On 22 Nov 2000, Michael Stutz replied
>> Visitors to their home page could upload mp3 files that
>> would immediately enter into their playlist. Has this
>> been done before? Is anyone even doing this with
>> streamed audio on the net?
>
> Jamie Zawinski thought about doing things like "let users
> choose the songs to download, or ... archive dj sets, or ...
> allow the world at large to collaboratively dj by voting on
> what song to play next"; he describes the legal hassles
> involved at: http://www.dnalounge.com/webcasting.html
Yeah, well, provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act
would render cost prohibitive the most unimaginative approaches
to webcast audio, and it appears people are still getting away
with being unimaginative.
Michael Pruett observed:
> There's a low-power FM radio station run out of Lloyd
> House at Caltech which has a similar setup. It's only
> available on the FM dial--no streamed audio. During
> the times that no live DJ is operating, people within
> Caltech can upload songs, request songs be added to
> the play list, and vote to remove songs from the play list.
Amazing how well this realizes what Berthold Brecht
was writing in his essay 'The Radio as an Apparatus
of Communication,' a proposal from *1932*:
"As for the radio's object, I don't think it can consist
simply in prettifying public life. Nor is radio in my
view an adequate means of bringing back cosiness to the
home and making family life bearable again. But quite
apart from the dubiousness of its functions, radio is
one-sided when it should be two-. It is purely an
apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out.
So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus
over from distribution to communication. The radio would
be the finest possible communication apparatus in public
life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would
be if it knew how to receive as well as to transmit, how
to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring
him into a relationship instead of isolating him. On this
principle the radio should step out of the supply business
and organize its listeners as suppliers. Any attempt by
the radio to give a truly public character to public
occasions is a step in the right direction."
