Pandora stopped their Music Genome Project from streaming to clients that would access the Pandora website from outside the United States yesterday. They are now checking the IP of every visitor and depending on his location he is either presented with the normal Pandora website or a letter which explains the situation that he is not allowed to use Pandora due to licensing difficulties. Internet Radio should be accessible from anywhere, just like normal radio that does not know boundaries as well.

Before I explain how to listen to Pandora from outside the United States I would like to ask a question: “I did use Pandora to find new music and I actually did buy some of the music that I found. Since I’m not allowed to use Pandora anymore I won’t find new music this way which means I won’t eventually buy new music. Do you think that this is a clever strategy ?” I have no usage stats for Pandora but would be excited to know the ratio of US to International users of the service.

continue reading "Access Pandora from outside the USA"

Pandora.com made the decision to stop streaming music to users who are not living in the United States. To be able to do this they implemented a script that checks the IP address of every user connecting to the server and if that IP happens to be located outside of the United Stats of America you will not be able to connect to the streaming client anymore. Pandora already updated their FAQ section to reflect this changes, here is what the entry said:

Delivery of Pandora is based on proper licensing from the content rights holders - we have always believed strongly in honoring the guidelines as determined by the artists, labels and publishers. In the U.S. there is a federal statute called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that provides this license for all the music you hear on Pandora. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent license outside the U.S.

continue reading "Pandora stopped International Streaming"

Maybe you are one of the unfortunate who is not near a TV when AC Milan battles it out with Manchester United today or the matches Werder Bremen versus Espanyol Barcelona and Sevilla against Osasuna in the UEFA Cup. Even if your team did not make it this far you probably would like to watch these exciting matches. There is a way to watch Champions League and UEFA Cup live on the Internet by using Internet TV clients that stream the matches right to your computer.

Best of all, you can watch the Champions League and UEFA Cup matches for free. All you need is to download a software that will be used as a client to receive the stream and display it on your computer. There are several possibilities to watch the Champions League match between AC Milan and Manchester United and I try to list them all in the next paragraph. I’m only listing the channels for the Sopcast application, this should be enough for everyone to enjoy the Champions League and UEFA matches.

continue reading "Champions League and UEFA Cup on the Internet"

Mixere is a great open-source audio application that lets you mix different audio tracks. It supports many formats including mp3, ogg and wav and can be used at parties for instance to mix the music live. It is possible to fade in, fade out of tracks, loop and auto-trigger audio and change the volume of the audio on the fly. All songs are loaded right into the main interface of Mixere with each audio file filling one track in the software. Any number of audio files can be then played simultaneously as well limited only by the operating system and sound device.

continue reading "Mix Audio Files with Mixere"

The guys at Joost are serious about going live as soon as possible. They announced today that beta members will receive unlimited invites to give all of their friends the possibility to get a glimpse at Joost before it goes live. I’m a little bit concerned about their move to go live at this point because the content that is currently available would be considered B-Content by many. Sure there are some channels that will attract fans like the World Poker Tour channel which will not be available in the United States by the way.

This is actually the first time that I saw a notice on the Joost website listing saying which channels would be available in which country. I think it is really interesting to see that users from the United States will be exempt from many channels - possibly a distribution rights issue. Some channels on the other hand are only available to users from the United States (MTV and Comedy Channel to name two).

continue reading "Joost 0.94 available, soon to go live"