The Den

I don't go out to shows as often as I might like - maybe I'm not enough of a music fiend or perhaps I'm too much of a homebody and I should break myself of that. But I do enjoy most of the shows I go to, and in the last month I've gone to three shows over in San Francisco.

A joint electronic music project from Jeremiah and BJ, with tracks released on the Grounded compilation from If Else Then

BJ's solo electronic music project focusing on experimental IDM, hip hop, and trip hop beats.

One of BJ's solo electronic music projects. Wormfood creates techno with darker, more direct sound.

Another excellent East Bay-based netlabel with a great selection of hard-to-find works from indie electronic artists, including our own Root Elements!  All tracks are non-DRM'd mp3's, only $2 per album .

One of the largest download sites outside of iTunes. eMusic works on a subscription basis - some $$ per month allows you to download a certain number of tracks - which is great if you don't want all the tracks of an album.  All genres are represented, from classical choral to indie hiphop. Plenty of smaller indie labels.

Great site for buying a wide variety of great music from a good-sized list of independent labels. All tracks are high-quality mp3's with no DRM. *yay*

A local 'net label'  featuring electronic music from independent East Bay artists. Run by my friends Jeremiah and BJ, their first full-length album 'Grounded' is available from their site for free (and the download files are hosted here at The Den).

Check it.

Root Elements is the primary solo electronic music project of my close friend Jeremiah. Originally started here in the Bay Area, he's now based in just outside of Barcelona, Spain. Check out his releases on IfElseThen and En:Peg digital .   Update: Root Elements will be playing live on May 18, 2007 at the Civic Center in Poble Sec, Barcelona. Be there!

This site started as AudioScrobbler and has grown to so much more. Sign up for free, install a little background app on your computer, and all the stuff you listen to in iTunes is logged, statistics are generated, and social links & discussion ensues. It also has a little internet-radio app that will stream music to you based on what you like, or on "music like the music of artist X".

 
Ever hear about a concert, show, or performance that you'd be psyched to see only to find out it happened last night?  Then Sonic Living may be for you!  A very cool website started up by my friend and co-worker Gabe, Sonic Living invites you to tell it about all the bands, groups, and artists you might be interested in, and will tell you whenever they have shows in your chosen city(s).

But that simple description doesn't begin to do it justice.  Don't feel like typing in the hundreds of artists you might like to hear?  Just upload them from your extensive iTunes Library, or your last.fm account! Don't want to go to a show alone? Easily find others who might be interested in the same show.

Browse upcoming events for your chosen artists, add them to you calendar, get email reminders. Also get email notifications when a show appears t that you might be into.

 And hey, buy your tickets too! 

 Sonic Living is Social Zen.

Here's some useful info about using my music server:

Clicking the stream link didn't add it to my iTunes.

If your iTunes doesn't automacically add the MP3 stream when you click the link above, try this:

1. Copy the web address of the stream into your clipboard: http://bearcave.qt1r.org:9000/stream.mp3
2. In iTunes, under the "Advanced" menu, choose "Open Stream..."
3. Paste the web address into the box that appears, and click OK.
4. The stream is now in your iTunes library. You can rename it, double click to start playing it, add it to playlists, etc...

I don't use iTunes, I use [some other mp3 player application].

If you use something other than iTunes, read the manual for your player to find out how to add the MP3 stream using the URL above.

I don't hear anything!

• Check your speaker volume.
• Make sure the stream is playing, not paused or stopped in your player.
• Use the control page to make the server send you something. Note that you can pause and stop the stream, which is different from pausing or stopping your player.
• Make sure you're controlling your stream from the control page and not someone elses! (see below)

How do I use the control page?

The control page is where you can browse the music library, add tracks to the queue, and control playback. It lets you create a queue of music that will be streamed to you. You can add hours worth of music to the queue, and then just let it play. You can also save a queue as a server-playlist and use it later.

• Use the left side to browse and search the library by artist, album, genre, etc. Look in the popup menu at the top. There you'll also see connections to other internet streams that you can access through my server.
• When you look at items in the library, you'll see 4 red buttons to the right of each item:
  • The right-pointing trangle clears the current queue, adds the item, and starts playing it.
  • The triangle pointing at a line adds the item to the queue immdiately after the currently playing track.
  • The square with 4 quarters (actually a plus sign on a square) adds the item to the end of the queue
  • The X removes the item from the queue, if its there.
• The right side of the page shows the playback controls at the top, and the playback queue below. The controls are pretty obvious, and you can hover your mouse over them to see what they do.
• Once you have some tracks in the queue, hit the play button, and in a moment, it should start playing on your computer (as long as you have the stream playing in your mp3 player)

How do I know I'm controling my stream, not someone else's?

First off, if you do stuff with the controls, and you hear the results in your mp3 player, you're controling your own stream.

The server remembers the IP addresses of computers playing streams from it, and you can assign your own names to those addresses. The address or name is displayed above the playback controls, over the Ablum art and under the text 'squeezbox'. If more than one stream is being sent out at any moment, the name will appear in a popup menu. The queue and controls shown are for the stream shown in the menu. To change which one you're controlling, just choose from the menu.

The flipside of being able to send more than one stream is that everyone can control everyone else's streams! Be nice, and only mess with your own.

How do I know which IP address is mine?

To find out what address the server calls yours, just click here. The number that shows up on that page is your IP as viewed from the internet.

How did you do that? Can I let people listen to my music?

Slim Server is an open-source music streaming server. If you run a web server and you'd like to stream your music, check it out.

I keep my iTunes library on my server, so that I can listen to it when I'm away from home. Sometimes I'll let friends listen to a streamed track or two from here also. Its true, you can play music from my iTunes to your own computer. Its like the "Radio" part of iTunes, but you get to choose what you hear from a web page.
This should work with any application that can play mp3 streams from the internet, but here's how to do it with your iTunes: