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Shifting From File Sharing To Stream Ripping?

Overhype

from the is-that-really-happening? dept

Wed, Apr 21st 2004 1:49pm — Mike Masnick
MusicLover writes "As users continue to try fending off the ever more litigious music industry, some seem to have dropped P2P entirely, moving to Ripping instead.  While they loose some control over what they are downloading, it's a untraceable way to download music (no way for the RIAA to track users or sue).  With some of the more powerful software that's been coming out recently, stream ripping has become more main-stream. Some of the more well known software packages, like StationRipper, allow users to download several thousand songs on a daily basis.  And, depending on how you read the law, it's 100% legal.  How will the RIAA respond?  As more users move to this type of technology to avoid the P2P lawsuits, how will the music industry respond?" Well, some of the comments are a bit misleading. It's not clear just how mainstream this technology really is, and it's certainly not nearly as user friendly for users as basic file sharing applications. The idea is that it records songs directly from streaming radio stations (though, right now, it looks like only certain kinds of streaming radio stations work with the software). Also, copying a song off the radio (which is this basically equivalent to) often involves a lower quality offering with songs cutting into each other, DJs talking over the music and other radio-related reasons why it's not the same as getting a full track.
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20 Comments

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  • identicon
    Jon, 21 Apr 2004 @ 2:17pm

    Rippers

    i've been using rippers for a while now. i've actually been using less P2P apps on a daily basis, as rippers can't be tracked (read: no law suit) and i kinda like just getting a wide amount of music to listen to and not have to troll though collections or know what i'm looking for. i'm also not sure how main stream they are at this point, even though i imagine some people are moving to them for the same reason i do.

    good point here, on the songs you get aren't always 100% perfect, depending on the stream operator (some are, some are close, some are way off). if i end up with a song i just really have to have that's on the "way off" side of things, i usually use a P2P app to find it, or just edit the mp3 file (sitch the last and cur song together, or something like that)

    i'm not sure about the ease of use - some of the newer ones are really simple to use. just click on the streams you want, it does it's thing. come back a couple of days later and you have a few thousand new tracks. 'course i admit i was initially confused - you gotta wait for a bit to actually have a complete song (hehe, i thought it was broken for the first few mins).

    ->jon w.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2004 @ 3:33pm

    Station Pracitces

    Having noticed that most stations never stream complete, unadulterated tunes I asked several station managers for the reason. While a few tried to claim that they do it to somehow please their listeners (huh?), most admitted that their listeners don't like it but they do it anyway to please the record industry.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2004 @ 3:47pm

      Re: Station Pracitces

      Some stations will rip 100% perfect. Some won't rip 100% ever - from what I've heard, this is mostly the broadcasters doing it on purpose, to foil rippers.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2004 @ 4:17pm

    tivo

    legit uses for these rippers is also TiVO for radio - i.e. you can record the radio whilst at work, and listen to it later (for those of us who aren't allowed music at work).

    I've heard of lots of problems with the beginning/end of songs being cut-off, so DJ's talking etc; which begs the question why don't these things rip to .WAVe so you can edit it without quality loss (I guess disk space is the answer)?

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2004 @ 4:46pm

      Re: tivo

      Past experience tells me that they are just saving the raw mp3 stream. They could save to wav, but they'd have to decompress the stream. They might as well just save the raw stream and let you deal with conversion at edit-time.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    suprised, 21 Apr 2004 @ 4:27pm

    guess the story has to come out sometime

    i wonder how long the technology has been out? ive been stream ripping for at least 6 months, and i dont run into any trouble at all, because my taste in music is such that i dont have to contend with the nazis of pop music with all these said tactics of not streaming %100 of songs and such. If you listen to old rock and eclectic stuff, the audio quality doesnt matter. 56k all day long for me is great.... and , i used this free program called dbpoweramp to reconvert some of the ripped streams i keep on my laptop drive down to 24k and for certain music its just fine! but instead of a 3 megabyte song its a 300-400 kilobyte song!

    for audio quality, i go for 128 and a above. 320 is nice but imo overkill. theres plenty of 190 and 128 on the shoutcast page...

    why listen to streams that run commercials? id rather send the station owners money.

    like dr yo internet radio.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Jake, 21 Apr 2004 @ 6:08pm

    Never tried it

    I have never tried radio stream ripping, although the player I use, http://www.zinf.org , automatically saves ever stream I listen to into an mp3 file, So I suppose in a sence it works that way. Another way I found to get free music to listen to is to simply check out the cd at the library. Well that's my 2 cents.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Chris Falco, 21 Apr 2004 @ 8:50pm

    Slashdot rippig off

    Well isn't it nice to see slashdot ripping off this entire story.

    Or maybe they just "ripped" the RSS stream.

    How lame, I'm very dissappointed in /.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 21 Apr 2004 @ 10:03pm

      Re: Slashdot rippig off

      My guess is whoever submitted it here also submitted it there. No big deal, though it would be nicer if they didn't do that.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Bob Thedino, 22 Apr 2004 @ 12:09am

      Re: Slashdot rippig off

      Erm, Slashdot is just a bunch of links to other interesting sites or news stories. It gave a link to this story on techdirt. I don't see how you can complain about them "ripping off" the story, when all they're doing is quoting it and linking to it!!! Isn't that what the web is all about?

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Mike (profile), 22 Apr 2004 @ 12:25am

        Re: Slashdot rippig off

        Oh. Heh. I hadn't even realized that the /. version linked here to Techdirt. Bizarre. Oh well. I imagine there will be a bump in traffic.

        [ link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        airdrummer, 22 Apr 2004 @ 4:59am

        Re: Slashdot rippig off

        that's fucking hilarious, rippers complaining about getting ripped;-)

        [ link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          s13g3, 22 Apr 2004 @ 8:39am

          Re: Slashdot ripping off

          Yah, you guys should be glad... You'll get a huge traffic spike, maybe some new users, etc., etc. After all, I'd never heard of your site before... The article was quoted/linked verbatim from your site and sent to /. by an anonymous coward, after all, and for a site whose code is built on /.'s, grievance with said site is a bit, ah, hypocritical. I'll prolly check your site out again sometime though (just bookmarked it), so I wouldn't complain too much. The /. effect can be a good thing, yanno, though it might help bunches if ya ran some advertising. The MegaTokyo Web-Comic, for example, has a pretty good pay-per-impression rate. Get yourself some advertisers and then a coupla good articles cross-posted /., site gets bigger, and b3wm, you're the next big geek site =)

          [ link to this | view in chronology ]

          • identicon
            AMetamorphosis, 22 Apr 2004 @ 8:53am

            Re: Slashdot ripping off



            Oh God ...
            not the /. crowd ...
            please,
            I found this site as an alternative to the geek snobbery that goes on over there ...

            For all the pissin' & moanin' we do ... Techdirt is still levels above /.

            [ link to this | view in chronology ]

          • icon
            Mike (profile), 22 Apr 2004 @ 11:12am

            Re: Slashdot ripping off

            Er... I wasn't the one complaining about /. linking to us. This isn't the first time either. We've had them link to us 4 times before. The traffic boost these days is noticeable, but not all that big (despite the belief about the "slashdot effect").

            [ link to this | view in chronology ]

            • identicon
              Adam, 22 Apr 2004 @ 9:13pm

              Re: Slashdot ripping off

              I stopped reading /. about a month after finding Techdirt (via a slashdot link). Not only is /. overrated, the people who post have gone way beyond the normal computer dork arrogance...

              [ link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        eskayp, 23 Apr 2004 @ 4:25pm

        Re: Slashdot rippig off

        For me, /. and TechDirt are two of my six daily "news" reads.
        A good variety of views on a variety of tekkie topics.
        I won't put any of them down:
        information comes in many flavors, most of them good.
        Hopefully my minimal critical thinking skills allow sorting the gold from the pyrite. Maybe.

        [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Chuck, 21 Apr 2004 @ 11:01pm

    StreamRipping

    It sounds like what I used to do when I was a teenager. Record my favorite radio station onto cassette tape, to listen to it at my leasure.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Mr. T, 6 Feb 2006 @ 12:28pm

    No Subject Given

    Why exactly is there room to reinterpret what the law says?

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Art, 13 Aug 2006 @ 6:58pm

    Radio Ripping Software

    Anyone where to download free software for ripping online radio broadcasts? I'm an old-time radio fan, and would like to copy these broadcasts to CDs for use while out walking. Thanks.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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