SOURCE:

http://p2pnet.net/story/4573
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Thanks to the Net, Indie music has come of age.

All musicians need is an online connection, a bit of initiative, a little imagination and they’re cooking.

The trouble is, there’s now so much out there, how do you get to hear to it all?

As we write this, we’re listening to Italy’s Cum Distortion ----- thanks to Indy, Freenet creator Ian Clarke’s latest brainchild which, he promises, does for freely available independent music what Google does for the world wide web.

“Over the past few months, while working on Dijjer in public, we’ve been working on a sister project in private called ‘Indy’, and we’re now ready to release it to the public at-large,” he says.

It uses collaborative filtering, similar to that used by Amazon to recommend books, etc, to prospective buyers, to learn about your musical preferences in relation to other Indy users.

Everything it plays is from online indie music freely available on the web and you can rate each piece at between one and five stars. Using that as feedback, Indy will find and download music that’s keyed to what you like as opposed to what you don’t like : )

“Eventually it becomes like your own personal A&R machine,” says Clarke, going on:

“Artists benefit too, since the user can just click on the name of the mp3 and immediately visit their websites to learn more about them, or perhaps buy their CDs or other merchandise.”

Can you promote your own music through Indy?

Yep. Just go here.

What persuaded Clarke to develop Indy?

“We were concerned that even with all of the advancements with online media in the past few years, it was still pretty difficult just to find new independent music that you liked,” he told p2pnet.

“As a result, if you look at the type of music people were sharing on mp3 networks, or purchasing from a download site, it really wasn't all that different to what was being promoted by the mainstream music industry.

“We wanted to use the Internet to democratise the promotion of music in the same way that the Internet is democratising the distribution of music.”

Clarke says he’s planning on extending Indy it to other types of media in the future, including video. And right now it's for Windows only. But that, too, will change soon so it'll also work with Linux and Mac systems.

The app is freely available as of today, although there’s a mechanism in place to limit the number of downloads to stop the Indy servers from being swamped.

Tip: If you have trouble hearing anything the first time around, just exit and re-start.

Download it here.

Frequently Asked Questions
What is Indy?
Indy is a music discovery tool. The goal of Indy is to give indy musicians a great new way to promote their music, and to create a whole new way for people to discover music that they'll love.
How do I use Indy?
You rate the music that's playing and Indy does the rest. Let's say you give a track one or two stars-- Indy figures it's not for you, and starts playing a new one. If you give a song more than two stars, Indy plays on (and you can always skip to the next track whenever you want). As you rate more music, Indy gets very smart, very fast about what you like. It will start playing things you like that you would never have found on your own.
Remember, Indy is all about helping you explore beyond the music you already know about. It's a personalized search engine, full of surprises and discoveries-- the more ratings you put into it, the more great music you get back!

How does Indy work?
Indy uses a collaborative filter, identifying fans with similar taste to yours to recommend music they liked. It's basically the way people have always recommended music to their friends, the only difference is that Indy draws on the recommendations and taste of a whole lot more people. Indy uses the COllaborative Filtering Engine, although we are working on our own collaborative filtering engine to dramatically improve the scalability of Indy and related software we are working on right now. Watch this space.
Why should users like Indy?
There are tons of great bands out there that don't have big labels promoting them, and Indy is a good way to find them. Once Indy downloads a track, you can add it to your music collection, listen to it whenever and where ever you want, and best of all, it's free!
Why should artists like Indy?
Because it's a free way for artists to find new fans. Anyone who who discovers your music on Indy can go to your website to find out more about your band, buy downloads, concert tickets, or other stuff. Indy gives you an entirely new way to reach a fan base that you may never even have known existed in the first place.
Why isn't Indy more like iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player and such like?
Because Indy isn't a tool for playing back music, is a tool for discovering new music. Once you have found something you like and would like to listen to it on a regular basis you should just add it to your existing music collection and use software such as iTunes to listen to it.
When will Indy be available for operating systems other than Windows?
Our Mac and Linux versions of Indy will be ready for summer 2005.
Where does Indy's music come from?
All music on Indy has been made freely available on the web by artists. When Indy downloads music, it comes directly from the artist's website, and you can visit that website by clicking on the title of the track in Indy's user interface.
Can I promote my music through Indy?
Yes! Please visit our music submission page.
Who created Indy?
The Indy concept originated from Ian Clarke, but was inspired by a number of other projects including iRate (neither Ian Clarke nor Indy is affiliated with the iRate project). Most of Indy's code was written by Andrew Clarke, and if Indy were a movie its producers would be Steven Starr and Oliver Luckett. Indy's website was designed by Nicholas Reville of Downhill Battle, and the GUI artwork was created by Erik Ries.
Can I promote my favorite bands music through Indy?
Yes! As long as the artist has made their music freely available on the web, just visit our submission page.
Will Indy support video in the future?
Yes! Music is just the beginning for Indy, our goal is for Indy to promote and help you discover all kinds of media, including music, video and more.
Is it legal?
Absolutely. Indy works like Google-- it only connects you to content that's already freely available on websites. But if you're an artist and you'd rather not have your music on Indy, just let us know and we'll take it off.
I think I found a bug, what do I do?
Please send an email to feedback@indy.tv explaining as clearly as possible what the problem is. Please also attach this file:
C:\Program Files\Indy\logs\indy.logto your email as this will give us extremely useful diagnostic information.
What do I do if my question isn't answered here?
We are always happy to receive comments or questions, feel free to email us at feedback@indy.tv.

The idea of this sounds really great. But I can't get it to work yet.



Guess I'll try it again at a later date. Anyone else use Indy? What's your experience with it?

Weird interface. We could do better just with our stuff.

I think so too.