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Mon, 18 Aug 2008

Hi,

What on earth does that mean? Free as in libre radio for free as a bird music. And what does it have to do with KGPL?

Free as in libre is a phrase describing open source software, also called free software. The meaning is free as in liberty or freedom as opposed to free as in beer. When someone gives you a free beer that means you don't have to pay for it. Free software means you are free to use it and modify it and even redistribute your modified version as long as you follow the rules laid out in the free software license. For KGPL I use the GPL or General Public License. More info on that here.

Free as a bird is an evocative phrase that is another way of expressing freedom. For KGPL free as a bird music means that the songs are available for free download on the internet. And I'm not talking about illegal downloads from a pirate p2p network. There are thousands and thousands of songs posted by the songwriters and others with permission. Legal downloads of free music.

Some of those songwriters take an additional step with a license that allows anyone to distribute or even modify the song. I use Creative Commons licenses to license my work. More info on that here.

For musicians free as a bird has an additional meaning. Bird aka Charlie Parker was on of the great Jazz saxophonists, a true original who not only wrote songs but had a seminal influence on Bebop, a far reaching Blues based Jazz style that uses riffing to define frameworks for improvisation. All Jazz players strive to be as free as Bird in their solos.

KGPL is two things. It is an open source internet radio software project. And it's a working station featuring free music. Besides just turning on the radio listeners can program their own shows. Anyone can add songs to the library as long as the songs are available for free download on the internet. Widgets and embeds are available so you can add songs or playlists to your websites or myspace or DailyKos.

So here's a shout out to Charlie Parker aka Bird.

Here's a widget with some Jazz on KGPL.

And finally here's some links to other sites featuring free as a bird music.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry

Hi,

I posted this at DailyKos.

For music to make you feel invincible to the Republican hordes check out my new internet radio station, KGPL.

Not only can you listen to KGPL you can add songs and program your own playlists. Right now most of the songs are from the Live Music Archive, Jamendo, ccmixter, and Delta Boogie Radio.

The Delta Boogie Radio link above is the dialup version for those like me who are bandwidth deprived. There is also a hifi version.

Anyone can add songs as long as they are available on the internet as mp3 files. Then you can program your own playlists for anyone to enjoy. Widgets and embeds allow you to post these songs and playlists on your websites or myspace.

Please add your favorite music or email me about more great music on the internet.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com

Sat, 02 Aug 2008

KGPL and Delta Boogie Radio

Why two stations and what's the difference?

KGPL links to mp3 files on the internet. So anyone can submit songs since all KGPL does is link to the file. It also links to the page hosting the file so listeners can find out more about the artists and the songs. Also because of this KGPL is all genres and all styles.

Delta Boogie Radio runs on KGPL V1 software. With this version of the software there is no database. Delta Boogie hosts the files in dialup and hifi formats. So this station is all originals or covers of public domain songs.

Because we host these songs we only post songs with the songwriters permission. Delta Boogie Radio has a kind of a broad genre including blues, jazz, country, folk, bluegrass, songwriter, etc. Kind of a wide swath of American music that doesn't crunch or thrash.

Delta Boogie Radio has been one of my most popular promotions. I get artist submissions every week and I'm working through a backlog. It's also the only station on the internet that really works well over dialup without skips and buffering.

All songs on Delta Boogie Radio will be on KGPL. I'm adding a few every couple of days as I have the time.

The new KGPL software runs on the Google AppEngine so it's supposed to scale automatically as we grow. I'm really proud of it. It has a lot of user features that can't be included in a software without a database. I intend to add more features where users can start their own station and control their own library. I also intend to add listener/DJ pages where you can see what someone has added, what playlists they've made and you can message them. Kind of like a smaller social network built around the station where everyone's friends.

Please add songs to KGPL, make some playlists, embed them on your site, and spread the word. And if you're a songwriter interested in being featured on Delta Boogie Radio send me an email.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com

Mon, 28 Jul 2008

Popping up the XSPF Web Music Player

Here's a great show that Rhode Island Red and I recorded at Bunky's Breakfast on Cherry St. in Helena, Arkansas during the 2006 King Biscuit Festival.

Play Hairy Larry and Rhode Island Red in the popup flash player.

The popup player is the XSPF player mentioned in the last post. Enjoy!

You can embed this show on your website. Go here for more info.

Let me know how it works.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry

Embedding lists

There are two ways of distributing embeds for the XSPF player. You can distribute the embed code itself or host the embed code and distribute iframe code that points to the embed code.

I've decided to support both ways because neither way works on all sites.

For myspace the embed code works but they don't allow iframes.

On this blog the embed code doesn't get interpreted and just displays on the web page. The iframe code works great.

There are so many interactive sites of the net I can't check all of them. Please let me know about successful embeds and how you did them. And please for sure let me know of a site where neither embed works. I will do my best to make them work for you.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry

Fri, 25 Jul 2008

Mono Monster Embedded

I am working on the new KGPL software. It runs on Python and is hosted by the Google AppEngine.

It uses a database and accepts links to mp3 files. So you can add songs right on the internet.

http://www.kgpl.org

I've been using a Flash player called XSPF Web Music Player.

http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/

Here's an embed of Mono Monster using this player.

I had to use an iframe to get this to work so I can see I will have to provide this as an option.

Ok, here's a link that pops up the same player in it's own window.

Play "Mono Monster" in a popup flash player.

Now here's the widget I wrote that delivers an m3u file to your media player.

Here's a link to the Mono Monster page where you can see the different widgets and embeds available. Of course all the widgets are available for every song in the KGPL library.

Please let me know if you have any trouble installing any of the widgets or embeds.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com

Thu, 18 Oct 2007

KGPL Launched

I have decided to license my new radio software under the GPL V3 and I have named it KGPL.

Free (as in libre) Radio for Free (as a bird) Music.

I registered kgpl.org and I'm setting up a blosxom blog on the site. This is my first blog post to kgpl.org.

Once you can accept that the music can be as free as a bird it's easy to write great software to distribute that music. It's all of the caging the music in that's hard to write.

KGPL works with .m3u playlists a standard recognized by all media players. It sends out the radio shows as .m3u playlists giving the listener the option to pause, skip, start again, shuffle, save, modify, basically anything you can do with a playlist.

Listeners can also create their own shows which are saved as .m3u playlists. They can email these shows to friends or link to them from their website.

KGPL also supports On Demand listening and Downloads. If you like a particular song you don't have to wait until it's played again. The On Demand feature lets you select the song you like and listen to it right now. If you really like the song you can download it to your harddrive or media player.

All of this only works if you can distribute the music with the permission of the songwriter. Creative Commons licenses are a way that songwriters and bands can make their music available for this kind of distribution.

http://creativecommons.org

I have many plans for improvements which I will discuss in future posts. If you have suggestions or would like to help with the project contact me. If you are interested in using this software to set up a radio station on your website please let me know. I will help you every way I can.

I have a test radio station, Delta Boogie Radio, here.

http://deltaboogie.com/radio

Please check it out and let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com

Javascript Media Player courtesy of David Battino at O'Reilly distributed with permission
GetID3() software is distributed under the GPL license.

Penguin Musicians clip art from ABKL Designs.
Dancing penguins from the internet. Thanks internet.
If you animated these penguins please let me know.

Email hairylarry@deltaboogie.com