Making A (Virtual) Independent Bollywood MP3 Download Web Site

 

My niece beds Indian takes and Indian film medicine. To her, as to most of the world, this galore, colorful, romantic and just-plain-fun literary genre is summed up in one word: Bollywood.

 

I profess that I've got taken with Bollywood as happy, though non to the duplicate extent as my niece, who features a amount of Indian movies and on a regular basis splits others. The Bollywood well is so bad that I give to bound myself to following those a couple of of its productions that babble up to see the tending of American movie reviewers. Otherwise I imparted be lost in Indian ocean of unfamiliar movie titles, workers and actresses.

 

My niece as well collects CDs of Bollywood music. There's an Asian marketplace almost her house that offerings a cornucopia of them. But she has the identical problem selecting CDs to buy that I do settling which Bollywood movie may be worth my time. Unless she's seen the film from which a soundtrack derives, she's usually in the dark every bit to whether a careful CD's strains and artists are ones she will enjoy.

 

At her invite, I set up a right smart for her to preview a variety of Bollywood strains and even to live with them on her iPod for a while, all for Loose. This style she can take knowing decisions about which CDs she ultimately purchases.

 

First, I searched for Indian music Web sites, and specifically for those devoted to Bollywood, or at least modern popular medicine (equally opposed, say, to classical Indian ragas). I found several good ones, with names such every bit Bollywood earth and India FM.

All the big music sellers may have moved to non-DRM MP3 files long ago, but the watermarking of files with your personal information continues. Most users who buy music don’t know about the marking of files, or don’t care. Unless those files are uploaded to BitTorrent or other P2P networks, there isn’t much to worry about.

A list of which music services are selling clean MP3 files without embedded personal information, and which aren’t, is here. Apple, LaLa (owned by Apple) and Walmart embed personal information. Amazon, Napster and the rest have resisted label pressure to do so.

A music industry insider who’s asked to remain anonymous writes to us:

Hidden in purchased music files from popular stores such as Apple and Walmart is information to identify the buyer and/or the transaction. You won’t find it disclosed in their published terms of use. It’s nowhere in their support documentation. There’s no mention in the digital receipt. Consumers are largely oblivious to this, but it could have future ramifications as the music industry takes another stab at locking down music files.

Here’s how it works. During the buying process a username and transaction ID are known by the online retailers. Before making the song available for download their software embeds into the file either an account name or a transaction number or both. Once downloaded, the file has squirreled away this personal information in a manner where you can’t easily see it, but if someone knows where to look they can. This information doesn’t affect the audio fidelity, but it does permanently attach to the file data which can be used to trace back to the original purchaser which could be used at a later date.

Retailers aren’t talking, but there’s ample proof of what’s transpiring. Using simple file comparison tools it’s possible to verify this behavior by purchasing identical songs using different accounts and see if they match. I emailed support departments for several retailers asking if they would acknowledge these actions and inquiring about what specific information they are embedding. Only 7digital responded saying they don’t use any watermarks. What retailers won’t say publicly is that the major record labels are requiring this behavior as a precondition to sell their music.

Certain record labels have aspirations to use this hidden data to control future access to music in a return to DRM (digital rights management). The labels yearn to control where you can listen to your music and this could be a backdoor for them to achieve it. When personal libraries are stored in the cloud, it becomes possible to retrieve this personal data and match it to a user identity. If the match is successful the song plays, but if not, access can be blocked through a network DRM system such as the one Lala patented (which is now owned by Apple).

For the scheme to work record labels need all retailers to support this and so far some notable names are resisting. Napster, Amazon and UK based 7digital are selling clean MP3 files. Files purchased from these stores do not have any user information whatsoever embedded into them. Other retailers such as Apple and Walmart have succumbed to label pressure to embed personal info.

Retailers and record labels should have the right to sell dirty files if they wish, however they should be obligated to disclose their practices in advance. Consumers should have this information so they can make an informed buying decision about whether to support dirty or clean MP3 vendors. If Barnes and Noble printed your name on pages of books you purchase that would be important information to know because it would affect the value of your book. Here the clandestine actions are even more worrisome because it could lead to a future lockdown of purchases. If the labels have plans to require cloud vendors to use this information in the future, they should disclose that as well.

Cloud Music And The New DRM

Apple, Google and Amazon are all reportedly in discussions with big labels to provide a cloud music service. These services will allow users to purchase rights to stream music, and they will also allow syncing of songs on your hard drive already so you can play those without repurchasing them (this was the original LaLa model).

The labels, say our source, are demanding that a user can only stream music that is watermarked to their username. Change the username, or try to stream music that you’ve ripped from a CD, and those songs won’t play.

In other words, it’s DRM déjà vu all over again.

Online resources for discovering and downloading new music appear to be endless. And once you have discovered one that has everything you want, it’s gone. They come and go like the seasons. Some are legal, most are not.

The best way to keep up with the latest single or album releases, tour dates, and the hottest new bands are social music networks.

Here is a website that focuses entirely on what’s hot right now and where to get cool new tunes for free.

Muzic

We tune in and analyze this tidal wave of musical conversation to help you find songs, artists, and music bloggers that you want to know about. We want to help you discover new artists you’ll support in the future.

Sound good? Let’s have a look at how Muzic works.

Browsing for music…

When you’re not logged in the start page shows a tag cloud of “artists happening now”, i.e. artists that have a lot of free stuff out now. You can zoom over to “songs happening now” and “bloggers on our radar” by clicking the small buttons at the bottom of the tag cloud.

Muzic lets you search for artists, songs, or bloggers. But to discover new bands, “popular tags” or “songs by genre” are a better starting point.

The results page is a list of posts that match your query. Posts are created by the bloggers that provide the free MP3 downloads. Each post contains details about the song and a link back to the the site where it was posted originally.

Click on the song name to launch the song’s card, which contains some more information, as well as lists of more songs from the same blog and all songs from that artist below the card.

Downloading mp3s…

Once you found an interesting song, click > Get Song in its bottom left. You will be redirected to the original source. Muzic will stay with you though, as it is minimized to a small bar at the top of the page.

Now you can either download the song from the respective blog or from Muzic’s top navigation bar. If you decide for Muzic, > right-click the green > Download MP3 button and select > Save Link As… from the menu. Now select a destination and you’re ready to save the song.

To return to Muzic, click the << back link in its navigation bar at the top.

In case an artist uploaded a song to Muzic, you can directly download the MP3 from the respective song card. Uploaded songs can also be “previewed”, i.e. listened to in full through the Muzic player, which launches in a separate frame at the bottom of the page.

The community…

When you’re logged in you can add songs to your faves, follow other listeners or artists that have uploaded songs, and update your profile.

In all honesty, the profile features and community aspects are a little underdeveloped. Unless I missed out on something important, there is no real exchange between users. You can see what others added as their faves and follow them, but that’s about it. On the other hand that isn’t too bad. After all, you’re in for the latest free music and not for even more distractions.

Hungry for more free music?

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What are you listening to these days?

Image credits: CMSeter

about of the Web sites I found offered song samples, meaning 30-second or 1-minute snippets. Some had full audio streams that allowed the visitor to listen to continuous Bollywood medicine for equally long equally she or he might want. It was these latter that provided the first half of our solution.

 

Normally, streaming audio, such every bit what you hear over an Internet radio post, cannot be saved or downloaded. New software, though, makes it possible to phonograph record the stream to your hard drive for replaying equally often equally you like.

 

Even better, some of the newest audio capture software incorporates something called an mp3 splitter. This software package is able to break the audio stream into distinct mp3 song files. By the way, this is perfectly legal, because you're simply taping a broadcast, the identical equally when you tape a TV show on your VHS. Voila -- we made the second half of our solution.

 

Between the audio streams and splitter/reading computer software, we made our own real Bollywood mp3 download sites.

 

Now whenever my niece is in a mood to search the latest tuneful offerings from Bollywood, she dogs on her favorite Indian-medicine Internet radio send, then starts the taping software package. Pretty soon she has enough Bollywood mp3s to shuffle terminated for the rest of the calendar week, and she's almost guaranteed to find two or three that will spur her to make a trigger to the CD bin complete at the Asian storage.