OpenMusic: Uniting networks with content aggregation and distributed authentication

great ideas Chris.

I actually didn't like the appleseed project (thanks for flagging it, though)....I'm always sceptical of open networks that aren't really open...i.e. as i understand it appleseed requires you to use appleseed to be part of the appleseed network. that's not exactly open, is it? or have I missed something?

I prefer your ideas surrounding distributed authentication, especially via openID...i.e. where a drupal, joomla or other site can intertwine via rss and openid authentication.

One of the very interesting aspects of what you're putting forward, especially from a music perspective, is the ability to cross-pollinate fan bases, naturally and organically.

Re: your question about the charts..

Rigging the charts is not unique to sales. The ability to boost friends on myspace or listens on last.fm is remarkably easy - the last.fm charts are referred to the "hype charts" in music industry circles..i.e. nobody pays attention to them except the people hyping them and I'm not sure if that affects the music discovery system.

The way sales have always being charted is via financial transactions...i.e. the chart companies are able to cross check and audit sales data. In the UK the OCC was setup by the BPI (Association of Record labels) and BARD (British association of retailers and distributers) and have special access to data that makes the UK charts one of the most respected in the World. That's not to say the charts can't be rigged, but, having worked in the industry for over 10 years now...I can tell you the horror stories of labels who were caught red-handed buying their own records. Both major and indie.

Like one wonderful story of an independent band in liverpool, who organised all their family, neighbours, friends and relations to meet in a pub on a saturday and divvied up all the record stores across Liverpool to buy their single. After lunch, when they met back up in the pub, they realised that they had bought every single copy in the city...so what did they do? they went back out...smuggled the singles they bought back into the stores and bought them again!!! Of course that set the alarm bells ringing straight away and the single was dumped out of the charts. Bless.

How a legitimate and trusted chart would work under the open-music network is hard to envisage, without co-operation with companies who handle financial transactions (like paypal/amazon/worldpay/etc.). In other words, the ISRC system (International Sound Recording Codes) could be carried along with the transaction to Worldpay/paypal/amazon/google/whomever and their weekly data is fed into a trusted third party, like the OCC, who collate, check and audit the data.

However, that doesn't stop a label buying 10,000 of their own songs, in the knowledge that they'll get the best part of those costs back, minus the paypal/worldpay/amazon/google charges, so there must be more information gathered, such as IP address (which is probably easy to fake now) or other that will enable a third party to audit the data.

I quite like the idea of SMS authentication.....e.g. when you buy a single online, a free SMS message is sent to your phone thanking you for the purchase and asking you to reply (for free) to 'authenticate' the sale for the charts.

In other words, it's quite simple to fiddle IP or email addresses, but, it's actually quite hard to fiddle SMS + mobile numbers. True, a label with resources could buy 1,000 sim cards and thumb away...but, it's the only plausible method I can think of, assuming consumers are willing to reply and say 'yep, i'm a real person'.

anyway..I hope that sparks some ideas.

Dub

edited: actually, it might be possible to authenticate the download using SMS....if the download code is sent via SMS after payment is made...once that code is activated, you have your 'yep, i'm a real person' authentication.

The ideas are really good, i'm curious to see how the OpenMusic will be ;]

there's a past discussion at the art and music groups by Zirafa and Dublin Drupaller that relates to what we are discussing here
Module Proposal: Swapping information across music sites?.
I was led to the publish and subscribe modules too, and I think there is some potential in these modules although the same effect can be reached with RSS and Aggregator. Utilizing such a technique requires a centralized hub though.

Publish Charts to the OpenMusic Hub
Each OpenMusic website (island) would establish a publish-subscribe channel to the central OpenMusic Hub(a fixed domain) through which it will publish it's own charts node on each update (publishing issued through cron runs maybe) to the hub. The Hub would then aggregate the results and in turn publish the aggregated charts content to all OpenMusic websites through a second publish-subscribe channel.
If using RSS feeds this approach is achieved by letting the Central HUB aggregate content from specific(how can it discover them?) OpenMusic websites and then have these websites subscribe to the HUB's charts feed.

Now it starts making sense! By default, upon installation each OpenMusic website (island) will have it's Aggregator subscribed to the central Hub's charts feed (e.g http://www.openmusic.gr/chartsfeed). Therefore the moment an OpenMusic island comes online it will contact the Central Hub at the feed's address, meaning that the Hub will become aware of it's presence ( how can it know which of the feed subscribers are OpenMusic websites, or, furthermore, eligible for charts inclusion? )

At that moment, the Hub will add a specific to the island feed url to it's own aggregator. The feed will be of the following format
http://www.islanddomain.tld/chartsfeed
On specified intervals (e.g. once daily), the Hub will sum up the results of all feeds gathered and will publish the updated charts rss feed . Now when each island will be re-requesting the feed at http://www.openmusic.gr/chartsfeed it will acquire an updated feed with the aggregated charts of all OpenMusic websites online.