Internet MPEG Audio Archive/IMAA.mdf/faq/iuma16b.faq

Text File | 1994-11-14 | 18KB | 488 lines

                        IUMA FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

   October 3, 1994, Version 1.6 beta

   This is an attempt to answer many common quesions about the Internet
   Underground Music Archive. If you still have questions after reviewing
   this file, email [e-mail] or by phone or land:

          IUMA
          903 Pacific Ave, #300
          Santa Cruz, CA 95060 USA
          [phone]


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TABLE OF CONTENTS


  GENERAL QUESTIONS:


   G1: Why have an archive of music on the Internet?

   G2: Who submits music to IUMA?

   G3: How large is the archive and how many people use it?

   G4: How does the artist/band get paid for their music?

   G5: What does this mean for the music industry?

   G6: Why is this free?



  SUBMISSION QUESTIONS:



   S1: Why should I submit a song to IUMA?

   S2: How do I submit a song to IUMA?

   S3: What are the legal issues surrounding this? They sound hairy.



  TECHNICAL QUESTIONS:



   T1: What is MPEG compression?

   T2: What's going to happen to my demo tape if I send it to you?

   T3: Is there a MPEG audio player for my system?
          T3a: Microsoft Windows
          T3b: Macintosh
          T3c: UNIX Workstations

   T4: Is there a MPEG audio encoder for my system?
          T4a: Microsoft Windows
          T4b: Macintosh
          T4c: UNIX Workstations

   T5: What compression ratios are possible with MPEG?

   T6: Which MIME type is an .MP2 file?


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ANSWERS TO GENERAL QUESTIONS



  G1: WHY HAVE AN ARCHIVE OF MUSIC ON THE INTERNET?

   If you put your music on the net it will be available to
   approximately 20-30 million of the most 'connected' people in the
   world. Many of them spend a lot of time listening to and discussing
   music. There are more than 100 public discussion USENET newsgroups
   and mailing lists relating to music (not counting
   alt.icelandic.waif.bjork.bjork.bjork).

   A major university site <ftp.uwp.edu> carries lyrics, pictures,
   playlists, reviews, magazine reprints and lists of mailing lists such
   as the Indie-List, the Blue-Eyed-Pop (Bjork and her ex-band The
   Sugarcubes) UK-dance, SF (San Francisco) Raves, and, without
   hesitation, more. The tastes of Internauts are the likely most
   diverse, eccelctic, and passionately held of any community you're
   likely to hang with.

   Any music including yours can find a receptive audience on the
   Internet.


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  G2: WHO SUBMITS MUSIC TO THE IUMA?

   All kinds of people submit all kinds of music. We have everything
   from traditional folk to indie rock to instrumental jazz to japanese
   experimental noise -- an that's just within our first 25 submissions.
   One thing they do share is a love of music, belief in their talent
   and a refusal to be unheard and unnoticed whether or not they have
   major commercial potential.


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  G3: HOW DOES THE ARTIST/BAND GET PAID FOR THEIR MUSIC?

   At this time most artists are only making one to three songs
   available per band, so like radio, IUMA is mostly a means for
   tremendous exposure. But IUMA is not limited to exposure only, we
   encourage bands to offer demo tapes in their textfile and will soon
   offer ways for listeners to patronize bands and buy demos directly
   from IUMA (if the band chooses to). We cannot guarantee anything, but
   we believe IUMA is a working protoype of how many people will buy
   recorded music in the future.


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  G4: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE MUSIC INDUSTRY?

   From "The Music Technology Magazine," a British publication), Feb
   1994, from the article HYPERinterACTIVE, Thomas Dolby speaking:



     "Given that artists are already designing their own record covers,
     doing their own music videos, marketing themselves and making the
     music, why do we need record companies? We've got machines at home
     capable of making master recordings, and having finished a master I
     can telephone it into a central server and my fans can have access
     to it by dialing it up on their interactive TV screens. What
     exactly is the record company's contribution, other than being a
     bank stupid enough to loan money to musicians?"

   Thomas is right on the mark (his faith in interactive music is a bit
   loopy though.

   IUMA shows that anyone can get exposure without resorting to the
   canonical forms of pop marketing. We don't expect this to change much
   in the realm of mass-market commercial music, but that's not what
   we're necessarily here for. IUMA is here to bring eclectic,
   home-grown, otherwise possibly unknown music to the world at large.

   Think of IUMA as a worldwide coffeehouse where anyone can take the
   stage or visit your table.


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  G5: WHY IS THIS FREE?

   IUMA is a labor of love, run by people dedicated to the worldwide
   distribution of otherwise obscure bands and artists. As such, the key
   is to act as an enabler to connect all music possible to as many
   listeners as possible. The concept of giving away a sample (or even
   more) of music for free is an age-old one and something we heartily
   support. As we have grown, so have our expenses, so we no longer can
   afford to meet the demand for adding new musicians to IUMA without
   establishing some sort of regular income. To meet this need, we have
   developed suggested donation guidelines which are outlined in the
   submission information document.

   Donations pay not only for the digitizing and compressing of music,
   the scanning of images and the processing of text, but also for the
   hardware, software, maintanence and management of IUMA as a whole.
   There are also such non-negotiable costs as rent, utilities and
   telephone bills. We spend a minimum of an hour to process each
   submission, therefore, we feel our donation tiers are reasonable for
   the service we provide. However, IUMA is sympathetic to starving
   musicians. If you honestly cannot meet our suggested donations,
   please feel free to send in your music along with a donation you can
   afford. You will eventually be put on the site, but priority is given
   to those who meet the standard rates.
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ANSWERS to Submission Questions:



  S1: WHY SHOULD I SUBMIT A SONG TO IUMA?

   See Answer G1. In short, what we offer is worldwide electronic
   promotion and distribution across one of the fastest-growing media in
   the Networked world, namely the World-Wide Web (access to the IUMA
   archives is also available via older standards, ftp and gopher, but
   the Web is the coolest and preferred way to get in).
     _________________________________________________________________



  S2: HOW DO I SUBMIT A SONG TO THE IUMA?

   Grab a copy of our latest Submission Information from our site. By
   mail or FAX, call us at [phone]. That's (408) I-AM-IUMA. You
   can also send electronic mail to [e-mail] to receive a list of
   documents and forms which can be requested automatically.



  S3: WHAT ARE THE LEGAL ISSUES SURROUNDING THIS? THEY SOUND HAIRY.

   Here's our official policy:



     COPYRIGHTS AND DISCLAIMERS
     IUMA MUSIC LISTENERS -- PLEASE NOTE
     IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING GETTING MUSIC FROM THE NET:

     Unless otherwise noted, all sound recordings and other artistic works
     available from IUMA are copyrighted by their respective authors and
     performers. These recordings and other works are transmitted to you
     for your non-commercial home use only, and by using this service you
     agree to these terms.

     All public performance, copying, or other use of these recordings or
     works, including the music and lyrics thereof, and expressly including
     sampling and the creation of compilations or derivations of the
     recordings or works, is prohibited.

     U.S. and other copyright laws can be enforced, subjecting violators to
     substantial civil penalties and/or criminal prosecution.

     Radio broadcasters and others requiring copyright clearance
     information should refer to the accompanying permissions file for
     information on contacting the authors/performers or their agents.


   What this really means is that any music on IUMA is freely
   distributable only in its native form and only for no cost unless we,
   the IUMA staff leaders, give written permission. This prevents the
   potential problem of one day finding your song on an audio CD without
   the being paid while allowing the inclusion of your song on a
   computer CD-ROM or on a "mirror site" (a Internet site that maintains
   a copy of the IUMA site) for further distribution or archival
   purposes.


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ANSWERS to Technical Questions:



  T1: WHAT IS MPEG COMPRESSION?

   To lift directly from the MPEG FAQ (available from IUMA and
   elsewhere).



   > Written by Mark Adler .
   >
   > Q. What is MPEG?
   >
   > A. MPEG is a group of people that meet under ISO (the International
   >    Standards Organization) to generate standards for digital video
   >    (sequences of images in time) and audio compression.  In particular,
   >    they define a compressed bit stream, which implicitly defines a
   >    decompressor.  However, the compression algorithms are up to the
   >    individual manufacturers, and that is where proprietary advantage
   >    is obtained within the scope of a publicly available international
   >    standard.  MPEG meets roughly four times a year for roughly a week
   >    each time.  In between meetings, a great deal of work is done by
   >    the members, so it doesn't all happen at the meetings.  The work
   >    is organized and planned at the meetings.
   >
   > Q. So what does MPEG stand for?
   >
   > A. Moving Pictures Experts Group.


   So you ask:
   What do you need a motion pictures group for? Because they don't just
   research pictures and their compression, but its audio and its
   compression.



   > Q. You didn't mention anything about the audio compression.
   >
   > A. Oh, right. Well, I don't know as much about the audio compression.
   >    Basically they use very carefully developed psychoacoustic models
   >    derived from experiments with the best obtainable listeners to
   >    pick out pieces of the sound that you can't hear.  There are what
   >    are called "masking" effects where, for example, a large component
   >    at one frequency will prevent you from hearing lower energy parts
   >    at nearby frequencies, where the relative energy vs. frequency
   >    that is masked is described by some empirical curve.  There are
   >    similar temporal masking effects, as well as some more complicated
   >    interactions where a temporal effect can unmask a frequency, and
   >    vice-versa.
   >
   >    The sound is broken up into spectral chunks with a hybrid scheme
   >    that combines sine transforms with subband transforms, and the
   >    psychoacoustic model written in terms of those chunks.  Whatever
   >    can be removed or reduced in precision is, and the remainder is
   >    sent.  It's a little more complicated than that, since the bits
   >    have to be allocated across the bands.  And, of course, what is
   >    sent is entropy coded.


   Does that answer your question?


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  T2: NOT REALLY. WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO MY DEMO-TAPE IF I SEND IT TO YOU?

   Using an Antex Electronics SX25 professional audio digitizing and
   compression board we record your music to disk. Music recorded at at
   Compact Disc quality takes up 10 megabytes (MBs) per minute. So if a
   song is five minutes long, it occupies 50MBs of disk space -- that's
   more than most people have to spare, much less want to transfer over
   the net, so we compress it as we record to using the MPEG compression
   techniques described above. This is the same technology that is used
   in VideoCD format, and very similar to that found in Sony MiniDiscs
   (MD) and Phillips Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) formats.

    To quote the MPEG Frequently Asked Questions textfile again:



   > Q. So how much does it compress?
   >
   > A. As I mentioned before, audio CD data rates are about 1.5 Mbits/s.
   >    You can compress the same stereo program down to 256 Kbits/s with
   >    no loss in discernible quality.  (So they say.  For the most part
   >    it's true, but every once in a while a weird thing might happen
   >    that you'll notice.  However the effect is very small, and it takes
   >    a listener trained to notice these particular types of effects.)
   >    That's about 6:1 compression.


   We've found that up to 9.1:1 or 11.1:1 compression on demo tapes is
   acceptable quality-wise as the quality of the original is already
   limited.

   Now your probably asking:
   You mean that the audio quality is sacrificed for disk space?

   Yes and no. CD quality sound is not available online yet. It just
   takes up too much disk space and bandwidth. Cassette or FM radio
   quality is possible through MPEG audio compression. A computer with
   the latest generation of MPEG sound and video cards can even playback
   near CD quality from the same compressed files. You can grab a few
   demos from IUMA and judge for yourself. IUMA already has access to
   the technology to take the next step towards supplying CD-quality and
   is anxiously awaiting faster connectivity to allow listeners to
   download songs in a reasonable timeframe.


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  T3: IS THERE A MPEG AUDIO PLAYER FOR MY SYSTEM?

   You'll need to set your Web browser (probably NCSA Mosaic) to
   recognize MPEG audio files as the MIME type audio/x-mpeg. The
   filename extension for MPEG audio files is .MP2 or .mp2. For example,
   NCSA Mosiac for Windows should have the following lines in the
   mosaic.ini file kept in the Windows directory:



      [viewers]
      TYPE9="audio/x-mpeg"
      audio/x-mpeg="c:\mosaic\utils\xing_ply.exe %ls"

      [suffixes]
      audio/x-mpeg=.mp2,.MP2




    T3a: Microsoft Windows

   Use XingSound Player for Windows as mpgaudio.zip available from the
   IUMA site. You may also need the file msnd_e24.dll from XingSound if
   you have problems. You must already have a soundcard and Windows
   sound drivers installed for the player to work. Their tech support
   number is 805/473-7431.



    T3b: Macintosh

   At this moment, Macintosh players are not available. We know of two
   that are in the works (both of which we are beta testing) that will
   be available in the near future. Email [e-mail] to kept updated
   on their imminent arrival.



    T3c: UNIX Workstations

   Use Tobias Bading's MPEG audio player source as maplay.tar.Z or
   various different format system binaries. People using this should
   look online for addition tips and information.


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  T4: IS THERE A MPEG AUDIO ENCODER FOR MY SYSTEM?

   Probably.



    T4a: Microsoft Windows

   Antex Electronics sells a few different hardware solutions. Their
   phone number is 800-432-8592. Xing Technologies sells "XingSound for
   Windows" for US$99. Contact [e-mail] or 1540 W. Branch St.,
   Arroyo Grande, CA 93420, [phone], FAX [phone].

    T4b: Macintosh

    Look for the latest alpha releases of G.T. Warner's Macintosh
   software-only encoder/decoder on IUMA. We haven't had too much
   success with them but they are being developed.



    T4c: UNIX Workstations

   Charles Henrich <[e-mail]> of Michigan State University
   has written some encoding software. A copy is available on IUMA.


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  T5: WHAT COMPRESSION RATIOS ARE POSSIBLE WITH MPEG?

   Everything from "virtually" CD-quality at a compression level of 6:1
   to the rather warbled sounding 20:1 compression. The fact that one
   can scale the compression to whatever suits the material is a great
   option for potential encoders. That, along with it's highly
   sophisticated psychoacoustic algorithm, is the main reason we use
   MPEG over other open audio compression algorithms such as ADPCM.


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  T6: WHICH MIME TYPE IS AN .MP2 FILE?

   audio/x-mpeg. Adjust your MIME settings properly.


     _________________________________________________________________

   If we've failed to answer your question, please email us at
   [e-mail]. And look for the next IUMA FAQ, frequently updated
   to answer frequently asked questions.