iNapsterTunes

August 30, 2006 6:23 PM

Musicastturns your iTunes (mac only) into a music sharing server that conveniently spits out a podcast feed for your friends to subscribe and download all your mp3s from. Download this quick before the RIAA kills the server something might happen to this wonderful app.
posted by mathowie (37 comments total)

I can't see this lasting long. Apple has a habit of crippling add-ons like these in version updates.
posted by Robot Johnny at 6:32 PM on August 30, 2006

Can they somehow fit web2.0 and social networking into that buzzword slushpile?
posted by delmoi at 6:41 PM on August 30, 2006

It's cute, but does it do anything that the free SlimServer software doesn't?
posted by Armitage Shanks at 6:48 PM on August 30, 2006

What I don't understand with stuff like this is why iTunes has to be involved at all.
posted by illovich at 6:58 PM on August 30, 2006

Once the app is released in the wild it can never really be suppressed.
posted by caddis at 7:02 PM on August 30, 2006

does it do anything that the free SlimServer software doesn't?

You don't understand. This isn't for home entertainment or streaming.

If I gave you my musicast URL, you could download all my music to your own computer. It's basically a small scale napster and I imagine at a university it could spread like wildfire, as people share all their mp3s with one another.
posted by mathowie at 7:08 PM on August 30, 2006

At universities people have shared network access which will explain the hundreds of gigs of music my friends have.
posted by matimer at 7:12 PM on August 30, 2006

This is why you're number 1.
posted by mds35 at 7:12 PM on August 30, 2006

It's not really an itunes plugin - it's a standalone app that reads the itunes database, which apple provides in easy to use XML format to begin with.
posted by TravellingDen at 7:13 PM on August 30, 2006

I can't visit "my Musicast"; it keeps timing out.

Unless I'm missing something, here.
posted by interrobang at 7:17 PM on August 30, 2006

open up port 5554 on your mac firewall in prefs (and be sure your home router forwards 5554 to your mac if you want outside friends to see in).
posted by mathowie at 7:20 PM on August 30, 2006

If I gave you my musicast URL, you could download all my music to your own computer.

Sorry if I'm being dense, but how would you do that other than by selecting the songs one at a time?
posted by Armitage Shanks at 7:26 PM on August 30, 2006

There's a podcast feed of all the mp3s.
posted by mathowie at 7:28 PM on August 30, 2006

This is clever. And the web interface is gorgeous. AJAX is really fast when you're running the server locally...
posted by smackfu at 7:31 PM on August 30, 2006

MAC envy
posted by caddis at 7:33 PM on August 30, 2006

It looks like this does not allow you to share any DRM-protected (e.g. iTunes Music Store) music. Is that right?
posted by alms at 7:57 PM on August 30, 2006

Even if you could shared DRM'd files, they'd still be DRM'd.
posted by aaronetc at 8:21 PM on August 30, 2006

This is just as illegal as Napster, and they know it. From their website:

Musicast is completely legal as long as you're not sharing copyrighted material. Even if you do happen to be sharing stuff you aren't supposed to be, Mr. RIAA would have to guess your IP address to even find your Musicast to see your huge stash of copyrighted music.
posted by brain_drain at 8:22 PM on August 30, 2006

It's probably just my browser settings, but I nonetheless find it ironic that I can't open the "Legal" link on their site.
posted by grobstein at 8:28 PM on August 30, 2006

Who's ever let DRM get in there way before?
posted by bob sarabia at 8:31 PM on August 30, 2006

Even if you do happen to be sharing stuff you aren't supposed to be, Mr. RIAA would have to guess your IP address to even find your Musicast to see your huge stash of copyrighted music.

I can envision that one sentence alone causing huge nightmares for their legal department. I'm not a lawyer, but something similar is ultimately what brought Napster down, if I remember correctly.
posted by dhammond at 8:56 PM on August 30, 2006

I've got it and I am just wondering how to best use it once I get a free serial. ;-)
posted by persona non grata at 8:59 PM on August 30, 2006

does it do anything that the free SlimServer software doesn't?

You don't understand. This isn't for home entertainment or streaming.

To rephrase: does it do anything that the free Apache doesn't?
posted by pompomtom at 9:03 PM on August 30, 2006

This is pretty fucking sweet.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:20 PM on August 30, 2006

I suppose this could be done with a WASTE network too, just not as easily.
posted by oraknabo at 9:23 PM on August 30, 2006

So - what's the address to your MP3 stash Matt?
posted by strawberryviagra at 9:38 PM on August 30, 2006

Only for OS X 10.4, you say? Pity. Looks like it's back to wax cylinders for me!
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:00 PM on August 30, 2006

It works - check it out
posted by strawberryviagra at 10:09 PM on August 30, 2006

I can envision that one sentence alone causing huge nightmares for their legal department.

They really ought to wise up and change that wording - the difference from Napster is that they are not directly facilitating the actual copyright violation - the user, by instructing the software to construct 'casts of copyright protected files, does that. Napster actually facilitated the violation of copyright directly, by providing the interface through which people actually sought and found infringing shared files. This gave them a knowledge that infringement was occurring and some capacity to put a stop to it - which I think were critical components of why they were found in violation of the DMCA

For this software they are much more solidly rooted in the position that they are merely providing a tool which are merely capable of being used for infringement (my modem, my computer, my gmail account are just as capable though not half so slick). But they would be better off to be more judicious, and pay more lip service, to respecting copyright.
posted by nanojath at 10:17 PM on August 30, 2006

They could be held liable under the Grokster case, which held that "one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."
posted by brain_drain at 10:36 PM on August 30, 2006

There's a lot to like about this, but I wonder if they could build in some meaningful access controls for the next version. Their current idea of "access control" apparently involves displaying a list of every contact in your address book to anybody who happens to drop by port 5554. And... that's it. No actual user accounts, no password prompts, nothing. Seriously, I have no idea what they were thinking with that feature.
posted by cobra libre at 11:20 PM on August 30, 2006

Well - 30 people are a little more familiar with TISM. I'm going to shut it down now, in case someone starts hacking my machine.
posted by strawberryviagra at 11:54 PM on August 30, 2006 [2 favorites has favorites]

it doesn't seem to work for me. oh well, it was fun while i downloaded it and closed the annoying pop-ups telling me to pay for it.

as for the university students enjoying it to share music - most of my friends are on windows and use mytunes instead. it seems much easier to use, but then again it is doing a slightly different job. makes it easy to take songs from other people on the network. something you used to be able to do in very early versions of iTunes 4.0
posted by muthecow at 5:15 AM on August 31, 2006

Man, I guess I just don't understand how to set up my ports, because I thought this would e cool and instead I just keep getting the time out...
posted by klangklangston at 9:44 AM on August 31, 2006

I can't connect to my own IP address here (work... heh) and neither can anyone else, apparently. I opened the correct port, but that didn't seem to do anything.

Somebody post a screenshot of what the web page/rss feed looks like. It's weird that there are no screenshots of those two things on the Musicast site. Does this thing actually work?
posted by emelenjr at 10:08 AM on August 31, 2006

Sorry mathowie, but this is pretty lame and generally unworkable IRL due to being easily crippled by NAT and just generally being a poor model for illicit music distribution.

You could only ever host at most a few tens of songs – what are you going to have it do, generate a podcast feed that encloses the thousands of songs in your collection, and host all that through this app's embedded webserver? All apologies, that shit doesn't work.

Also, they want people to pay for it! I doubt that this will ever come into enough use for the RIAA to ever even care enough (tens of songs!) to wipe this shit up with the inducement standard put forward in the Grokster opinion. These guys will be entirely forgotten once they scroll off the front pages of digg, boingboing, et. al. – like so much crap these days.
posted by blasdelf at 10:13 AM on August 31, 2006

Well - 30 people are a little more familiar with TISM. I'm going to shut it down now, in case someone starts hacking my machine.

I'm a cyber-terrorist! Just how cool is that?
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:57 PM on August 31, 2006