What about direct link?

A lot of people have complained/made-topics about this, including myself. Hopefully the people who run Jamendo will respond to the large number of requests for OGG.

sekinto wrote: Hopefully the people who run Jamendo will respond to the large number of requests for OGG.

Well, then think: what about the web space? I think that with all the new albums that keep flowing to the moderators, it's very hard to pay for all the gigabytes the MP3 ZIPs take up, and just think about all the bandwidth costs.
For example, I'll take fresh body shop's "make this end" and assume that its running time - 34 minutes - is the average length of every album here (it's most probably not, with the enormous number of EPs I've seen here, but you get the idea). It takes up 49 megabytes on my hard drive. I multiply it by the number of the albums given by the statistics at the time of the writing of this post - 8992 published albums - and get 430 gigabytes.
Now, I take the same artist's "tasteless" (the only Vorbis album I managed to download using BitTorrent), which takes up 61 megabytes on my hard drive. Again, assuming that its running time - 38 minutes, which is more than the previous example, but is not a huge difference in my opinion - is the average length of every album, I multiply it by 8992 and get 535 gigabytes.
Now, there are obviously some faults here, given the different lengths, the difference between "zipped" and not "zipped" files (not all that big, given MP3 and Vorbis are lossy formats), and the latter album's bigger average bit rate (again, not by much - only 199 kilobits per second versus 223), but again - you get the idea, don't you? If Jamendo were to host Vorbis-encoded files for download, one of the consequences would be doubling the costs.
What we, Jamendo users, can do for now, is either host Vorbis- and FLAC-encoded versions of our albums by ourselves on BitTorrent or on servers (which would allow greater flexibility anyway, since one could also sell them - a la Brad Sucks - and offer higher bit rates than Jamendo), donate money, keep ranting about the lack of support for Vorbis, anticipate Vorbis-encoded albums hosted on servers, or any combination of the former.

i heard one possible idea was to offer FLAC as a paid option

Litis wrote: What we, Jamendo users, can do for now, is either host Vorbis- and FLAC-encoded versions of our albums by ourselves

I've been using archive.org to host FLAC files of some of the albums I've published on Jamendo. Archive.org automatically encodes Ogg and two different bitrate MP3 files as well as playlists from the uploaded FLAC tracks. The download options are far more extensive than anything Jamendo can offer. The whole user interface is far more straightforward and easier to use. I've found that the upload process is easy to use, and album pages go live once the files are uploaded... none of this "Your files are being encoded" and "Awaiting Moderation" messages for days on end.

Archive.org falls flat when it comes to building a community around the music and independent artists. Jamendo does a much better job with this because of the sharing of playlists, messaging, forums, staring albums, recommendations, etc. Also, Jamendo has artist pages that list all of an artist's work, but on archive.org each album is an independent entity not linked to anything else. Archive.org has a much wider scope than Jamendo, with distribution of video, podcasts, radio programs, software, so probably doesn't see a benefit to adding Jamendo-like features.

I think Jamendo could learn a lot from archive.org. The download process on Jamendo is one of the problems that people frequent complain about, but the archive.org design has this problem solved. Here are a couple of recent examples (not yet available on Jamendo because of the moderation time):

http://www.archive.org/details/ChooseToFindDuoLive
http://www.archive.org/details/BookmobileLive20080504

@Litis:

First of all, doesn't Jamendo have to keep on seeding the OGG torrents? Usually only one person is downloading at a time, this means that Jamendo has to upload just as much, using the same ammount of bandwidth as they would have if the person had directly downloaded it. Therefor I don't see why offering direct OGG downloads would cause much more stress.

This isn't really about direct downloading, just something that I should add. Why do they make the OGGs bigger than the MP3s, they should compress them at the same bitrate, or at least close to the same.

And this is the final thing I'm going to say. If Jamendo can't aford too much bandwidth why don't they force torrenting with both MP3s and OGGs, really that's the way it should be, because if everyone torrented it would bring down some stress on the servers. And I find it kind of silly that a site about open music is avoiding the most popular open audio format (not including lossless formats like WAV or FLAC).

randy wrote: http://www.archive.org

This site sounds great for uploading music!

Litis: The Ogg Vorbis files are being stored anyways and storage is very cheap.
I fully agree with sekinto that Jamendo should focus more on torrents. One idea from me was to not include the Jamendo peer's IPs in the first announces/scrapes to the clients, so normal people do the major part of distribution.
Making the Ogg Vorbis files higher bitrates is highly debatable too. Q5 is transparent to most people. :\

I guess I am just missing OiNK's too much. :(

Having torrents support after introducing HTTP download is a big fat luxury, but people just take it for granted and keep demanding more and more. Some are whining about OGG, another fella demanded FLAC as a default format... Where does it stop? It's pretty obvious that after having OGG someone will ask for AAC, MP4, APE etc etc...

I think Jamendo should drop support for OGG and save the headache and complaints from ungrateful pettifogging people that can't appreciate what they have and just bitching about what they don't have. You have direct HTTP download of full albums for free in the most conventional audio format, what fucking else do you need?


Offering alternative audio format was a nice gimmick when Jamendo was a young site with reasonable amount of albums allowing to maintain it easily. The things are different now, there are too many albums to be prepared for direct download, for torrents in 2 formats, seeds and stuff.

Dropping OGG really wouldn't save that much bandwidth Saregama (it would probably save disk space though), which is what I was replying to the person about (the bandwidth issue) in my post. I was saying how dropping MP3 "direct/http downlads" would save much more bandwidth. You do agree with me that most people use MP3, right, you said it was the most conventional audio format, so I am going to make that assumption. Therefor, if we had everyone who currently downloads MP3s downloading them via a torrent client we would have a lot of people to upload to others, realeasing some of the stress on the server's bandwidth.

You also say MP3 is the convention audio format, conventional things are the "accepted standards", but Jamendo definately isn't your standard site. That's my opinion. I'm not saying Jamendo should embrace OGG, neither am I whining (you seem so angry), I'm just saying that IFF they do they should give it equal treatment (why do they encode at a higher bitrate (which also increases bandwidth use), not offer the same means of download, and force a choice of format on you right away instead of making you decided?)

sekinto wrote: (why do they encode at a higher bitrate (which also increases bandwidth use)

Q7 Ogg is essentially CD quality. Most people will rate it as subjectively lossless. It is also about a third of the size of the FLAC version of the file.

Again, I don't know why the big fuss about how Jamendo handles this, or why SaReGaMa seems so ticked off. It seems like a non-issue to me. I spend a lot of hard work getting good recordings of our live acts and spend a lot of time editing, so I upload the FLAC files to archive.org. Archive.org has all of the music hosting functions of Jamendo and much more. It automatically encodes my FLAC files to high quality Ogg and VBR MP3 and Lo-Fi 64Kbps MP3. Zip files are available via HTTP and FTP direct downloads as are individual files. They also offer streaming and M3U playlists and embedded players. They don't offer torrents, but bandwidth probably isn't as much of an issue as it is for Jamendo as they most likely have better funding. Archive.org did a great job with their download page interface.

What archive.org does not have that Jamendo does is the integration with reviews, ratings, tags, recommendations and other social networking functions. Also, archive.org is far more difficult to browse because about all you can do is run a search and get back a list of results. So, I will continue to publish albums on Jamendo with a note in the description that reads: CD quality FLAC files of this recording are available from http://www.archive.org/...

Take a look at this example:

Jamendo: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/24694
Archive.org: http://www.archive.org/details/ChooseToFindDuoLive

Until Jamendo gives you exactly what you want, try some workarounds. I don't see why this would be a big deal for anyone when I include the archive.org link in the description section on the Jamendo page.

I've tried several sites such as MySpace, Lost FM, SoundClick, The 61, OurStage etc and among them Jamendo is the most well organized site. I'm just tired of people who can't accept this simple fact with gratitude and just keep whining : "gimme this and gimme that". Jamendo already has fulfilled its part to the artists BIG TIME, now this is artists responsibility to create torrents and seed them or offering alternative audio formats, and some of them are doing that.
I know many artists here that offer FLAC or seed torrents with audiophile versions of their albums. Jamendo shouldn't worry about that, it did enough already and support for OGG should be dropped because it doesn't work anyway...

SaReGaMa: It is not "gimme this and gimme that", it is "why did you remove this and remove that"? My interest in Jamendo came from Ogg Vorbis & Torrents & Creative Commons.

The Chilling Spirit wrote: "why did you remove this and remove that"?

Because the site has grown and the staff not and because non efficient things were replaced with better ones. Who needs torrents when you have a direct link?

SaReGaMa wrote: Who needs torrents when you have a direct link?

+1

I prefer direct downloads. They are much faster than the torrent 'rubbish'. KraftiM

SaReGaMa wrote: and because non efficient things were replaced with better ones

Riiiight and I thought you might have stopped acting like a troll.

No way! Being a troll kicks ass!

The Chilling Spirit wrote: My interest in Jamendo came from Ogg Vorbis & Torrents & Creative Commons.

Well, perhaps you're at the wrong place then, 'cause Jamendo primarily is a place for music and that's what you get here very well. The things that you mentioned are just ancillaries.

The Chilling Spirit wrote: My interest in Jamendo came from Ogg Vorbis & Torrents & Creative Commons.

If this is the reason then this site www.archive.org will improve und increase your interest further!

OGG should be dropped because it doesn't work anyway

OGG does work, it is Jamendo that doesn't work in seeding OGG torrents properly.

non efficient things were replaced with better ones. Who needs torrents when you have a direct link?

Exactly, this is why we should either get rid of HTTP downloads or get rid of Torrent downloads. The reason the torrents go slow is because not enough people torrent the songs and for torrents to work properly you need a lot of people downloading/uploading the same thing, this would only happen if Jamendo got rid of HTTP downloads. That is why we either need it all to be HTTP or it all to be Torrents.

I'm just tired of people who can't accept this simple fact with gratitude and just keep whining : "gimme this and gimme that".

There is a difference between whining and asking. Whining would be asking for all your wishes to be fullfilled, it just fusturates me that Jamendo chooses to offer OGG, but then doesn't comit to it. If you say you are going to do something you should do it, Jamendo says they offer OGG, but the truth is they only offer OGG through poorly seeded downloads.

cause Jamendo primarily is a place for music and that's what you get here very well.

Jamendo isn't just about music, it is about open music.

No way! Being a troll kicks ass!

Well at least you aknowledge the fact that you are doing it, good for you. Flaming people is not the proper way to have a conversation both online and offline. I'm sure if you went up to someone asking why a parlor doesn't serve a certain kind of icecreame on certain days, when they are just looking for an answer, and you called them a whiny brat (when they were just asking about something)... I'm pretty sure you'd get smacked, or worse.
What do you have against asking questions? Are you trying to enforce some kind of totalitarianism here, [sarcasm] because we all know you own the site and have the right to bully people [/sarcasm].

sekinto wrote: [sarcasm] [/sarcasm]

!!!!!!!!!!!
New tags?

They're needed, because sarcasm does not translate well over the internet.

sekinto wrote: at least you aknowledge the fact that you are doing it

Sorry, I wasn't aware of those marvelous tags of yours when I wrote that... So having alternative opinion is "flaming people" for you?

sekinto wrote: get rid of Torrent downloads

Agreed.

sekinto wrote: Jamendo isn't just about music, it is about open music.

Agreed. We get it openly without any torrents and OGG.

Sorry, I wasn't aware of those marvelous tags of yours when I wrote that... So having alternative opinion is "flaming people" for you?

I don't care if you have an alternitive opinion, but this is clearly flaming:

and save the headache and complaints from ungrateful pettifogging people that can't appreciate what they have and just bitching about what they don't have

Insulting your oponant is never a good debate tatic, it is immature.

Damn it. Why did I post again?

There has been a history of torrent problems on Jamendo. This has affected both ogg and mp3.

I am personally pro torrents but have become highly frustrated with the way they are performing for Jamendo.

Jamendo's solution to "fixing" this problem was to introduce mp3 direct downloads. The only reason we now hear about the "Ogg" problem instead of the "torrent" problem is because people who want mp3 files just use the http direct download.

When used properly torrents can reduce the bandwidth usage of the central site by offloading some of the bandwidth to peers. As stated earlier torrents work best when there are lots of peers. Providing http direct downloads destroys the seeding of equivalent torrents because most people will use direct download when it is available and potential seeders are removed from the pool.

The question I then ask is why is Jamendo offering http downloads of mp3 files when there is no bandwidth advantage to doing so? In my opinion the answer is "follow the money"....

To survive financially Jamendo has to display as many adverts to as many people as possible to earn sponsorship. This means that the more people that use the site the better because it is easier to raise sponsorship for successful sites. To make the site appeal to the widest audience possible you need to give the public what they want:
- Joe Public does not understand torrents. He just wants a link to click on to get his music.
- Joe Public uses commercial music players that seldom support the DRM free ogg format.
- Joe Public wants to get as much for free as possible and "seeding" makes it less "free".

By going to http direct downloads for mp3 Jamendo has demonstrated that bandwidth usage is not their biggest issue. As Jamendo is promoting open standards (CC music) it makes sense to support Ogg. There is a small but important community of Jamendo users that prefer ogg files and they should be accommodated. It is this member community that supports the site by commenting on music and promoting it to their friends.

I would say Jamendo should add http downloads for ogg files and scrap all p2p formats. It would have no major impact on bandwidth usage and make the ogg users happy.

Alternatively make the high quality ogg files via torrents a members only format and enforce a low minimum ratio or you loose ogg download rights.

Personally I think the issue with the torrents is not a lack of seeders but a problem with the tracker. I have torrents that report 20+ seeders but never start. It must be a tracker issue because if the seeders don't exist why is the tracker reporting there are seeds?

As to the argument of why the ogg files are encoded at a higher bitrate than the mp3 files I say that this is the point of using ogg files. For the same physical file size as an mp3 file you can encode a higher quality ogg file. Storage is cheap compared to bandwidth used to download things. The restraint is that the mp3 files and ogg files must both take about the same amount of bandwidth to transfer so as to make no difference to Jamendo's bandwidth costs.

If Jamendo is cleaver the bandwidth costs of http direct downloads can be reduced as well. By making use of an upstream ISP that is a member of a web cache network can reduce their bandwidth load considerably.

Personally I would be happy with Q5 ogg files but Q7 ogg files are a good compromise for bandwidth hungry flac files. Offering flac files on a site like Jamendo is just going overboard as most of the music here is not recorded at a quality high enough to need flac to do it justice. The odd artist that wants to offer surround sound mixes and flac can do so via archive.org or their own web site.

My vote then is:
- Keep mp3 http downloads for the masses.
- Add ogg http downloads for the specialists.
- Scrap torrent support, it is broken and poorly supported.

Rocketman wrote: - Keep mp3 http downloads for the masses.
- Add ogg http downloads for the specialists.

Absolutely correct.

Rocketman wrote: - Scrap torrent support, it is broken and poorly supported.

I don't think Jamendo will do that. Even though torrents are full of problems, they still have one great advantage: p2p is very cheap.

Rocketman wrote: - Add ogg http downloads for the specialists.

+1 I have to agree with your analysis that this would not considerably increase Jamendo's use of bandwidth. The number of Ogg downloaders is probably small anyway.

Rocketman wrote: - Scrap torrent support, it is broken and poorly supported.

+1 I hate broke stuff and don't like using it. There's nothing more frustrating than a torrent that won't start. Back to your first point, most of the successful torrent downloads that I've had were directly from a Jamendo server with no other peers contributing. So much for saving bandwidth!

Rocketman wrote: The odd artist that wants to offer surround sound mixes and flac can do so via archive.org or their own web site.

+1 ... but who are you calling "odd" dude?

I think Jamendo should drop support for OGG and save the headache and complaints from ungrateful pettifogging people

You're just incredible SaReGaMa.

Are you aware that MP3 isn't open format? It is important for Jamendo to use open format, just as it is important to use libre software. On top of that it seems OGG has better compression and is better quality than MP3.

I think torrent is a good idea too, it means sharing which Jamendo is about since it has built a community around the music. Torrent would work better I suppose if mp3 zip files weren't available, for M$window users, essentially. I'm thankful that Jamendo cares for the minority who really care about freedom. We are not "ungrateful pettifogging people". You misunderstand the issue completely I'm afraid.

cheers

I want more seed to download ogg torrent or direct link to ogg.

And you?

This lack of seeders is making Jamendo a real pain to use. I'm not able to recommend Jamendo to anyone as it currently is.

I would be happy to seed the Ogg Vorbis music I've already managed to download, but the tracker is constantly invalidating week-old torrents for new ones with re-encoded files, it seems. I have downloaded 19 albums via BitTorrent, only one of which is still accepted (and thus shareable) by the tracker.

I want to support Jamendo for one reason: Free music in a Free format supported by Free software. I am no longer interested if Jamendo reduces to using only a non-free format, as it effectively is doing at the moment.

Quadduc wrote: I want to support Jamendo for one reason: Free music in a Free format supported by Free software. I am no longer interested if Jamendo reduces to using only a non-free format, as it effectively is doing at the moment.

This is a cheep demagoguery, a commie one. And it's pettifogging and ungrateful.

http://unmotivationalposters.com/main.php?g2_itemId=4901

libre fan wrote:
You're just incredible SaReGaMa.

Are you aware that MP3 isn't open format? It is important for Jamendo to use open format, just as it is important to use libre software. On top of that it seems OGG has better compression and is better quality than MP3.

I think torrent is a good idea too, it means sharing which Jamendo is about since it has built a community around the music. Torrent would work better I suppose if mp3 zip files weren't available, for M$window users, essentially. I'm thankful that Jamendo cares for the minority who really care about freedom. We are not "ungrateful pettifogging people". You misunderstand the issue completely I'm afraid.

cheers

it's called 'a sense of humor'. and you'd know just what that is if you didn't happen to be a linux user.

With my hifi equipment I could never tell the difference between ogg and mp3 if the bitrate is high enough. And so for most of you. If mp3 are free or not, that isn't interesting for me. I don't pay for them, so what? Or you really think the people of Jamendo work there for their ideals of free music for everyone? The only thing is that if you write you have oggs for downloading, you should have them. Not because we listeners have the right to have them, just because of the loss of image for Jamendo. They don't work for the glory, they work for money, and they make money if their users are satisfied. A good working webpage attracts and keeps more users and, as you all know, the more users the more sponsors.
Getting people unsatisfied isn't a good politcs for EVERY business company. And we all want Jamendo working better and better.

Agree with every single word. If you write you have oggs for downloading, you should have them and that's why I suggested to remove ogg since it's not functioning anyway and just upsets a handful of commies we got here. I say again that Jamendo does enough to promote free music and artists themselves should create and manage distribution of all kinds of weird formats. If Randy can upload FLACs to archive.org anyone can. Go get them and convert to whatever you like.

Jamendo already has a lot of support for its providing Ogg Vorbis – take a look at the Partners section at ogg.jamendo.com. In Fedora (which supports free formats like Ogg Vorbis) at least, the music player software comes with a plug-in for Jamendo and includes bookmarks to Jamendo and related sites in the browser. Many of these users (and other members of the communities around free software and free cultural works) probably know about Jamendo. All this is because Jamendo provides free music in a free format. Thus I do not think it would be feasible for Jamendo to break support for Ogg Vorbis.

@SaReGaMa:
OGG functions just fine, it is Jamendo's distrobution of OGG that doesn't work well.
And don't confuse people who like open formats with communists. Richard Stallman would be an example of an intellectual property "communist", he thinks all software and other intellectual property should be free/open. Most people who like free/open things are DIFFERENT from RMS, they believe that commercial and free/open software (and other intellectual property) can coexist and just premote free/open things. So basically most free/open advocates are capitalist who believe that sharing is an excellent thing and encourage it, they don't force it down anybody's throat. BTW, I'm not saying communists are evil and capitalist are good (that is not what I believe), I am saying that when it comes to "intellectual property" you should have the right to choose what you do with it.

sekinto wrote: OGG functions just fine, it is Jamendo's distrobution of OGG that doesn't work well.

Duh! Ain't that what I mean?

sekinto wrote: I'm not saying communists are evil and capitalist are good

I'm not saying that either. Communism ideals are even better, though utopian. By commies I mean narrow-minded-fanatic-dogmatic people with distorted concept of what freedom is.

As far as I know there is no 'Communism' and 'Capitalism' in music.

sekinto wrote: Richard Stallman would be an example of an intellectual property "communist", he thinks all software and other intellectual property should be free/open.

Richard Stallman refuses to use the term "intellectual property", because it's a deliberately confusing term that tries to lump together completely different laws. When people use the term "intellectual property" they usually either mean one of copyright law, patent law or trademark law. As RMS says on the page I linked to, these three laws originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues. RMS therefore treats the three laws completely differently. He thinks that copyright has become too powerful, but he does not think it is necessary to completely abolish copyright laws. He is against software patents, because they function like a mine field for all software developers. Trademark law is in his view good, because it lets customers know what they buy.

Saying that Richard Stallman "thinks all software and other intellectual property should be free/open" is therefore entirely inaccurate. He thinks that one should be free to use, modify and share all works that serve a practical purpose (like software and documentation), while one should at least be free to share non-commercially all other works (like music and other art).

Richard Stallman explains well in the article "Why Software Should be Free", why associating him or the free software movement with Communism is incorrect. Calling people Communists like this is a "way of changing the subject and avoiding the issue. [...] (It is much easier to attack communism than to attack the views of the free software movement.)"

sekinto wrote: [...] they believe that commercial and free/open software [...]

It looks like you are trying to differ between "commercial" and "free/open software". This is nonsense. I think what you really mean here is "proprietary and free software". Free software can be commercial, and non-free (proprietary) software can be non-commercial. RMS does not have anything against commercial free software.

@Quadduc:
Yeah, sorry Quadduc. I definately made some major mistakes there, I realy meant "free/open and non-free/closed". I think it was because I was angry so I wasn't thinking straight, it seems that whenever SaReGaMa comes into a thread about the distribution of OGG on Jamendo not working he has to call everybody names and says we should be happy with what we get. I think that if Jamendo wants to distribute OGG they should make sure their distribution infranstructure is working, otherwise they should drop it because when it doesn't work they will pisses people off. If Jamendo drops OGG I'll just go somewhere else, but if they keep it but don't properly distribute it I will continue to voice my opinion on how it can be improved. I've never heard of someone making half a cake, you either make a whole one or you don't make it at all. 10 days ago I started torrenting five OGG albums,two started right away, another took three days to start, another took five days, and I'm still waiting for the last one to start. And it's really sad, because I love Jamendo for its one-of-a-kind community, and because there are so many good artists here.

well well well should jamendo support freedom? (eg ogg)

yes because freedom supports Jamendo

http://creativecommons.org/?s=jamendo

just look at the applications supporting Jamendo ^

____

oh hang on it does support freedom already, but is having some expansion issues - maybe we can forgive that, but not for too much longer --- throwing the towel in now is neither right or in the least bit smart