* * * * *
                                        
       Is it an Internet Radio Station if you don't actually play music?
                                        
> You might have noticed that I show the current playing song from my mp3
> player here on my site. What you don't know is that I've been using a hack
> for the past few months. For Winamp, I used the DoSomething plugin to work
> through a local special template file which would create another local flat
> file with song info. I'd then ftp the output file to my server, which I
> loaded as an include. To get my mac to the same, I had to setup a similar
> program, and both hacks ended up constantly sending flat files to my server
> over insecure FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Kinda sounds like overkill,
> doesn't it?
> 

“Trackbacks in Winamp [1]”

An interesting idea and something I didn't know about WinAmp [2], but cool
nonetheless. By presenting a current playlist he is not only showing what
type of music he listens to, but in an abstract way, he's acting as a form of
disk jocky (although he isn't spinning disks but streaming electrons), which
may be a way that Internet radio can survive the onslaught of the RIAA
(Recording Industry Association of America) [3] in an underground type of
way.

I had the idea some time ago, made a quick note of it, and promptly forgot
it. This post reminded me of it. Given the silly hoops you have to go through
(Webcasting Legally) [4] to actually present a radio-like station over the
Internet, what if you sidestepped the major problem—the playing of music?

It's certainly not illegal to provide a list of song titles and artists on a
publically accessible webpage. Lyrics, possibly, but not the titles and
artists. And there should be even less problem if you don't actually link to
the song itself—just a list.

And if that isn't illegal, then it certainly is okay to update said list
periodically. Say, every fifteen or thirty minutes or so. Oddly enough, it
would be such that the list of songs, if played would cover the period of
time in question. And it shouldn't matter if the ilst is stored in HTML
(HyperText Markup Language), XML (eXtensible Markup Language) or a flat text
file. And store it in a well-known location on a web server.

And it certainly wouldn't be my problem if something like Kazaa [5] or any
other form of P2P (Person-to-Person) filesharing program would pick up said
file and do an automatic search and retrieval of the songs in the list.

I mean, I can't be the only person to have thought of this? Right? Right?

[1] http://a.wholelottanothing.org/archives.blah/006625
[2] http://www.winamp.com/
[3] http://www.riaa.org/
[4] http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html
[5] http://www.kazaa.com/

Email author at sean@conman.org