Free gigs - input wanted

[Worra]

Hi all!

As you might now, there once where a site called \"Worra\'s Place\", well there still is, but the free downloads are a bit crippled.

The general idea was to let people share their homemade gigs. It was a success! Many people shared their gigs, some where first attempt and some where really professional and some where in between.
Anyway, I\'ve still got somewhere between 600-700 Mb of gigs.
The problem is bandwith. I\'ve got 8Gb/month in the account that I use, and that\'s used up within 2-3 days if I put all the gigs up.
Additional bandwidth comes at $12/Gb, so there\'s really no possibility of me paying for this.
I\'ve tried several different solutions, it turns out that all providers that offers \"unlimited bandwidth\" doesn\'t really do that and cooperations with other companies haven\'t been working that great either. It seems like the only way to get this site up and running is to put all files up at my own site and simply pay for the extra bandwidth.
Ok, as I said, I can\'t afford this, so here\'s what I had in mind:
Would it be interesting to pay a small fee to get access to the gigs, say $15/month. That is, for that amount, you\'ll get a user/pw that gives you acess to the gigs during one months time?
In return, I promise that there will be at least 2 new gigs/week to download from Worra\'s Place.

Please let me know what you think of this, before I\'ll begin setting up the site.

Peace
Worra

[meltingmars]

Why don\'t you get DSL with a static IP, and just set up a Linux server with anonymous ftp. Your website could point to these files. That would cost you a whopping $50 a month, and solve all our problems.

If you don\'t have the ability to do this, maybe you should turn over all the uploaded gigs to someone else who can do this.

[Worra]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by sgarsson:
This then starts to beg the question of why not set-up a commerce model similar to Sampleheads where you pay as you go based upon what you need and want.


Scott<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
This would be a better idea, but I\'m afraid that it would take a lot of time to administrate. You have to put a price on each gig, and that would be very hard to do.
Maybe if there where some kind of way to put up a small demo, like streaming audio of what the gigs sounds like that you could listen to before you decide if you want to pay the fee, I suppose that would be possible.

/Worra

[Worra]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by meltingmars:
Why don\'t you get DSL with a static IP, and just set up a Linux server with anonymous ftp. Your website could point to these files. That would cost you a whopping $50 a month, and solve all our problems.

If you don\'t have the ability to do this, maybe you should turn over all the uploaded gigs to someone else who can do this.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yep, that would cost me $600/year to maintain a free service, sorry, just cant afford that. Also, I\'ve put down a lot of hours making Worra\'s Place what it is, so I really want to keep it to myself!
Also I really don\'t think that a DSL connection could handle the kind of bandwidth that we are talking about here. What I want to do, is to get a permanent working solution.
/Worra

[sgarsson]

Hi Worra,

Thanks for asking us into your quest for distributing gigs - always a noble cause. It is an interesting concept.

I am not sure, however, I would participate. I have downloaded many of the sounds from your board. A few of the gigs are excellent and many are marginal.

So, if I am to pay a subscription fee, I would care more about assurance\'s of quality gigs than I would about volume of gigs. At $15 bucks a month, a few great gigs would be worth it. This then starts to beg the question of why not set-up a commerce model similar to Sampleheads where you pay as you go based upon what you need and want.

Just my 2 cents. I am sure there are many other perspectives.

Scott

[clueless]

I\'m just thinking out loud here ...

At $15/month, that becomes $180/year. If 100 users participated in a subscription program, that would accumulate $18,000/year. If it costs $4,000 for storage and bandwidth that would leave $14,000 for collection, creation, or modification of Giga soundware annually. Does $14k support a rate of production of two new instruments per month? Don\'t know.

Would I pay $180 for 24 great Gigafiles each year? Yes, if most were what I needed to deliver on my projects. I just paid $120 for Maximum Strength Guitar, which consists of two Gigafiles -- one strummed and one picked (with lots of dimensions of course). It was what I needed.

Just some thoughts.

clueless

[Horst]

Hi Worra,

You made a honourable contribution to the GS-community in the past.

BUT

if you are going commercial (and if you charge fees for whatever reason then you ARE going commercial) please do not miss to ask the producers of the smaples before, if you are allowed to still \"distribute\" their free files.

Concerning the file I send you (a flute) the answer is clearly NO. I do not want my free file to be distributed on a pay-site. It should stay my little contribution to the community.

Horst

[Worra]

Horst, the files would still be free, the only thing that I want to avoid is me paying big bucks to keep this free site up. The $15/month was just a suggestion and I haven\'t really calculated on it, but I assume that there will be a lot of hackers using stole PW\'s that will D/L, and for that, I have to pay.
If I was to use the bandwidth that I\'m allowed to have (10Gb/month) and put up all gigs, I probably have to close it down after 2-3 days since then the BW would be all used up. I tried a couple of months ago and I used up 8Gb on 2 days. For every extra Gb I have to pay $12, if I use up 4Gb/day that would be 120Gb/month. Minus the 8 that I have, I have to pay for 112Gb. That would be $1344......
Sooo, I\'m only trying to find a way to get the gigs up and make them stay up.

What people would be paying for, really, are the bandwidth, not the gigs.
I agree on that all people that have contributed should have chanse to tell if they want to be on a site that operates in this way or not.

I wouldn\'t get rich on this, bealive me, on the other hand, I could get poor.... imagin what would happen if a stolen PW got on the alt.bins..... It wouldn\'t be THAT funny to owe my ISP $2000-3000.....
Maybe this isn\'t that good idea after all....

/Worra

[killerbobjr]

Worra, what about setting up multiple Geocities accounts and spread the Gigs across the accounts. Gigs that are over 15M can be split up as a self-extracting Rar. It could be set up so that the main page list the files, which links to the sub-pages, where you can download the actual files. Multi-part files can daisy chain across several accounts. This method gets around Geocities\' no direct linking policy. Admittedly, this is clumsy, but it is free.

[Worra]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by killerbobjr:
Worra, what about setting up multiple Geocities accounts and spread the Gigs across the accounts. Gigs that are over 15M can be split up as a self-extracting Rar. It could be set up so that the main page list the files, which links to the sub-pages, where you can download the actual files. Multi-part files can daisy chain across several accounts. This method gets around Geocities\' no direct linking policy. Admittedly, this is clumsy, but it is free.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks for the tip, but already tried that. Not with Geocity, but with some other ISP that works the same. I even contacted them and told them about it since I wanna do this straight. When they found out the imense BW that I used up, they simply shut the sites down. They can do that!

I also tryed a lot of other methods, MySpace being one of them, didn\'t work that well either....

/Worra

[killerbobjr]

Well, instead of asking people to donate $15/month, why not ask people to donate an account on Geocities? If you get several hundred donated accounts, it keeps it legit, and with large files dispersed across several accounts with any chunk no larger than say 2M, the bandwidth used won\'t trigger alarms for an individual account. Yes, the administration will be a bit of a headache, but no more than using Myspace was.

[Doc]

I think that we are all missing the obvious here. The answer is simple and cheap for all. Given the 600-700 megs of samples, weed out a few of the lame ones and put the rest on one CDR to duplicate at request. Tell people to send you five dollars for the CDR and postage. Process/dupe/mail once every few weeks to those who have sent in the fee. You can keep your website/bandwdith simple and cheaper by not having all the gigs to download, just the info needed to buy the public domain gigs on CDR. You could put any other info on a zeroxed sheet mailed out with the CDR. If there are too many requests for this CDR then lets get a network of people here to do it with you (just list multiple names/addresses to send the money to). Its a simple solution that keeps the gigs available to all at minimal cost. No one gets rich but the costs and time involved are minimal, especially if several people can make the CDR copies. Future gigs can still be uploaded to Worra for a second CDR in the making whenever there is enough of them. I\'m sure many here are willing to be listed to make dupes to keep a public domain library of gigs growing and available. What do you all think of this low tech/snail mail super cheap solution?

[Doc]

I think that we are all missing the obvious here. The answer is simple and cheap for all. Given the 600-700 megs of samples, weed out a few of the lame ones and put the rest on one CDR to duplicate at request. Tell people to send you five dollars for the CDR and postage. Process/dupe/mail once every few weeks to those who have sent in the fee. You can keep your website/bandwdith simple and cheaper by not having all the gigs to download, just the info needed to buy the public domain gigs on CDR. You could put any other info on a zeroxed sheet mailed out with the CDR. If there are too many requests for this CDR then lets get a network of people here to do it with you (just list multiple names/addresses to send the money to). Its a simple solution that keeps the gigs available to all at minimal cost. No one gets rich but the costs and time involved are minimal, especially if several people can make the CDR copies. Future gigs can still be uploaded to Worra for a second CDR in the making whenever there is enough of them. I\'m sure many here are willing to be listed to make dupes to keep a public domain library of gigs growing and available. What do you all think of this low tech/snail mail super cheap solution?

[clueless]

This free soundware site is important to Nemesys because it promotes exchange of adjunct, non-commercial sound files. I wonder if Nemesys would accept a proposal for a grant to keep a high-bandwidth site like Worra\'s operating. The grant status would keep the site from being commercial and remain free to the users. The grant could be for $4,000 per year (or whatever it costs), renewable annually with disbursements semi-annually.

It\'s an idea. They can only say no.

clueless

[cowboyhat]

Sonic Foundry has a great model to support the ACID community. Have you seen acidplanet.com? Talk about bandwidth!!I wonder if Nemesys has the infrastructure to do something similar.

Hehe, of course, that\'s not what Worra is after :-)

[Worra]

Well, I\'m really after a place where to store all the files that you\'ve sent me and make them avalible for the public.
Does anyone know of a web provider that can offer like 150-200Gb/month in bandwidth. All the companies that offer \"unlimited\" BW usually have some kind of fineprint that really makes it limited.

/Worra

[carlgt1]

It seems like a good idea; I suppose the main problem would be people trying to upload/download copyright-protected stuff. I mean, how many GS customers can there be? Probably thousands. If thousands of people chip in a buck a year that should cover a huge bandwidth connection & a decent box for a webserver dedicated to Gigs.

[Worra]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by carlgt1:
It seems like a good idea; I suppose the main problem would be people trying to upload/download copyright-protected stuff. I mean, how many GS customers can there be? Probably thousands. If thousands of people chip in a buck a year that should cover a huge bandwidth connection & a decent box for a webserver dedicated to Gigs.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

He, he... it would be like \"if every person on earth gave me a cent, i\'d get rich!\"
I\'ve found some posssible providers, one of them are http://www.kikko.com/. (\"http://www.kikko.com/.\") Anyone heard of them. It seems like I can get a dedicated server with 10Gb of disk and 400Gb/month in bandwidth for $200. As you said, there are many GS users out there and maybe I could try sell bannerspace to finance the site. The hitrate should be pretty high if I culd get all the gigs up all the time (mayby 400Gb wouldn\'t be enough....) It would be nice to keep the gigs free!

/Worra

[Doc]

Regardless of which host you go with Worra, offering a CDR of the public domain gigs for sale at low cost is still an option you should offer. I would rather send in my five dollars than spend days downloading and having to burn my own CDR as a backup anyways. Having a CDR available will cut your bandwidth needed period. If you are not willing to do this CDR, I\'m sure there are plenty here that are willing to help or do it for you. How many of you out there want a five dollar public domain gig CDR? Why wouldn\'t Nemesys themselve\'s not want to distribute this CDR? (Nemesys are you listening? help market your product and contact Worra about selling this thing at your website for five dollars, as you sell other libraries there).

[eilamgross]

For god\'s sake, why should Worra spend nights for duplicating CDR\'s for you?
I think $15 or even $20 for such a great CDR is a fair offer.
Let Worra get something for his effort.
Why should he work for free duplicating disks. Its a lot of work!
The CDR is a great idea, but folks, its really an effort!
Eilam

[OH]

Well. Why not changing gigs on a weekly or monthly bases? You could start with guitars, then move on to brass etc. until in the end you get back to guitars...


------------------
O.H.

[GigaBeliever2]

http://www.kikko.com/ (\"http://www.kikko.com/\") is down now so I would think that it is not a good webhost.
http://www.cobaltrack.com/dedplans.htm (\"http://www.cobaltrack.com/dedplans.htm\") has 200GB/month for $275/month for your own dedicated cobalt server. It only has a 15GB hard drive though, but some of the other plans have a 60GB hard drive. Additional traffic is available for all servers in 10 GIG increments for only $27.50 per month, not a bad deal.

[JohnS]

I like the CD idea, and it I wouldn\'t mind paying $15-20. Creative Labs sells a Sound Fount disc for $15, most of which can be downloaded for free. However, I have a 56K modem and it is just not pratical to download all the fonts.

Sample providers should probably be asked first if their samples could be provided on a CDRW with a \"shipping and handling\" charge. I believe most would agree. The idea of a \"free\" service is nice for users, but the service is not free to the provider. Users could reasonably bare some of the burden. If not the service could disappear.

[Worra]

I have thought about the CD idea for some time, and there\'s one thing that worries me. Before anyone uploads a gig to me, he/she have to go through a page where he/she guarantees that the samples doesn\'t infringe on any copyrights. I also check all gigs that are sent to me and I never publish anything that seems suspicious.
I also have a note on the download site saying that if anyone finds a gig that contains copyrighted material, they should tell me and I\'ll remove it straight away.
This, together with the fact that I\'m not making any money from this, is about as far as I can go to protect the site from having material that infringe copyrights.

If I was to make CD\'s with the material, I would in fact duplicate it and if I charge for it I would in fact making money on it (even if it was just to cover my expensives)
If a CD that was made by me and sold would contain material that was copyrighted, I could end up in a lot of trouble. I suppose that one way would be that I have all contributors sign a paper where they guarantee that the samples provided by them where ok. This would probably call for help from lawyers (any lawyers out there?)
If anyone has any ideas on how to avoid sutch problems, please let me know. Making CD\'s from the gigs together with having them online would be a great idea, but I don\'t want to end up in court..... http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/frown.gif

/Worra

[Doc]

What you need to cover your backside is a \"Liability Waiver\" which will \"hold you harmless\". Your chances of getting nicked over a public domain CDR is pretty slim since you are technically already exposed legally with the distribution on the website for all of this time, and have yet to have a problem. Put gigs on the CDR that have been posted on your site without problems. Have all new public domain gig suppliers (which will eventually be put on a future 2nd public domain CDR), sign a simple standard liability waiver.

[carlgt1]

I agree, I think making a CD of the public GIGs (while convenient) is too risky. At least a website you can immediately turn off a file that you find out is stolen or copyrighted. Especially since you do business selling commercial CD\'s; I think it would be a conflict of interest (e.g. you find out to your horror that the public domain CD has samples buried in it from a commercial library you sell!)

[Worra]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by carlgt1:
Especially since you do business selling commercial CD\'s; I think it would be a conflict of interest (e.g. you find out to your horror that the public domain CD has samples buried in it from a commercial library you sell!)

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I would be more horrified if the samples came from anyone else since I really can\'t sue myself..... http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif
Anyway, I\'m working on a solution that could be a good one!

/Worra