC community do this out of the goodness of our hearts and simply ask no more than to be not out of pocket over the distribution costs and royalty/license payments - both we get something out of it.. those who contribute get something out of it... and those not involved at that level (aka the rest of the world) also get a crack at being able to get pre-cut MD's and ATRAC-CD's not just what few (if any) that do get mainstream official releases.

I mean, what a wonderful opportunity to link up the independent artists/performers and all their lovely (often brill quality) works and a market of listeners who ordinarily end up listening to transcoded mp3's etc on their ATRAC-only devices (thinking of MD users there) and simply if you want to fully exploit an ATRAC CD Walkman, then ATRAC CD would be what you would want your purchased pre-cut compressed audio to be supplied in.

MDLP rate encodings (pref 105/132k ATRAC3) makes for a good device transparent ATRAC combination.

If supplying pre-cut (ATRAC CD's in question), then it really is as simply as fufilling a customer order by making up the ATRAC CD (image it post burn to allow for rapid burning if the same item is requested afterwards by someone else) and posting it. Alternatively, the customer could get it for almost free (no media and shipping cost, just the appropriate license/royalty payments) if they are prepared to download a disk image suitably stored and accessible.

MD's, pre-cut, clearly is probably not to everyone's cup of tea particularly for SP cut examples as SP is still a 1x transfer/record process, so you'd really only do them if you had the time and inclination - however, on an exchange basis (blank media + return shipping costs+license/royalty payments in return for the supply of pre-cut MD media) i'm sure the takers on the distro side would increase for MDLP pre-cut would be way more practical timewise.

But hey, we can discuss this til the cows come home and still probably get nowhere and still be wandering around in circles.

So simply, do what you chose to do.. however you prefer to do it - find some way of informing people discretely what's available and how they can obtain the content.. and see what works.

I'd guess most wont want to go to the effort of being totally fair-play and legit - so maybe i'll forget mentioning those kinda aspects in future... after all, a message falling of deaf ears is a wasted effort.

'Tom Kat'

[FezzFest]

Why not using newsgroups? alt.binaries.atrac

Edited November 6, 2006 by FezzFest

[JustAnUnCoolCat]

Nice idea, if it exists..??

Not sure if it does, as yet - and whilst it's a brill universal method, it's limited by the fact that not all ISP's carry all the alt.binaries groups .. ditto for the NNTP specific providers (that said, most independent NNTP specific providers do carry the vast majority at least).

I was about to add that since it'll be (in NNTP terms relative to the rest of the binaries groups) pretty damn low occupancy and demand, maybe if the group existed or got created, it'd probably never get the vote or approval by many ISP's if it was an 'to be added' request since the average ATRAC user base is pretty low in numbers.

But i'll retract that observation, and simply say... if anything, the usage will be low and maybe unattractive as an 'to be added' group to many ISP's NNTP list. In revision, i wont completely write it off though as a non-starter, after all there are plenty of zero-occupancy or ghost-town groups still floating around the kept lists... and many aint been posted to in years.. such as, alt.binaries.sound.vqf - in fact, the last time i saw a post in that group, was a multi-post of sample encodings i sent to it for a closed group test.. (was easier to distribute the VQF versions that way). That was about two or so years ago.

Well, if the interest is there, and enough users get their ISP's to carry the group and it exists or gets created, fair play... i'll recognise it as a more serious contender

Bear in mind, i do realised there are high-retention subscription access servers out there that hold most groups - but not all of us use them - in fact, the vast bulk of users of NNTP dont use the paid-access servers at all unless they are the harvesters of the proverbial dodgy content. In fact, i reckon it's the fact a lot of the subscribers want the high-retention server access to fill their dodgy stuff desires, that keeps the old paid-access servers a going concern.

I'll buy music (that's totally a fair-play thing), i'll use a bundled access to NNTP via my ISP's or equiv on other ISP's on other people's accounts i often have permission and usage of - but i doubt i'd shell out money to access a subscription access NNTP facility otherwise, simply aint got the necessity to go do that.

I'm sure there's an option out there we've all overlooked, probability says there's gotta be, just a matter i guess that when we can fit it into our 'we do have lives outside of the forum' free time... that we uncover the elusive answer.

*sharpens the claws, in prep of yet another forensic shredding of the as-yet-unfound holy grail*

'Tom Kat'

'Tom Kat'