Making A (Virtual) Independent Bollywood MP3 Download Site

 

My niece knows Indian takes and Indian film music. To her, equally to about of the earth, this rank, colorful, warm and just-plain-fun musical style is added up in one word: Bollywood.

 

I squeal that I've get taken with Bollywood every bit happy, though not to the same extent equally my niece, who features a come of Indian movies and on a regular basis lets others. The Bollywood good is so bad that I get to restrict myself to seeing those few of its productions that bubble up to match the attending of American movie commentators. Otherwise I given be lost in Indian ocean of unfamiliar with movie titles, players and actresses.

 

My niece as well compiles CDs of Bollywood medicine. There's an Asian food market nigh her family that proposes a cornucopia of them. Only she has the same problem preferring CDs to buy that I do deciding which Bollywood movie Crataegus oxycantha be worth my time. Unless she's seen the film from which a soundtrack derives, she's usually in the dark every bit to whether a minute CD's strains and artists are ones she will enjoy.

 

At her asking, I set up a style for her to preview a kind of Bollywood strains and even to live with them on her iPod for a while, all for Free. This way she can establish informed decisions about which CDs she ultimately purchases.

 

First, I searched for Indian medicine Web sites, and specifically for those devoted to Bollywood, or at least modern popular music (as opposed, say, to classical Indian ragas). I found several good ones, with names such equally Bollywood Earth and India FM.

All the big music sellers may have moved to non-DRM MP3 files long ago, but the watermarking of files with your personal information continues. Most users who buy music don’t know about the marking of files, or don’t care. Unless those files are uploaded to BitTorrent or other P2P networks, there isn’t much to worry about.

A list of which music services are selling clean MP3 files without embedded personal information, and which aren’t, is here. Apple, LaLa (owned by Apple) and Walmart embed personal information. Amazon, Napster and the rest have resisted label pressure to do so.

A music industry insider who’s asked to remain anonymous writes to us:

Hidden in purchased music files from popular stores such as Apple and Walmart is information to identify the buyer and/or the transaction. You won’t find it disclosed in their published terms of use. It’s nowhere in their support documentation. There’s no mention in the digital receipt. Consumers are largely oblivious to this, but it could have future ramifications as the music industry takes another stab at locking down music files.

Here’s how it works. During the buying process a username and transaction ID are known by the online retailers. Before making the song available for download their software embeds into the file either an account name or a transaction number or both. Once downloaded, the file has squirreled away this personal information in a manner where you can’t easily see it, but if someone knows where to look they can. This information doesn’t affect the audio fidelity, but it does permanently attach to the file data which can be used to trace back to the original purchaser which could be used at a later date.

Retailers aren’t talking, but there’s ample proof of what’s transpiring. Using simple file comparison tools it’s possible to verify this behavior by purchasing identical songs using different accounts and see if they match. I emailed support departments for several retailers asking if they would acknowledge these actions and inquiring about what specific information they are embedding. Only 7digital responded saying they don’t use any watermarks. What retailers won’t say publicly is that the major record labels are requiring this behavior as a precondition to sell their music.

Certain record labels have aspirations to use this hidden data to control future access to music in a return to DRM (digital rights management). The labels yearn to control where you can listen to your music and this could be a backdoor for them to achieve it. When personal libraries are stored in the cloud, it becomes possible to retrieve this personal data and match it to a user identity. If the match is successful the song plays, but if not, access can be blocked through a network DRM system such as the one Lala patented (which is now owned by Apple).

For the scheme to work record labels need all retailers to support this and so far some notable names are resisting. Napster, Amazon and UK based 7digital are selling clean MP3 files. Files purchased from these stores do not have any user information whatsoever embedded into them. Other retailers such as Apple and Walmart have succumbed to label pressure to embed personal info.

Retailers and record labels should have the right to sell dirty files if they wish, however they should be obligated to disclose their practices in advance. Consumers should have this information so they can make an informed buying decision about whether to support dirty or clean MP3 vendors. If Barnes and Noble printed your name on pages of books you purchase that would be important information to know because it would affect the value of your book. Here the clandestine actions are even more worrisome because it could lead to a future lockdown of purchases. If the labels have plans to require cloud vendors to use this information in the future, they should disclose that as well.

Cloud Music And The New DRM

Apple, Google and Amazon are all reportedly in discussions with big labels to provide a cloud music service. These services will allow users to purchase rights to stream music, and they will also allow syncing of songs on your hard drive already so you can play those without repurchasing them (this was the original LaLa model).

The labels, say our source, are demanding that a user can only stream music that is watermarked to their username. Change the username, or try to stream music that you’ve ripped from a CD, and those songs won’t play.

In other words, it’s DRM déjà vu all over again.

Last.fm is a highly popular music site which lets users create paid and free accounts. Account holders can stream popular music online with ease. Whilst free music streaming is possible, saving music to one’s hard drive is not. To record Last.fm music streams as mp3 audio files, Last Recorder can be employed.

Last Recorder is a tiny freeware compatible with Windows and Ubuntu operating systems. The Windows version is nearly 7MB large and requires no installation. Just simply download and run the 7MB exe file. Then we feed the program our Last.fm username plus password. Once logged in, click the red recording button; consequently all songs we stream will be saved by the program in the mp3 audio format.

The mp3 files can be tagged separately (type in the tags within the program) according to the filename we want it to have. Additionally we can choose to strip the filename of characters which Windows does not recognize. Last Recorder can also be configured to skip already recorded streams.

Main features:

• Freeware.


• Compatible with Windows and Ubuntu.


• User friendly interface.


• Can add ID3 tags (artist, album, title) to audio files.


• Can strip whitespaces and Windows-incompatible characters from file names.


• Can automatically skip already recorded streams.


• Remembers last used station and other settings.


• Similar tools: Fire.fm, PWNLast.fm, YouScrobble and also see our article “3 Easy Tools to Record Streaming Music as MP3 Files”.

Get LastRecorder @ www.timka.org/lastrecorder

almost of the Web sites I found offered song samples, meaning 30-second or 1-minute snippets. Some got full audio streams that allowed the visitor to listen to continuous Bollywood medicine for equally long as she or he might want. It was these latter that provided the first half of our solution.

 

Normally, streaming audio, such equally what you hear over an Internet radio post, cannot be saved or downloaded. New software system, though, makes it possible to phonograph record the stream to your hard drive for replaying equally often every bit you like.

 

Even better, some of the newest audio capture software package incorporates something called an mp3 splitter. This software is able to break the audio stream into part mp3 song files. By the style, this is dead legal, because you're simply showing a broadcast, the duplicate every bit when you phonograph record a TV show on your VHS. Voila -- we experienced the second half of our solution.

 

Between the audio streams and splitter/showing software system, we created our own living Bollywood mp3 download sites.

 

Now whenever my niece is in a humour to search the latest tuneful offerings from Bollywood, she flicks on her favorite Indian-medicine Internet radio post, then starts the entering software package. Pretty soon she has enough Bollywood mp3s to shuffle through for the rest of the workweek, and she's almost assured to find two or three that will spur her to establish a trigger to the CD bin complete at the Asian storage.