Liking Jamendo, Rhythmbox

[techieMoe]

I got bored today and I'm a glutton for punishment so I decided to see if I could use my 2nd generation iPod Nano with Ubuntu 7.10 and Rhythmbox Music Player. The last time I tried this was in SuSE 9.2 and I remember it being a disaster.

Much to my surprise, Rhythmbox opened itself up when I plugged in the iPod and not only allowed me to browse and play music on it but to add music as well. The only issue I ran into was that when I ejected the iPod I received an error that it couldn't eject the device, even though my iPod said it had successfully been removed.

Rhythmbox also has plug-ins for Magnatune and Jamendo. I've used Magnatune in the past but they're not free of charge. I've discovered several new artists on Jamendo that I've been adding to my iPod all morning. Just wanted to share a pleasant story of something that "just works" in Linux.

[carlosponti]

cool deal. so far i havent found anything that i use at home that i cant use in ubuntu. even my wifes mp3 which is a creative i had to download the nomad package to get it working but it worked. good to hear that you can use the ipod i have heard of notorious difficulties on linux with it.

[ryokimball]

I've used Magnatune in the past but they're not free of charge.

Okay, I'm a little nervous about mentioning this, but this isn't entirely true, for at least two reasons.
First is probably more obvious to you and anyone else using Magnatune: the whole "Download of the Day" thing. If you don't know, you sign up and they email you a link and some info of the song of the day, and you go to the download page (always the same) to download it.
But this other is what I'm nervous about knowing... you see, if anyone has ever opened up a m3u playlist in a text editor, then you will see that it is only a list of locations of different mp3's. For instance, if I had a m3u of some songs, I would have

.\song1.mp3.\song2.mp3

or something like that....
And this is no different for m3u's on the internet: they are simply the addresses of the songs. Magnatune has a m3u under each artist (or at least from what I've seen) for a high-def and low-def; if you save the high-def.m3u and open it in a text editor, you then have the addresses from which you can download the mp3's themselves.

I don't know if this is a bad thing to mention or not, so if a moderator comes by and thinks this is not a legally nice thing to share, please go ahead and delete it (but send me a PM saying that you did, please).

[Vergil83]

Okay, I'm a little nervous about mentioning this, but this isn't entirely true, for at least two reasons.

I am sure Magnatune is aware of this and realize people download songs this way. However, they are trying to create a new way of music distribution based not on forcing you to pay for the music, but of paying more in appreciation of the music. After all, you could just listen to the stream everyday and not even download them. That would actually cost them more with bandwidth.

[techieMoe]

The tracks you get from the streams have a little blurb at the end that says "That was track number XXX from the album YYY by ZZZ on Magnatune.com." They're not exactly the same as the tracks you get when you purchase the music.

I like Magnatune, and I think a minimum price of $5USD is more than reasonable for a good album. I generally pay around $8-10USD. Sometimes though I just can't afford it, so it's good there are sites like Jamendo.

[ryokimball]

Sometimes though I just can't afford it, so it's good there are sites like Jamendo.

I thought it was funny --I'm looking for a job (like I have been since I moved here), and one place I very well might get a job is this restaurant that is expanding and will need more people to cover it. I went there yesterday to see how things were going and she suggested I come and eat there --kinda hard to do without money, and i need a job to get that....