Rhythmism.com

Burning through Napster's collection, free

Hundreds of music CDs, zero dollars*, obtained legally.

*Not including the cost of blank CDs

Practical how to:

(credit goes to warlock1711 of club.cdfreaks.com for discovering this loophole)

0. Download and install Napster, sign up for 14 day free trial.

1. Download and install Winamp

2. Download and install the Winamp Plug-in Output Stacker

3. Open Winamp Options->Plug-ins->Output->Dietmar's Output Stacker->Configure

a. Add out_ds.dll from Winamp/Plug-ins folder

b. Add out_disk.dll from Winamp/Plug-ins folder

c. Select out_disk.dll in the Output Stacker->Configure

d. Set the output directory and output file mode to Force WAV file

e. Exit preferences

4. Load downloaded Napster protected WMAs into your Winamp playlist

5. Press play and each file will be converted to WAV as it plays

6. Burn WAVs to CD with your favorite burning program

Theoretical fun:

Three computers, one fast networked drive, and a few dedicated people: Turning Napster's 14 day free trial into 252 full 80 minute CDs of free music.

Each song can only be burned after the duration of the track length has elapsed in realtime:

14 day trial = 336 hours = 20,160 minutes of potential music = 252 80 minute CDs

Computer 1: Dedicated to downloading new music off of Napster

Computer 2: Dedicated to building WAV files for each CD

Computer 3: Dedicated to burning CDs

All computers share one fast networked drive where new files are downloaded to, converted WAVs are saved to, and CDs are burned from.

[Edit: on Feb 12th, this post was front paged at digg.]

i may try this tonight

Still no date, apparently?

stop hitting on me. i just want to be friends.

Duly noted.

While we're making requests, would you mind not leaving anymore middle of the night voicemails telling me how soft your back hair is?

Thanks.

NO QUILT FOR YOU THIS CHRISTMAS!!!

*shivers*

Keep it to PMs please, lovebirds.



Oh, and does Napster actually have any good music?

don't try to break this up just because you and RaverDave aren't the center of flirtatious attention, okay?

I'll hold out hope for a throw manket.









Kevin, don't you have some non-PM flirting to do with Kristi and Shirley?

Don't get me wrong, if it looked like you were gonna score a piece from this thread, I'd be supporting it. But let's face facts, noisey . . .

best threadjack evar.

GENIUS!

!!!

If only my photoshop skills rivaled my verbalism...

seriously get a room

the thought counts.

That's awesome

More noiseboy bitchslaps needed around here.

-mjr

Good God.

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahhahahaha noiseboy is a supermodel

i'm so glad my genes can provide teh funneh.

MANKET omfg

brilliant photoshoppin lee... oh man, spittle on my keyboard...

bsg

my apologies for getting this back on track but my grandmother's 80th bday is in 2 weeks and i've been delegated as the dj, so i'm doing this napster thing to beef up the collection


the bastards at winamp took output stacker off their site

gonna try it with qcd which has live outputting anyway.

America Online is disabling a feature of its popular music software that had been used to evade copy-prevention features of digital music services, the company said Friday.

The company's Winamp software was identified by bloggers this week as part of a process that transformed copy-protected music downloads into songs that could be burned by the thousand to CD. The tool had potentially affected any subscription service that used Microsoft's media format, including Napster, Virgin Music and even America Online's own music subscription plan.

AOL programmers are taking a series of steps to prevent its software from being used in this way, a representative said.

"Immediately upon discovering this flaw, we worked quickly to address it and to ensure that Winamp can continue to provide secure playback of Windows Media content," spokeswoman Ann Burkart said. "A fix is being implemented today in existing players, and a new player will be posted for users to download."

The technique used in the Winamp process is not a new one and is a part of many other pieces of software available online. Nevertheless, the news rippled though the record industry and online music services this week, causing renewed scrutiny of the subscription music business model by top industry executives.

The process was essentially a high-tech version of recording a song off the radio. Antipiracy software, including Microsoft's, typically prevents a direct digital copy from being made. But some software packages, dubbed "stream rippers," allow a computer to rerecord audio as it is being played.

The resulting files are typically lower quality than the originals, and the artist, album and file information are lost.

AOL has already removed the Winamp plug-in that made this process fairly simple. Programmers are developing a patch that will be automatically pushed to the software's users. The patch will probably disable altogether the ability to play copy-protected songs in Microsoft's format.

A new version of Winamp software will then be released that can once again play the Microsoft-formatted songs, but will block the stream-ripping capability, Burkart said.

i gave it a go yesterday. no dice with winamp. unless i am doing something wrong, but don't think i am.

blah blah blah, no one cares. output stacker is still available online, you just have to poke around a bit more.

see above...

wiretap works great for the mac