gHacks technology news » jamendo http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:43:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Jamendo distributed one million albums http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/27/jamendo-distributed-one-million-albums/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/27/jamendo-distributed-one-million-albums/#comments Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:22:01 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/27/jamendo-distributed-one-million-albums/ The free social music networking site Jamendo announced today that they have distributed more than one million downloads of albums that are freely available using bittorrent technology. Only albums that have been fully distributed have been counted or as they put it: “this figure is the minimum indicative number of the total of complete albums we have distributed so far”. This is a huge success for sites that believe that drm free music sites can and will succeed in the long run. Jamendo has an incredible download rate of more than 200000 albums every month and the figure is increasing with each passing month.

jamendoThe most successful album on Jamendo has been downloaded more than 11000 times which is a huge success for the artists that decided to upload their work to Jamendo. Users can listen to and download more than 2800 albums at Jamendo using streams and the bittorrent network. If you are looking for free music you should definetely visit Jamendo and start listening to some of the tracks suggested there. Below is a short sample of my favorite songs that can be listened to and downloaded at Jamendo. (I’m into Electronica at the moment)

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/27/jamendo-distributed-one-million-albums/feed/ 0 Discover more than 2000 free albums at Jamendo http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/02/discover-more-than-2000-free-albums-at-jamendo/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/02/discover-more-than-2000-free-albums-at-jamendo/#comments Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:36:35 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/02/discover-more-than-2000-free-albums-at-jamendo/ Jamendo is a music service that tries a different distribution model for music albums. Instead of paying money to download and listen to music you download the music for free and pay or donate money later directly to the artist who created the music. You may either donate money using paypal or visit the artists website to purchase music directly to support them even further and receive CDs that are send to your location.

All music available at Jamendo was released under Creative Commons which means that you may download, remix and share the music freely without the fear of being sued. Jamendo offers a tag cloud which can be used for navigation which seems to have roughly 100 different genres from 17sonrecord to zen. The most popular ones seem to be electronica and rock. Alternatively you may navigate Jamendo by artists or albums.

I think it is pretty nice that all albums have cover art and a genre connected to them. Clicking on an album loads a website filled with information and options. You may listen online to all the tracks (mp3 or ogg), download the full album using bittorrent or emule, spread the album using your website, write and read reviews, buy the album from the artist, donate to the artist, find out about similar artists and rate the album.

You may create podcasts or m3u (winamp playlists) while listening to one or more of the tracks of a certain album. Online quality of the songs is not that great but sufficient for judging the song. Downloads are encoded with roughly 200 Kbps (mp3) and 300 Kbps (ogg).

Jamendo rocks. Oh, you will have to create an account before you can use most of their services. It is free, takes only a couple of seconds.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/02/discover-more-than-2000-free-albums-at-jamendo/feed/ 0 Access 1010 free music albums with Jamendo http://www.ghacks.net/2006/05/02/access-1010-free-music-albums-with-jamendo/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/05/02/access-1010-free-music-albums-with-jamendo/#comments Tue, 02 May 2006 20:08:42 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/05/02/access-1010-free-music-albums-with-jamendo/ Jamendo is a community website that lets you discover a growing collection of currently 1010 free music albums released under Creative Commons using latest p2p technology.That´s right, you are free to download everything using bittorrent. But that´s not all Jamendo is about. They have a very active community that reviews albums, rates and tags them and offers personal recommendations.

Artists are paid using donations, if you like a album you are free to donate using paypal. This is a great new concept, I´d really like to see stats how this way of distributing albums compares to portals like itunes and the like. Do the artists get a better payment for instance ?

You might know the tagged approach, right at the start page you have a list of common tags like rock, ska and metal. Clicking a tag leads to the category page that displays the albums sorted in that category. Every album offers a listen icon that you simply click and it opens in your favorite player. You find the bittorent link on the same page there, if you want to download the full album right away or after listening to the music for some time.

You can click on the album cover which leads to the albums page. You see all songs listed, can listen to every song there, write reviews, spread the album by placing links on your homepage. Some bands offer CD versions of their albums which you can purchase from their website.

What else ? Downloads are available in MP3 (~200 Kbps) and OGG format (~300 Kbps). Last but not least you find recommendations that sound similar to the album you are currently viewing / listening to.

My suggestion ? Support them, it´s a great concept and finally a portal that stands in contrast to all commercial portals.

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