OggMusic.net - The Net's New Music.ogg™

OggMusic.net is coming soon

The last update to this page was Tuesday, August 10, 2007. College and work are interfering with getting this project off the ground, but work on this project is still being done.

Sunday, March 4, 2007, was spent reworking the CSS into something that would be friendly to all Web browsers (with the possible exception of Netscape Communicator 4.x). There's even been a hack installed which allows Internet Explorer users to at least access the site and all its links. Previously, properly graceful CSS was not possible while preserving IE compatibility because IE either shoved one box underneath another, making links in the obscured box unclickable, or it caused the sidebar to vanish entirely. For the record, the primary development Web browsers are Mozilla Firefox, KDE Konqueror, and Opera Software Opera.

The pieces are finally falling into place. As of Tuesday, February 6, 2007, homes have been found for the servers which will work together to give you a fast, lightweight site combined with ready-to-listen media content.

Soon this site will be the premier Web site for music by free and independent artists. Soon, the emptiness left by the MP3.com Grinchmas of '03 will be filled, and once again you'll have a single place where you can listen to RIAA-free music, legally and for free.

Here, music artists, bands, and musicians of all genres will be able to upload their music and have it heard and rated by Internet listeners. Here, listeners will be able to rate the songs they hear so that only the best music makes it to the top of the playlists. Here at last, you'll be able to escape the monotonous drone of Top 40 RIAA music without having to break the law or micropay your life savings away. OggMusic.net will not become anything like BuyMusic or Napster (good or evil versions), or anything like that.

OggMusic.net will use Ogg Vorbis Digital Audio

Better Quality, Patent Free

To play MP3 files, your player needs an MP3 codec. Likewise, to play Ogg Vorbis (Ogg) audio files, your player needs an Ogg Vorbis codec. Here's a short list of just some of the music players capable of playing Ogg music files.

A slightly longer list can be found on the Ogg Vorbis Software Page. These players are programs available for Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, all major distributions of Unix and Linux, and Sun Java. Hardware and software Ogg players other than these do exist.

Software players	Hardware players
WinAmp: Media Player for Windows.	These iRiver Ultra Portable Players: 700 Series, 800 Series, and 900 Series
XMMS: X11 Multimedia System.	These iRiver Audio Jukebox Players: H320 and H340.
foobar2000 Windows audio player.	These iAudio hardware players: iAUDIO X5, iAUDIO 5, iAUDIO G3, and iAUDIO M3.
Zinf Is Not FreeA*p.	These Samsung "Yepp" audio players: YP-F1Z, YP-F1X, YP-F1V, YP-T8Z, YP-T8X, and YP-T8A.
XMPlay by Un4seen Developments.	Rio Karma 20GB Player. Note: this player has received more than one unfavorable review [C|Net].
Sonique by Lycos - Sonique may or may not require a plug-in to play Ogg files. Details are presently sketchy.
RealPlayer - Only the Linux version is documented as playing Ogg files. Due to Real's persistent browser redirects, details on the Windows versions are presently sketchy.
Audacity: Free, Cross-Platform Sound Editor
Audion 3 for Mac OS - Audion is no longer being upgraded or maintained, but it is now a free download.
Whamb for Mac OS.
jOggPlayer for Java
iTunes - According to this Mac OS X Hints forum article, iTunes seems able to play Ogg files with the help of a QuickTime plug-in.

Petition to Apple for Ogg Vorbis support in iPods

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the online petition:

"Petition to Apple for OGG Vorbis Support on Ipods"

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/appl1435/

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider signing yourself.

Best wishes,

Ariel Millennium Thornton

The MP3.com Grinchmas of 2003

MP3.com was founded by Michael Robertson, better known as the CEO of Linspire, the company that makes a desktop Linux system regularly featured on Wal-Mart.com's budget desktop and laptop computers. MP3.com quickly grew into something more than Mike could handle, so he sold the site and everything that went with it to Vivendi Universal, a member company of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Under Vivendi Universal's stewardship, MP3.com's popularity exploded and it became the center of the music world for literally thousands of free, independent, and unsigned artists.

In the Fall of 2003, Vivendi Universal sold MP3.com to C|Net. However, C|Net bought only the site and name, not the music archive. At the time, MP3.com hosted the largest collection of freely-available music from independent, unsigned, and small-time artists. MP3.com was such a powerful hub of the online music community that many of the thousands of artists made MP3.com their only home, depending on MP3.com's listeners for CD sales. By some estimates, it had so many millions of songs that to listen to them all just once would have taken somewhere around 20 years.

Yet despite pleas from thousands upon thousands of listeners, and even an empassioned plea from MP3.com's founder, Vivendi Universal insisted that the terabytes of legally free music would be purged—and not transferred—before the end of the year. It was never noted or recorded for posterity what C|Net's opinion on this threat was.

On the week of Christmas 2003, Vivendi Universal made good on its promise. All the music was taken offline and deleted, and all the artists' homepages were evicted. C|Net bought only the name, not the archive that gave the name meaning. That was Vivendi Universal and C|Net's Christmas present to the millions of loyal listeners. That was the MP3.com Grinchmas of '03.

OggMusic.net will never forget that.

More to come soon, especially a site listeners and musicians alike can use and rally around.