Audiogalaxy
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Type of site | Music |
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URL | www.audiogalaxy.com |
Commercial | Yes |
Current status | Closed |
Audiogalaxy was an Internet music service with three incarnations. From 1998 to 2002, it was a
History
The original Audiogalaxy system was created in 1998 by Michael Merhej as an FTP site index called The Borg Search. It quickly evolved into a robust peer-to-peer system with client software (the Audiogalaxy "Satellite"), a web-based search engine, always-on searching for requested files, auto-resume and low system impact. It quickly gained ground among file sharers abandoning Napster in 2001. Some observing the previous downfall of Napster via lawsuit were shocked at the design of Audiogalaxy, which was in some ways more centralized than Napster.
Audiogalaxy's stated mission was to facilitate sharing of music, though it was also notable for its strong community due to such features as chat-enabled groups and per-artist/per-genre peer moderated internet forums. This strong community also facilitated a very broad reach of content across many genres, particular those that tend to remain under-developed in more modern systems. Even very obscure or emerging artists could be heard. Moreover, it served as a teaching/learning tool for anyone wanting to explore, explaining subgenres of music, with thousands of examples readily available.
In June 2008,
Conflict with RIAA over sharing of copyrighted material
In May 2001, Audiogalaxy implemented "groups" which allowed group members to send songs to everyone in the group. Hackers used this backdoor to circumvent the "blocked songs" restriction, where Audiogalaxy could deny transfer of specific copyrighted songs.[citation needed] In addition, even when a specific file was blocked, it would often be replaced by an identical file with the group or song incorrectly spelled. For example, if "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd were blocked, another track with the same title, but credited to "Pink Lloyd", would suddenly appear. The latter file would be completely identical to the former; however, since Audiogalaxy would never have received any notification for "Pink Lloyd," the downloading of that track would not be affected.
Even though Audiogalaxy claimed that they were trying to cooperate with the
Partnerships and end of P2P operations
On September 8, 2002, Audiogalaxy licensed and re-branded a for-pay streaming service called
From 2008 through 2010, Audiogalaxy worked with failed Choruss venture headed by Warner Music Group and longtime record-industry/Internet technology expert Jim Griffin. Choruss was an experimental effort to monetize peer-to-peer file sharing among college students, and Audiogalaxy software was to provide a possible technological basis for the system.[4]
Until mid-2010, some of the message boards remained active, but the Audiogalaxy website only promoted the
Relaunch
In mid-2010, Audiogalaxy was quietly relaunched as a
This incarnation of Audiogalaxy service enabled
Closure
Audiogalaxy stopped accepting registrations on December 12, 2012, due to the company's acquisition by
References
- ^ "The greatest defunct Web sites and dotcom disasters". CNET. 2008-06-05. Retrieved 2008-06-05.
- cnet. Retrieved 2009-07-09.
- ^ Marlowe, Chris (2002-09-10). "Audiogalaxy links to Rhapsody". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on April 24, 2009. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
- ^ Peoples, Glenn (2011-02-24). "What Ever Happened To Choruss? An Interview with Jim Griffin". Billboard. Archived from the original on 2012-06-20. Retrieved 2012-03-07.
- ^ "Audiogalaxy website home page". Archived from the original on 2002-11-05.
- ^ "Audiogalaxy website home page". Archived from the original on 2004-09-24.
- ^ Merhej, Michael (2010-10-14). "Audiogalaxy is back". Archived from the original on 2012-03-09. Retrieved 2012-03-09.
- GigaOM. Retrieved 2012-03-09.
- ^ "Hello Dropbox". The Audiogalaxy Blog. 2012-12-12. Archived from the original on 2013-01-16..
External links
- Archive.org Wayback Machine Summary and Site Map of www.audiogalaxy.com
- Tom Kleinpeter's History Of Audiogalaxy
- Austin's onetime file-sharing supernova
- OpenAG - an open-source, Audiogalaxy-compatible satellite/server system