I’m not much of a music fan. I enjoy listening to it while driving or whenever I’m doing boring and repetitive tasks. I enjoy silence.

But I’m not that happy when the silence is imposed on me. I’m talking about Pandora.com which is a music service that launched a couple of years ago. The launch caused some raised eyebrows in the music industry at the time. So it came as no surprise when Pandora closed down it’s service to the whole world except the US and the UK in May 2007.

Internet music broadcasting in the US is regulated by the DCMA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) which streamlines the process of acquiring all the licenses needed to keep such a service running. But outside of the US deals have to be negotiated with record labels in each country, which is a legal nightmare that Pandora (much like Hulu.com) choose to live without.

According to Podcasting News website:

Founder Tim Westergren said this week that the company cannot reach an agreement with music industry trade bodies over music licensing fees, adding that the licensing bodies’ rates “are far too high to allow ad-supported radio to operate” in the UK.

This would be sad news for music fans, but the community as risen to the occasion and launched a new website called globalPandora.
The site wraps around Pandora.com allowing this way everyone around the world to once more enjoy high quality music for free on the web. There are several other music services similar to Pandora link MeeMix.com. But I really like the minimalist interface, the quality of the audio and the way music genres or artists are cataloged and served.

Now if someone just did the same for Hulu.com I’d be a happy camper.

Via I Blog All

The music industry is collapsing. The consumers found a new way of getting the music they want, to listen to in which device they want. Itunes and others online services have changed that forever.

But there was no way to enjoy live music without getting out of your house and going to a concert.
Not anymore, now you can watch a live concert from your favorite band without leaving the comfort of your home.

And no, it’s not a live recorded CD or DVD. It’s a live broadcast which you pay to “attend” and get to watch your favorite performer playing live for you and hopefully to a few more costumers of the service.

DeepRockDrive promises just that. delivering live high quality video streams of selected bands perfoming in a stage set up just for that live broadcast. Actually the term that has been developed for such an event is a Socialcast.
And as you may have figured out the paying public gets to interact with the band in several ways.

According to TechCrunch’s post:

Here is how it works. The band plays in the soundstage (with or without a live audience). The shows are filmed with five Sony HD cameras, and each Web viewer can pick which camera angle he or she wants to watch. The audience can also vote on the order of the songs on the set list or make their own song requests. They can also send in messages during the show that the band sees on large screens surrounding the stage. Prior to shows (DeepRockDrive calls them socialcasts), bands try to drum up support with digital posters on their Websites and MySpace pages that fans can take and put on their own Web pages. On DeepRockDrive, fans can petition for concerts from their favorite bands, like this one for Flight of the Conchords. If the shows get enough votes, it makes it easier for the bands to decide to fly to Las Vegas to record the show.

I really don’t know what’s the big difference in watching a DVD recorded live or these kinds of socialcasts.
The big plus for this kind of stuff is the interaction between the audience and the performer.
On the other hand, the quality of such a service remains to be seen, but somehow i doubt that it will DVD quality.

Despite it’s possible shortcoming, it’s a step in the right direction. This service will debut during CES. So will surely hear more from this service very soon.