I prototyped something like this recently and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I'm glad somebody else has tried to make it into a business. I, for one, am a bit skeptical for a few reasons.
1. The barrier to entry is pretty high. In a world dominated by web apps, who wants to try a heavyweight Java app that might take a full 2 minutes to get set up? We live in a 30 second world these days.
2. Home routers are messy. People who aren't tech savvy aren't going to want to mess around with opening ports. UPnP helps this, but I've found that it's unreliable on many popular, low quality routers. Users who download the app and then find that it doesn't work oftentimes will just give up instead of diving into the router.
Of course, maybe I'm underestimating how much the average consumer can get done these days. It'll be interesting to see what kind of coverage this gets, especially since I'm working on an app that approaches the problem more in the style of Anywhere.FM.
This is cool, but I don't understand why I would use this over an uber-piracy service like waffles.fm. I'm provided with all of the flac rips I could ever want in a way that enables high-quality music discovery. I just don't think free music that exploits a peculiar hack of legality can ever win out over DRM free piracy. If someone finds something they like on reble.fm, they have to pirate it anyways to get it onto their iPod, except for the people that buy it through your iTunes affiliate link.
It's tough to compete with free by being less free.
If anyone wants a waffles invite, by the way, send me an email.
Depends on who your friends are. Some of my friends are DJ's, and they have a lot of music that you'd be extremely lucky to find via waffles, torrents, etc. I myself have music now that, if I lost it, I possibly would not be able to get back.
Waffles really has quite a collection. Much better than whatever you can find on a public tracker or p2p and it's all high quality and transcode free. It is not quite Oink yet, but it'll get there eventually.
I'm curious if there is anything in particular from your collection that is unlikely to be on waffles.
not a whole lot, but on the hip-hop side of things, I have some album advances with tracks that didn't make the final release, and a couple of albums that got shelved and never actually came out. Others would just be specific mashups / blends that DJ's might just do live on air; a lot of them record their sessions and trade tracks with each other, but they're not going to put it up on p2p.
So streaming a friends music collection to your PC is fine, but streaming it to an ipod isn't?
I'm not sure the legalities of this hold water personally.
Such muddiness when it comes to this sort of thing.
It'll be interesting to see how it plays out legally. I'm glad some people are prepared to push the laws even if I'm not sure I'd take that risk in my own startup. I guess the legal analogy they're going for here is that you are lending your friend the song, just like lending a physical CD. It sounds pretty reasonable but the law isn't really defined by what sounds reasonable.
I think with the restrictive nature of this service the RIAA et al might see it as being in line with their view on a music purchasors license.
Right, the FAQ puts emphasis on you streaming one song at a time to people you know - I don't see how this is different from streaming ten songs to ten people you don't know, you're still sending music to people who don't own a copy of it. Not that I agree with the way the music industry seems to be going, but I imagine they could come knocking wanting a big piece of your pie?
Congrats guys. I've wanted something like this for a long time. It's a pity you can't play something simultaneously though. I suppose intimate listening sessions will have to stay in real space.
PS: I never thought I'd say this, but I love the license agreement. :-)
I would have thought this was a fantastic idea....before Anywhere.FM .
Of course my opinion counts for little since I did not download the software, and have not actually seen it work
Nick--assuming that the users of Rebel.FM are liable for direct infringement (which seems likely), the way in which the software is marketed may affect Rebel.FM's liability. (see MGM v. Grokster: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-480.ZS.html). [This is not legal advice--just pondering.]
Wow, looks really cool. I haven't tried it yet because I'm on a Mac... And I don't think I could convince any of my friends to try it either. It's hard enough to get them to share their music in iTunes and not to mention having to install Java.
Just out of interest: Did the FAQ come across as arrogant to anyone else?
Yep. Working on the Mac version. Linux version should be out about the same time. The plan is to work most of the kinks out on the windows version and then get it running on Mac/Linux.
It's an interesting idea, for sure, but depending on just how you bought your music, you (the user) could get screwed.
Take for instance, buying mp3s from Amazon, and using Reble.FM. That's a violation of your agreement with Amazon. And other things may have similar restrictions.
Of course, with illegally downloaded content, you have no worries about how you can legally use it.
I'm more referring to the Terms of Service of something like AmazonMP3, which specifically and categorically says that you cannot do exactly what this site does.
A EULA, if written properly, is legally binding but violating it is not illegal in the criminal sense; it's a tort issue. If we were talking about violating the DMCA, however, it would be illegal.
I figured it went without saying that a comment on a forum should not be construed as legal advice and that one should seek the professional advice of a licensed attorney for that purpose. I'll say it now for completeness.
1. The barrier to entry is pretty high. In a world dominated by web apps, who wants to try a heavyweight Java app that might take a full 2 minutes to get set up? We live in a 30 second world these days.
2. Home routers are messy. People who aren't tech savvy aren't going to want to mess around with opening ports. UPnP helps this, but I've found that it's unreliable on many popular, low quality routers. Users who download the app and then find that it doesn't work oftentimes will just give up instead of diving into the router.
Of course, maybe I'm underestimating how much the average consumer can get done these days. It'll be interesting to see what kind of coverage this gets, especially since I'm working on an app that approaches the problem more in the style of Anywhere.FM.