As I mentioned before it looks like AllofMp3’s time is short. An article in the New York Times says American trade negotiators have demanded the closure of AllofMp3 before Russia can be allowed to join the WTO. The article also has some details about the legal loophole that allows sites like AllofMp3 to run.
AllofMp3 is still up and running after the downtime 3 weeks ago. Presumably if it disappears due to a change in the law then so will the other mp3 sites I mentioned in Alternatives to AllofMp3. I’ll try to make another “Alternatives” post with services not based around Russia’s legal loophole.
June 4, 2006
‘AllofMp3 must go if you want to join the WTO’ American trade negotiators tell Russia
May 16, 2006
Alternatives to AllofMp3
AllofMP3 is down at the moment. Their website says for maintenance. Slyck says it’s just while they recover from having servers siezed by the russian authorities. Even if it will be back, how long can AllofMp3 really survive with so much pressure on it? Putin’s recent assertion that Russia “must defend copyright inside the country. That is our obligation to our foreign partners” makes me think not long. Why is AllofMp3 so popular and what will happen if and when AllofMp3 disappears? (more…)
May 10, 2006
Last Exit: Gtk based Last.fm player
Last Exit is a Gtk based player for Last.fm. If, like me, you use GNOME Desktop then you might prefer the way this player looks compared to the Qt based official Last.fm player. It is harder to install than the official player and as it’s still quite new there are still a few bugs that need to be ironed out. I have written some basic instructions for installing Last Exit on Ubuntu Linux. (more…)
March 30, 2006
Photos from yesterday’s gig at the rugby club in Aberystwyth
I’m always happy to be able to combine two of my interests, photography and music. Last night I had that opportunity at the rugby club in Aberystwyth where there was a gig with 5 bands playing and I managed to get photos of the last four. Who were (in order of appearance)…
I don’t know the name of the first guy, but I believe he is from The Fenks. The was also a light show put on by Marco Matosic (I don’t know if he has a web address, leave a comment if you know) the lighting made for some interesting effects in some photographs and made some pretty bad as the light level changed rapidly and unexpectedly meaning that the auto focusing didn’t really work and the exposure was quite hit and miss, of the 168 photos I have put only 9 online. I’m hoping with a little work in The Gimp a few more will be ok.
November 30, 2005
Last.fm musical taste overlap
I have written a short Python script to allow you to find the overlap between the favourite artists of two user’s on Last.fm.
For example, my Last.fm favourites compared to my friend Seb’s favourites currently produces this list.
swp1@flemensfirth:~/src/python/lastfm-intersect$ python pair.py Aimaz cybersebb
In Flames
Pantera
Black Sabbath
Led Zeppelin
Dead Kennedys
Opeth
Beastie Boys
Anathema
Pink Floyd
Queens of the Stone Age
Iced Earth
Rage Against the Machine
Metallica
My Dying Bride
You can download the script here.
I am working on another script to do a similar thing for a group of people, but it needs to be programmed differently, otherwise given a large enough list of users no artists would appear in the list.
November 25, 2005
New Last.fm player (version 1.1.1)
(edit: this version has been retracted see Last.fm forum post)
This is what version 1.1.1 of the Last.fm Player looks like, you can binaries from http://www.last.fm/help/player/ the source code tarball is only version 1.0.4 so if you want the source you should check it out.
svn co svn://svn.audioscrobbler.net/player/trunk
Some people on the Last.fm forums have reported problems using ALSA with the newest player. If you try using it OSS may work for you, I am currently using OSS because I experienced the same problem with ALSA.
I intend to make a new .deb package geared towards Ubuntu users with Qt not staticly linked like in the previous package I made, with files in more appropriate places (not /opt) and all together I’ll try to do a better job 
*** Update *** I never got round to making a package, those after packages for ubuntu should go here. If you use debian then it is in apt, just install lastfm from apt.
October 28, 2005
Last.fm Ubuntu package
I have created an Ubuntu package of Last.fm Player 1.0.5 (2.7 Mb). It also adds a Gnome menu icon in the ‘Sound & Video’ submenu (Thanks to Mr_T for help with that). If you don’t know Last.fm you should check it out, same goes for Ubuntu.
If you have any suggestions on things that need to go in the package let me know. I’ll try to keep an up to date Ubuntu package on the site from now on.