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256 Creative Commons Christmas Songs

Sun, 2008-12-21 20:56 — Uwe Hermann

Christmas Tree

Yes, it's that time of the year again... it's almost Christmas, which means that I once again updated my 10 + 100 Creative Commons Christmas Songs blog article I originally wrote in 2005. That's a collection of a lot of freely downloadable, Creative Commons licensed Christmas music.

Some of the older entries in the list are no longer available unfortunately, some only needed a URL update, and I also added more than 30 new songs this year.

This currently makes a total of 256 CC Christmas songs (more will probably be added over the next few days), so head over to the full song list and get those downloads started...

(Photo: Wikipedia. Author: Malene Thyssen. License: GFDL 1.2 / CC-BY-SA 2.5)

Nine Inch Nails album "The Slip" released under Creative Commons license

Sun, 2008-05-11 00:59 — Uwe Hermann

NiN

You might have already heard of it — the new Nine Inch Nails album "The Slip" has been released by them under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 US license. Yep, that's right, it's totally legal to download it from the web — and use it for any non-commercial purposes!

It's a bit annoying that they want your email address, though. Nothing that bugmenot.com (or similar) cannot fix, but still. Luckily, the files are now also available from archive.org! This, and the fact that the music is CC-licensed allowed me to "play" one of the songs in my Creative Commons music podcast (RSS), and more will likely follow.

Playing audio on the NSLU2

Mon, 2007-05-14 03:01 — Uwe Hermann

3D Sound USB Audio Device

I'm a happy NSLU2 user since a few months now, and I'm using it for all kinds of things, e.g. as a 24/7 remote ssh server at home (using DynDNS and the ddclient Debian package), as IRC logger (screen + irssi), etc. etc.

I was considering multiple options as to where/how to install the slug (USB thumb drive, Compact Flash, disk drive, ...) but I settled with a full Debian install on an 1 GB USB thumb drive for now. I implemented some measures to maximize the life time of the USB thumb drive, maybe I'll post some info on that later...

One new thing I've been trying lately is to use the slug as an audio player.

As it doesn't come with an integrated sound card, you have to use an external USB audio device. I've got mine (see photo) from eBay for ca. 5 Euro (+ shipping) and it works out of the box with Linux 2.6.18 using the snd_usb_audio kernel module. You simply attach it via USB (the module is automatically loaded) and then attach external speakers to it. Here's an lsusb of the device:

Bus 001 Device 011: ID 1130:f211 Tenx Technology, Inc.

One problem with playing audio on the slug is the slow CPU. At 266 MHz (and without FPU!) playing audio with "normal" audio players such as mplayer or mpg321 is not possible. But there are several ways to make the slug play your favorite music. Here's a list of players I tested and a status report of whether they work at all. If yes, I listed a rough percentage of CPU load resulting from playing the music.

  • MP3:
    • mplayer, mpg321, aplay, playsound, and splay don't work.
    • $ madplay foo.mp3: 17% CPU load
  • Ogg vorbis:
    • mplayer, aplay, playsound, and ogg123 don't work.
    • $ apt-get install libvorbisidec-dev
$ cd /usr/share/doc/libvorbisidec-dev/examples
$ make
$ cat foo.ogg | ./ivorbisfile_example | aplay -f cd

      Result: 40% CPU load

  • MOD, XM, S3M, IT, etc.:
    • $ mikmod foo.mod: 10% CPU load (even with compressed MOD files)
  • WAV:
  • FLAC:
  • SPEEX:
    • $ speexdec foo.spx: doesn't work, 100% CPU load. Any known alternatives?
  • AU:
    • $ cat foo.au > /dev/dsp: 3% CPU load (but sounds crappy)
    • $ cat foo.au > /dev/audio: 3% CPU load (sounds better)
    • $ mplayer foo.au: 5% CPU load
    • $ aplay foo.au: 5% CPU load
    • $ playsound foo.au: 5% CPU load
  • AIFF:
    • $ sox foo.aiff -t wav - | aplay: 50% CPU load (a bit stupid, but it works)
  • Streaming MP3:
    • $ mplayer http://www.example.com/foo.mp3: doesn't work, 100% CPU load.
    • $ wget http://www.example.com/foo.mp3 -O - | madplay - : 17% CPU load
  • Streaming Ogg Vorbis:
    • $ cd /usr/share/doc/libvorbisidec-dev/examples
      $ wget http://www.example.com/foo.ogg -O - | ./ivorbisfile_example | aplay -f cd      : 40% CPU load

The SlugAsAudioPlayer page in the NSLU2-Linux wiki might have further information on this topic.

Feel free to add comments if you know of other audio types which can be played on an NSLU2.

Updated list of more than 230 Creative Commons licensed Christmas songs

Sat, 2006-12-23 02:49 — Uwe Hermann

Xmas gifts

Looking at my webserver logs, there seems to be a highly increased demand for my 10 + 100 Creative Commons Christmas Songs blog post from last Christmas... I wonder why... ;-)

So I decided to update the list this year, adding a bunch of additional songs; in total there are now more than 230 songs listed.

Of course the list is incomplete, so any further links to Creative Commons licensed Christmas music are very welcome. Just leave a comment here or directly on the old blog post and I'll update the list.

I'll probably also put up some more Christmas-related songs on my Creative Commons music podcast over the next few days...

Image credit: Photo taken from Wikipedia. Author: Kelvin Kay. License: GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), version 1.2.

10 + 100 Creative Commons Christmas Songs [Update]

Sat, 2005-12-24 05:25 — Uwe Hermann

Christmas Tree

So, it's Christmas today (or it will be tomorrow, depending on where you live). Wouldn't it be nice if you had a bunch of freely and legally available Christmas songs you could listen to all day? Burn on CDs and hand over to your relatives? Share with your friends without the fear of being sued to death by big record labels?

Well, here's a list of 110 256 songs which are all explicitly released under a Creative Commons license (no, I did not consider songs which are merely "podsafe"!) and thus can be shared, listened to, and sometimes even modified freely. There's a great variety in style, mood, and genre of the songs: some traditional, some contemporary, some happy, some sad, and some just plain funny. So here's the list:

Single MP3s:

Compilations:

Additional songs 2006:

Additional songs 2008:

This list is by no means complete, I'm sure. So if you happen to know some more Creative Commons licensed Christmas music, please leave a comment! I'd love to hear about it.

(Btw., the nice image on the right is taken from the Wikipedia. The author is Malene Thyssen, and the image is dual-licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license)

Merry Christmas everyone!

Update 2008-12-21: Added more songs for 2008. Updated/marked broken links.
Update 2006-12-22: Added more songs for 2006 :)
Update 2005-12-26: Added "Homeless Babe". Added "Christmas Impro".
Update 2005-12-25: In the press: Boing Boing, Creative Commons Blog, netzpolitik.org, Technorati, digg.com, del.icio.us and lots more. Added "How George Stole Christmas". Added "Winter Rose". Added "Still, Still, Still".
Update 2005-12-24: Added "We Three Kings".

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