HydrogenAudio

Hydrogenaudio Forum => Validated News => Topic started by: spoon on 2011-07-20 21:32:30

Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-20 21:32:30
AudioSafe is a refreshing new online backup concept: backup for free, only pay to restore should the need ever arise.

No size limits, backup TB's of audio: mp3, m4a, WMA, FLAC, Apple Lossless, lossy, lossless - we will take it all! (see audiosafe.com for restrictions)

Safe guard your music collection.
Still not believing us? one more time: backup as much audio as you have, with no monthly subscriptions, all to an unlimited locker.

For full details (currently at the beta-testing stage) visit www.audiosafe.com (http://www.audiosafe.com)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Brand on 2011-07-20 21:39:24
Well now, this looks interesting.

A couple of questions, off the bat:
Do you have an estimate of how much will you charge for downloading?
Is a dedicated program required for uploading or will it be possible to do it with the browser? (I'm a bit of a minimalist and don't like installing new programs.)


edit: I'm assuming you're involved, spoon, even though you didn't specify this. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-20 21:56:09
I am happy to answer your questions, I have no current costings for the restore - the actual beta test should give me a better idea of what that can be.

A dedicated program is required for the upload.

I am involved - through a new venture 'Cloud Audio'.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Andavari on 2011-07-21 00:27:03
Only pay to restore, but pay what amount as the site doesn't outwardly disclose that? Is it going to be like some ransom cost, etc., where just buying an external USB hard disk would be more cost effective.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: dgauze on 2011-07-21 04:37:22
Only pay to restore, but pay what amount as the site doesn't outwardly disclose that? Is it going to be like some ransom cost, etc., where just buying an external USB hard disk would be more cost effective.


+1

Also, if someone other than the owner ends up gaining possession of uploaded files, I assume the owner could be held responsible for violating copyright laws. Sounds like more trouble than it's worth. I'm not a fan of online backup solutions in general, as they don't offer any advantages over off-site backups on external hard drives.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Robertina on 2011-07-21 05:22:23
spoon, so you meant AudioSAFE when some months ago you announced (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=85466&view=findpost&p=735135)

Quote
something major (audio related), which might benefit 100,000's if not millions of people
?

[I do just ponder on the huge potential you seem to ascribe to your Cloud Service then.]
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soviet Commissar on 2011-07-21 06:12:18
A definite +1 to Andavari on this one.  I find it more than sufficient to have two backups - one on an external harddrive, and one in Windows 7's automatic backup files.  Technically you could also consider the iPod 160 GB a backup as well.

It could be suggested that, yes, a fire/explosion/flood/axe murderer could knock all three of these out of commission in one fell swoop; but frankly, I keep my computer (a laptop) and at least one of the externals packed away and ready to go at any given time I'm not using it, and honestly, should one of the above events occur, I'd have much more to worry about than my music collection.  Yes, it took years to assemble, and yes, it was expensive, but I think in the highly unlikely event something DOES happen to somehow clear the source and all two/three backups, it'd be one of the lesser concerns at the time.  /donerambling
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Brand on 2011-07-21 06:51:54
I agree that backing up to your own HDDs is a wise thing to do.

But what's wrong with an _additional_ "just in case" copy online to give you some extra peace of mind?
Of course, we've yet to see the price for downloading, which will determine its real value, but since uploading is free for even a huge amount of files (something I haven't seen anywhere else) it's IMO an interesting project.


Also, if someone other than the owner ends up gaining possession of uploaded files, I assume the owner could be held responsible for violating copyright laws. Sounds like more trouble than it's worth.

The EULA should probably have you covered on this (unless you share your account with other people - something you won't be inclined to do, since it's not free to download the files).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Andavari on 2011-07-21 07:19:09
In my opinion the "only pay to restore" concept is just silly as all hell, who on Earth has a "business practice" like that, it is basically ransom to get your stuff back!

In my opinion it would be better to just charge upfront a known monthly fee or yearly fee where someone knows exactly the cost and can download their files to "restore" at any time. But then again it's also one of those good luck business opportunities since someone can use free file hosting sites to achieve the same, etc., if they wanted to go with an online backup system - I personally never would.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-21 07:58:03
spoon, so you meant AudioSAFE when some months ago you announced (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=85466&view=findpost&p=735135)

Quote
something major (audio related), which might benefit 100,000's if not millions of people
?

[I do just ponder on the huge potential you seem to ascribe to your Cloud Service then.]


Yes this is the one
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-21 08:00:59
Only pay to restore, but pay what amount as the site doesn't outwardly disclose that? Is it going to be like some ransom cost, etc., where just buying an external USB hard disk would be more cost effective.


+1

Also, if someone other than the owner ends up gaining possession of uploaded files, I assume the owner could be held responsible for violating copyright laws. Sounds like more trouble than it's worth. I'm not a fan of online backup solutions in general, as they don't offer any advantages over off-site backups on external hard drives.


All costs will be clear and open upon launch. There is no ransoming of files, it is also not in the interest of any backup system to allow others to access files they did not originally process - AudioSAFE will accept any files, some of these might be personal unlike audio.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-21 08:06:25
In my opinion the "only pay to restore" concept is just silly as all hell, who on Earth has a "business practice" like that, it is basically ransom to get your stuff back!

In my opinion it would be better to just charge upfront a known monthly fee or yearly fee where someone knows exactly the cost and can download their files to "restore" at any time. But then again it's also one of those good luck business opportunities since someone can use free file hosting sites to achieve the same, etc., if they wanted to go with an online backup system - I personally never would.


You are aware that the big operators tend to charge a restore fee? (if over a certain amount they normally mail out a HDD), even if they advertise 'backup all you like for $10 a month'.

If you were to pay those $10 a month for 1.5 years and it is around $180 - AudioSAFE will be much cheaper than that for a restore of an average music collection.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-07-21 08:20:32
It could be suggested that, yes, a fire/explosion/flood/axe murderer could knock all three of these out of commission in one fell swoop


You forgot one of the most obvious and unfortunately quite likely ones: a simple home burglary, where your PC, iPod and HD are quite likely to be one of the few things missing that you do have to worry about

Backups ain't real backups until they are offsite.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-07-21 08:32:35
In my opinion the "only pay to restore" concept is just silly as all hell, who on Earth has a "business practice" like that, it is basically ransom to get your stuff back!


The concept makes perfect sense to me. If you don't end up needing the service, you don't pay anything! So you can use it for free and IF you end up wanting to use it, you can STILL always decide afterwards at any given time if it's worth the money.

This means that you don't actually have to care much how the price of restoring evolves. It's a pure no gain-no pain proposition.

The idea looks very sound to me. What may not be so sound is that it goes against the pricing structure of what most people are used to, and hence will provoke (IMHO completely irrational) reactions like yours.

Quote
In my opinion it would be better to just charge upfront a known monthly fee or yearly fee where someone knows exactly the cost and can download their files to "restore" at any time.


If you don't end up needing it, your proposal is always more expensive. If you do end up needing it, it depends on the pricing and how long you use the service before you experience a total loss event.

Quote
But then again it's also one of those good luck business opportunities since someone can use free file hosting sites to achieve the same, etc., if they wanted to go with an online backup system - I personally never would.


I don't know any free file hosting site where I can upload 40G of data and that guarantees it stays up. Gmail accounts, maybe?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-07-21 08:37:38
spoon, so you meant AudioSAFE when some months ago you announced (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=85466&view=findpost&p=735135)

Quote
something major (audio related), which might benefit 100,000's if not millions of people
?

[I do just ponder on the huge potential you seem to ascribe to your Cloud Service then.]


Yes this is the one


Good luck with it. Two questions:

1) Google is now offering a similar service in beta in the US, but with audio players and streaming to Android devices and what-else. Are you aware of that?

2) How do you prevent sharing of accounts? People aren't that likely to let others download from their accounts, but for groups of friends it may still happen. Worse, if people get malware infested they could unwillingly do that. If that happens, won't you get lawyers at your door quickly?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: _m²_ on 2011-07-21 08:43:53
Very interesting, though 500 MB limit on non-audio data seems wrong...a single bonus DVD is several GB. I think that a rule like 'at most 10% of your stuff' would be much better. Personally, I have 303 GB of music and 22 GB of other things.
Also, how about music videos?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: _m²_ on 2011-07-21 08:50:11
@ Garf:
Google doesn't let you get your data back. It's only streaming and AFAIK what you get is not a lossless copy of what you put.

As to sharing accounts, it can be done with everything from other backup services to spotify and others. It's nonsense to charge a service provider for such capabilities, but yeah, there are threats from copyright holders from time to time.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: GeSomeone on 2011-07-21 09:00:34
2) How do you prevent sharing of accounts? People aren't that likely to let others download from their accounts, but for groups of friends it may still happen.

Wouldn't the fact that one has to pay to download be prohibitive?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-07-21 09:02:22
@ Garf:
Google doesn't let you get your data back. It's only streaming and AFAIK what you get is not a lossless copy of what you put.


Ah, good to know. I'm not in the US, so I don't have first-hand experience with Google's service.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-07-21 09:03:53
2) How do you prevent sharing of accounts? People aren't that likely to let others download from their accounts, but for groups of friends it may still happen.

Wouldn't the fact that one has to pay to download be prohibitive?


That's why I said "groups of friends". It depends on the price, but if it is low enough, it may be an easy way to give a buddy access to my stuff. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-07-21 09:08:56
@ Garf:
Google doesn't let you get your data back. It's only streaming and AFAIK what you get is not a lossless copy of what you put.


Ah, good to know. I'm not in the US, so I don't have first-hand experience with Google's service.


The dream service would hence be that spoon's thing allows you to stream from your collection. But I guess that would be impossible for him cost-wise without fees.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: probedb on 2011-07-21 09:18:25
It's a nice idea but I'll stick to my 2 physical hard drive backups....one off site in a fire proof filing cabinet
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-21 09:34:56
Good luck with it. Two questions:

1) Google is now offering a similar service in beta in the US, but with audio players and streaming to Android devices and what-else. Are you aware of that?

2) How do you prevent sharing of accounts? People aren't that likely to let others download from their accounts, but for groups of friends it may still happen. Worse, if people get malware infested they could unwillingly do that. If that happens, won't you get lawyers at your door quickly?


I think Google will have limits and / or yearly fees (when they leave beta), this area is moving fast between google and amazon. We are billing this purely for backup, streaming would be a different model.

The fact that people would pay to restore would hinder sharing of accounts, those who want to pirate would have an aversion to paying. In this regard we are no different than any locker system, Microsoft, Amazon they are all open to abuses, ours perhaps less so than the latter (as with these if you have a free 5GB - 25GB locker there is no download limits AFAIK).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-07-21 09:40:37
I think Google will have limits and / or yearly fees (when they leave beta), this area is moving fast between google and amazon. We are billing this purely for backup, streaming would be a different model.


I would presume that they also automatically recommend stuff and make money on those sales. But Google didn't manage to get a record deal, so you're probably right.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: googlebot on 2011-07-21 13:00:56
IMHO the business model is severely flawed. Storage and downstream bandwidth cause real costs for the operator. A very artificial business model funnels all these costs to upstream users. The most under-utilized resource in this service - upstream capacity - is getting charged most. A good business model has a pricing structure that motivates customers in a way that implicitly optimizes resource usage (and cost). This one doesn't, it's rather the opposite. To me it looks like a business model trying to look different from the rest at any price.

I think, spoon might have written a clever deduplication software. So he expects his costs to stay below average (not that other storage providers wouldn't be using this too). IMHO a good business model, if you have a good deduplication product would be letting users leverage exactly that: pay less the better your data can be deduplicated. For example, pay close to zero storage costs for accurately ripped, lossless tracks of popular albums. A specialist deduplication system could decode and encode the audio content to a common lossless format and then just save one file plus (individual) metadata as delta. Retrieving the files would mean reencoding to the user-chosen lossless format. Costs for users would increase for users of rare, lossy formats and special taste, but not to punish them but because the actual storage costs for their content would actually be higher. BTW, the same strategies could be applied to lossy formats (MP3, AAC) etc.: one could deduplicate the raw audio content streams and save delta files for metadata and offset. Same here: the more a user has followed best practices for encoding and ripping, the lower his average storage costs would be.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Robertina on 2011-07-21 13:21:53
Is it possible that we are stopped from getting access to www.audiosafe.com if we block in our firewall URLs which contain the word "googleadservices" (> 'Error: Could not connect to remote server')?

This situation does not occur with any other web site, dbpoweramp.com included.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-07-21 21:35:47
IMHO the business model is severely flawed. Storage and downstream bandwidth cause real costs for the operator. A very artificial business model funnels all these costs to upstream users. The most under-utilized resource in this service - upstream capacity - is getting charged most. A good business model has a pricing structure that motivates customers in a way that implicitly optimizes resource usage (and cost). This one doesn't, it's rather the opposite. To me it looks like a business model trying to look different from the rest at any price.


I believe you've already completely undermined your own argument? As you already noted, client->server traffic will be low because of deduplication. Traffic back to the user cannot be deduplicated and costs money.

So it works the right way around, doesn't it?

Quote
IMHO a good business model, if you have a good deduplication product would be letting users leverage exactly that: pay less the better your data can be deduplicated. For example, pay close to zero storage costs for accurately ripped, lossless tracks of popular albums. ... Costs for users would increase for users of rare, lossy formats and special taste... Same here: the more a user has followed best practices for encoding and ripping, the lower his average storage costs would be.


I think that if you have a pricing structure your users can't understand let alone predict well, then your business isn't going to fly. This is just too complicated.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-21 21:42:50
I am unable to go into the exact details of the backup system employed, suffice to say it is easily the most advanced audio backup system designed (a good 9 months was spent purely on this detail), it is a very efficient design, beyond that I am unable to offer any more information.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: DonP on 2011-07-21 22:11:34
I think Google will have limits and / or yearly fees (when they leave beta), this area is moving fast between google and amazon. We are billing this purely for backup, streaming would be a different model.


I would presume that they also automatically recommend stuff and make money on those sales. But Google didn't manage to get a record deal, so you're probably right.


When you open the account they seed it with some free tracks in genres you say you like.  WIth those (and and what you upload) you have an option to "shop this artist" which may get them a commission  from the on-line stores (as with Amazon's affiliate program) or a click-through payment (as with normal ads on Google products) even if they didn't get a deal to sell direct.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: krabapple on 2011-07-21 22:38:37
I have yet to be able to load the audiosafe page ;<
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-21 22:57:33
I have yet to be able to load the audiosafe page ;<


A small % of people are getting routing issues to the new server, incidentally accuraterip is now on this server and there are a bunch of people who cannot reach it. It is a top priority correct this issue.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: googlebot on 2011-07-22 07:45:41
So you start deduplication already at the client level, interesting. Then it makes more sense.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: googlebot on 2011-07-22 09:23:28
Oh, just noticed that this was an answer by Garf, not spoon. IF deduplication is done on the client side, then this would be true. For example: 1. extract raw audio stream on the client, 2. hash it, 3. send hash to server, 4. if match, send only meta-data to server, else the whole file.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Robertina on 2011-07-22 13:22:40
spoon, I now can open audiosafe.com (apparently I belonged to that 'small % of people' with routing issues and that I temporarily managed to reach your web site by deactivating my Internet content blocking filter (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=89802&view=findpost&p=763761) had just been a coincidence).

For prospective customers it probably would be interesting to know where your servers will be located (USA or Europe) and if the Patriot Act or European Data Protection Acts (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-patriot-act-can-access-eu-based-cloud-data/11225) will be applied to them (this would be of peculiar interest for those who plan to upload not only audio files, but also private documents). So can you say something about your privacy policy? Will some of your employees have access to your customers private data? How will that private data be protected from beeing modified by your staff?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-07-22 14:32:23
So can you say something about your privacy policy? Will some of your employees have access to your customers private data? How will that private data be protected from beeing modified by your staff?


No offense to him but if you are at all concerned about these things there is only one proper response:  Encrypt your data.  No vendor response should ever convince you otherwise.

Protection of your data from outside eyes is ultimately your responsibility.  Period.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: SCOTU on 2011-07-22 17:07:09
Does the 500MB limit apply to things like album scans?  I easily have more than 500MB of album scans, not counting things that came along with the CD that aren't Audio data.  Similarly, do embedded resources like album art count against this 500MB?  I.e. If I embedded all of my album scans into my audio, would I be allowed to store my GB of album scans, but not allowed to do so if they're just image files alongside the audio?  On a similar note, could I then just embed all the accessory data of an album all inside my audio files to not have them count?  I know you can include non-audio data in FLAC tags, but I don't know what limits there are.  However, a more flexible format like MKA can basically hold whatever I throw at it.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Notat on 2011-07-22 19:31:36
Why would I want to engage a separate backup service just for music?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: pdq on 2011-07-22 19:39:24
Why would I want to engage a separate backup service just for music?

Because it's free?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: _m²_ on 2011-07-22 21:01:50
@Soap:
The world is not black and white and different things need different protections. I find my music to be fairly insensitive information and low cost of breaches makes trust a sufficient protection. But I would too feel better if the servers were a subject to EU regulations and not US ones.

@Notat:
I can answer from my personal perspective:
Because it's the only big data that I have. The rest of my content is so small that I keep a dozen of copies spread all around the internet, family computers, thumb drives etc. (Yes, encrypted.) Can't do this with music. I'm promissing myself to make a good backup strategy, but I keep doing so for several years already, I do have some backups but it's not organized and some solution that costs little maintainance and 0 in money unless I actually need it would be a good temporary solution and a perfect last chance protection when I finally implement something myself.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-07-22 21:04:37
@Soap:
The world is not black and white and different things need different protections. I find my music to be fairly insensitive information and low cost of breaches makes trust a sufficient protection. But I would too feel better if the servers were a subject to EU regulations and not US ones.

What is the difference US and EU regulations regarding the off-site storage of audio data which causes you concern?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: _m²_ on 2011-07-22 21:30:09
EU has nice rules on private data handling. Audio isn't private data, usually, but one can never know and in general all companies that store user data that they can't verify have to abide by these rules.
US acts differently, companies have to hand over whatever data they have when government asks for them (it's called patriot act).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Teknojnky on 2011-07-22 21:37:50
No offense to him but if you are at all concerned about these things there is only one proper response:  Encrypt your data.  No vendor response should ever convince you otherwise.

Protection of your data from outside eyes is ultimately your responsibility.  Period.


I agree that if one's privacy is their utmost priority, then they must encrypt said data so that only they could possibly access/restore it.

That said, I would expect that encryption would put a damper on any type of deduplication efficiencies (assuming the system is using some type of dedupe).

something like a cuetools/rsync type scanner/verifier that checks in your files against existing stored data, then stores only your delta would be pretty clever.

Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-07-22 21:54:51
US acts differently, companies have to hand over whatever data they have when government asks for them (it's called patriot act).


Lol.

Citation needed.

EDIT:

Let's be less glib and just say that the Patriot Act, for all its many flaws, does not work like that.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: _m²_ on 2011-07-23 06:33:05
US acts differently, companies have to hand over whatever data they have when government asks for them (it's called patriot act).


Lol.

Citation needed.

EDIT:

Let's be less glib and just say that the Patriot Act, for all its many flaws, does not work like that.



https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w...tems_under_FISA (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Library_records_provision#Section_215:_Access_to_records_and_other_items_under_FISA)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Robertina on 2011-07-23 07:03:40
So can you say something about your privacy policy? Will some of your employees have access to your customers private data? How will that private data be protected from beeing modified by your staff?

No offense to him but if you are at all concerned about these things there is only one proper response:  Encrypt your data.

No offense to you but a Cloud Service provider who doesn't publish a data protection guideline or who has currently none can't be taken seriously. I want to be fair and of course I see that the whole project still is in its early beta phase, so that other aspects may be much more important to spoon at the moment, but to be honest, that he maintains his silence about that matter irritates. Data encryption can be indeed an additional safety measure to prevent unauthorized access but on no account would this step release a Cloud Service offerer from his duty to fulfil Data Privacy Acts and to make sure that not everyone can dig around in his customers' private documents.

Quote
Protection of your data from outside eyes is ultimately your responsibility. Period.

I disagree. Hacked companies can be held responsible for data theft and they are beeing held responsible for it. Go and ask Sony and all the others.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Robertina on 2011-07-23 07:12:19
US acts differently, companies have to hand over whatever data they have when government asks for them (it's called patriot act).

Lol. ...  Citation needed. ... EDIT: Let's be less glib and just say that the Patriot Act, for all its many flaws, does not work like that.

Some links for you.Europe:
Directive 95/46 of the European Parliament on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31995L0046:EN:HTML)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: mobyduck on 2011-07-23 11:00:04
A dedicated program is required for the upload.
Windows only? Or are there versions for Mac and Linux users?

Alessandro
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Martel on 2011-07-23 11:32:35
If the application is simple enough (it runs under XP after all), you should be able to run it under Wine.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-07-23 13:02:22
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w...tems_under_FISA (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Library_records_provision#Section_215:_Access_to_records_and_other_items_under_FISA)

A sealed bench warrant is still a warrant and outside that fact (sealed) is no different than existing statues in most all western countries.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-23 15:23:01
Album art is not part of the 500 MB quota.

I will endeavor to put up a T&C and privacy statement ASAP
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Mangix on 2011-07-23 21:25:47
will the data be encrypted server-side?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-23 21:58:10
No
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-07-24 20:10:42
will the data be encrypted server-side?


It doesn't make sense if since they will employ deduplication. Of course, you can encrypt all users data using just one encryption key, but that doesn't make sense either. 
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: googlebot on 2011-07-24 20:25:40
It doesn't make sense if since they will employ deduplication.


Deduplication and client-side encryption (without vendor access to the key) is not mutually exclusive. Wuala is the best example, it works beautifully. I'm a big fan of it.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Ardax on 2011-07-25 14:27:51
Deduplication and client-side encryption (without vendor access to the key) is not mutually exclusive. Wuala is the best example, it works beautifully. I'm a big fan of it.

For something particular to audio libraries, I'd think that deduplication across accounts would be extremely useful to the service provider.  Especially if audio containers are cracked and audio data treated separately from embedded tags/artwork, with bonus points for taking offset matching into account.

Now, if you're saying that dedupe across accounts w/ client-side encryption is doable, then I'm curious how it'd be implemented.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-07-25 14:45:45
Especially if audio containers are cracked and audio data treated separately from embedded tags/artwork, with bonus points for taking offset matching into account.


Matching offsets that are not multiples of the audio frame format is probably not going to work. But most rips are going to have a few common offsets, matching the most distributed drive manufacturers. And then there's the fact that AccurateRip and the Drive Offset DB belong to spoon...
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: googlebot on 2011-07-25 19:20:41
Now, if you're saying that dedupe across accounts w/ client-side encryption is doable, then I'm curious how it'd be implemented.


Wuala implements this by using (symmetric) encryption keys derived from content hashes. If you don't know the exact content, you don't know the key. If you do know the content, you can recreate the key, but only to decrypt what you already know.

It is possible for a server to deduplicate encrypted files of unknown content, when identity information is being preserved across encrypted entities, like described. The only security feature, which is sacrificed, is plausible deniability (but no additional plain-text-attack vectors, ect.). You cannot deny to be in possession of a file, if a prosecutor is in possession of an identical, decrypted copy. For pirates this might be an issue.

In this specific case, an audio-only service, not much could be gained by a decrypt-by-content-hash-scheme. Since many audio files are identical across individual collections, the information which songs you own exactly, could be recovered by a fair share. And there isn't really much more to hide than exactly that information in a music collection, when you use an audio-only backup service. Wuala is general purpose, and thus a different case. Your diary entries, your family pictures are unique files, and their content hashes cannot be correlated with known content. Thus they are perfectly private. Other files, like Windows installation images are identical across thousands of users and can be stored as a single copy. To achieve plausible deniability in a case like that, it is sufficient to zip a popular file and include a random text file or directory entry. To achieve plausible deniability for your music collection, it is sufficient to have custom tags or individual codec (padding, ect.) settings. For Wuala it is impossible to deduplicate them in this case. A service like spoon's could deduplicate anyway, of course, when it generates an individual track identifier on the client machine, but I wouldn't see any benefit of an additional encryption scheme in that a case.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Ardax on 2011-07-25 20:03:00
Wuala implements this by using (symmetric) encryption keys derived from content hashes. If you don't know the exact content, you don't know the key. If you do know the content, you can recreate the key, but only to decrypt what you already know.

Let me make sure I understand this process correctly:


Roughly correct?

Quote
To achieve plausible deniability for your music collection, it is sufficient to have custom tags or individual codec (padding, ect.) settings. For Wuala it is impossible to deduplicate them in this case. A service like spoon's could deduplicate anyway, of course, when it generates an individual track identifier on the client machine. I wouldn't see any benefit of an additional encryption scheme in a case like this.

It's entirely possible to crack file formats and deal with each internal blob of data independently for the purposes of deduplication, making it resistant to tag changes (or at least ensuring that any further clients would only need to upload the modified tags).  Wuala could do this if it wanted to, and products like Druva inSync (http://www.druva.com/insync/data-deduplication/) already do.  inSync isn't a cloud-based backup product, just an example of a content-aware dedupe implementation.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: saratoga on 2011-07-25 21:38:29
US acts differently, companies have to hand over whatever data they have when government asks for them (it's called patriot act).


Lol.

Citation needed.

EDIT:

Let's be less glib and just say that the Patriot Act, for all its many flaws, does not work like that.



https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w...tems_under_FISA (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Library_records_provision#Section_215:_Access_to_records_and_other_items_under_FISA)


I suspect thats not the clause you intended to link, since allowing judges to issue warrants to seize property suspected of being involved in a crime is fairly common in most European countries as well.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: googlebot on 2011-07-25 22:02:35
Roughly correct?


Yes!

It's entirely possible to crack file formats and deal with each internal blob of data independently for the purposes of deduplication, making it resistant to tag changes (or at least ensuring that any further clients would only need to upload the modified tags).


Yes, it is indeed possible. And I also think that spoon has programmed something like that. The point I was trying to make was: There is no greater secret about a music collection than what it lists (compare that to private videos where the actual content is the secret). A deduplicating audio backup service with intelligent track ID mechanisms, that survive encryption (while only scrambling the content) makes no sense. Track IDs and there correlation among users ARE the secret.

I don't think that Wuala would be interested in more fine grained deduplication, because privacy is one of their biggest unique selling points. Deduplication of anonymous blobs is just a welcome side effect of how their P2P protocol distributes content to storage nodes.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: indybrett on 2011-07-26 02:29:22
Album art is not part of the 500 MB quota.



500MB?  Unfortunately, that's not enough for a large FLAC collection. And there's no point in backing up MP3's, IMHO.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-07-26 02:33:26
Dude, at least read the first page of the thread.

500MB of quota for non-audio data
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: indybrett on 2011-07-26 02:37:34
Actually, it wasn't in the thread, unless I missed it.  It was, however, in the fine print on the web page.  Thanks.
    ++ audio has no limits other than a fair use policy, non-audio files subject to 500MB total locker space

Edit: Unless you mean this "Very interesting, though 500 MB limit on non-audio data seems wrong", which is not an official statement from Spoon.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: hellokeith on 2011-07-26 05:09:30
A popular recent saying is that if the product is free, then most likely YOU are the product.

So what I want to know is what is in it for the AudioSafe developers/employees/investors? There cannot be much expectation of daily restore revenue.  Certainly not enough to offset storage costs in the short to mid term.  What is the benefit of having petabytes of digital music? Testing of algorithms, processing, compression?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Emon on 2011-07-26 06:20:46
So what I want to know is what is in it for the AudioSafe developers/employees/investors? There cannot be much expectation of daily restore revenue.  Certainly not enough to offset storage costs in the short to mid term.  What is the benefit of having petabytes of digital music? Testing of algorithms, processing, compression?

I also want to know this. From what I've read, the business model depends on users' having data failures. Given how uncommon that really seems to be these days, what is the revenue stream?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-07-26 06:41:04
I also want to know this. From what I've read, the business model depends on users' having data failures. Given how uncommon that really seems to be these days,


Hard drive failures have been +-5% (depending on brand/model) per year for a long time, and SSD's get very similar numbers. So I'm not sure what "uncommon these days" is supposed to mean.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-26 08:46:23
A popular recent saying is that if the product is free, then most likely YOU are the product.


If the restores were free then I might agree with you.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Squeller on 2011-07-26 14:03:33
My concept says: 1 HD current audio data, 2nd builtin HD with a copy, 3rd in bank safe, all changed regularly and I keep all old ones. Cannot upload tons of stuff (n*10^2 GBytes) to a www service, because of my providers upload bandwidth. Also, encryption.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: frozenspeed on 2011-07-26 14:49:05
Let's be less glib and just say that the Patriot Act, for all its many flaws, does not work like that.



Citation needed
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: DonP on 2011-07-26 17:36:50
I also want to know this. From what I've read, the business model depends on users' having data failures. Given how uncommon that really seems to be these days,


Hard drive failures have been +-5% (depending on brand/model) per year for a long time, and SSD's get very similar numbers. So I'm not sure what "uncommon these days" is supposed to mean.


In the case of laptops you have to consider a higher frequency of both theft/loss and failure due to shock.


Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: xnor on 2011-07-26 18:50:56
Maybe the business model includes re-using all the uploaded tracks/rips. Why rip music on your own if you can let others do all the work for you.

Is there a policy about what happens / Cloud Audio is allowed to do with the uploaded files?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: _m²_ on 2011-07-26 20:04:12
@saratoga:
As far as I understand it, in EU your data can be investigated if there's reasonable suspicion that you committed some crime.
In US your data can be investigated if you're suspected of being related to somebody, for whom there is a reasonable suspicion that this person was planning to commit some crime.

Seems quite different.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-26 21:00:53
Maybe the business model includes re-using all the uploaded tracks/rips. Why rip music on your own if you can let others do all the work for you.

Is there a policy about what happens / Cloud Audio is allowed to do with the uploaded files?


It would be the stupidest business model ever to 're-use' potentially copyrighted audio, and reuse for what exactly?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: xnor on 2011-07-26 22:43:23
Well is there (going to be) a policy, or not? People probably wanna know what happens with their data.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-26 23:04:00
Already stated the intentions, see:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=763983 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=89802&view=findpost&p=763983)

Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: xnor on 2011-07-26 23:04:50
Sorry, I missed that.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: hellokeith on 2011-07-27 04:29:28
What is to stop a bored bittorrent kiddie from just endlessly uploading music (with no future aspirations of ever "restoring")?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Ardax on 2011-07-27 05:25:07
What would be the point of that, especially if it cost money to get music back?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: evereux on 2011-07-27 09:03:25
Will the audiosafe client monitor your music collection for changes and automatically pick-up and synchronise those changes?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-27 09:11:46
Yes, it runs in the background.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Brand on 2011-07-27 10:15:43
Can it run as a 'portable' program (no installation, no registry etc.)?
If not, that would be my feature request.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-27 10:22:56
Sorry that will not be possible. The design is install and forget, 99% of the time you would not even know it is there (save for an icon on the notify area).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-07-27 11:48:03
Is that model not dangerous for a backup program?  Or is there a way to restore from a prior state?

I've only lost data due to a hard drive failure once since 1982, but have lost data three times due to bad RAM.  The most recent time was a few years back while replaygaining many albums (unbeknownst to be with a bad memory stick).  Long story short, about 10% of the files in that batch operation ended up corrupted and needed reripped.

If the audiosafe client monitor had been running in the background, monitoring and uploading, would it have updated my (corrupt) changes?  Would I be able to restore from the good point before said changes?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-27 12:00:52
Current + Previous are stored, so a virus which corrupts the whole collection would be recoverable, even if those corrupted changes were uploaded.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: evereux on 2011-07-27 12:25:09
I'm very interested in this service. If the pricing is sensible it'll be something I can see myself using.

Good luck with this spoon.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Martel on 2011-07-27 12:31:15
Isn't this susceptible to client reverse-engineering? If someone reverse-engineered the protocol, couldn't they mirror whatever music already on the server into their account without uploading anything?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-07-27 12:38:59
The server will not give out audio except that which is attributed to your account, no reverse engineering will help that. Pretty much like how funds in your bank are not easily transferred into another account, it is not in the interest of AudioSafe to allow this, or the banks.

Lets not for one minute think every designed system is impenetrable, but in this instance I think there is little incentive to do so, as the restore would be paid for.

Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-07-27 18:06:10
Current + Previous are stored, so a virus which corrupts the whole collection would be recoverable, even if those corrupted changes were uploaded.

Thank you for the response.  I assume that means just the immediately prior state is saved, no manual restore points?

Let me lay out what I think is a quite plausible scenario:
1 - Client installed
2 - Uncorrupted files added to collection
3 - Client syncs to safe
4 - Damage occurs (through user stupidity or malicious software or hardware failure)
5 - Client automagically syncs (unbeknownst to it) damaged files to safe.
6 - User edits tags.
7 - Client automagically syncs to safe.

So if a user notices damage after #5 they are protected, but if they don't notice damage until after #7 they are out of luck?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: DonP on 2011-07-27 20:06:14
Current + Previous are stored, so a virus which corrupts the whole collection would be recoverable, even if those corrupted changes were uploaded.

Thank you for the response.  I assume that means just the immediately prior state is saved, no manual restore points?



If it syncs more or less continuously then one change back wouldn't make much sense. If one operation (from the user's point of view) changes 10 files, that could count as 10 states.

I would hope that "previous" means any previous state for some reasonable amount of time (or maybe since creation of the initial backup.)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-07-28 03:12:53
If it syncs more or less continuously then one change back wouldn't make much sense. If one operation (from the user's point of view) changes 10 files, that could count as 10 states.

I would hope that "previous" means any previous state for some reasonable amount of time (or maybe since creation of the initial backup.)

I'm assuming "previous" is a concept unique to each file.  If one operation (from the user's point of view) changes 10 files I'm assuming that counts as 1 state change x 10 files, not as 10 state changes.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: mudlord on 2011-07-31 09:59:48
Album art is not part of the 500 MB quota.

I will endeavor to put up a T&C and privacy statement ASAP


And when will this be done? I am dying to see your clauses for harvesting user information.
Steam does it, iTunes does it, a lot of other places do it, so I don't see how your "cloud" based service will be any different to be quite honest.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-03 14:25:20
AudioSafe beta program has just begun and I've already started uploading my music archive.

My question is that AudioSafe skips valid MP3 files, showing these errors in its log:

Code: [Select]
13:21:12 : Could not process file :
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Reason: Unexpected file contents.


Should I upload these "damaged" files somewhere so that you could fix your application?

Upload speed is abysmal: (http://ompldr.org/vOXFtcg/upload.png) - yep, that's 38KB/sec (~300KBit/sec) upload speed.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Peter on 2011-08-03 14:38:28
Feel free to use the uploads (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showforum=35) forum to upload problematic files, they will; your post will be removed as soon as relevant developers get the files.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-03 14:41:54
In the AudioSAFE Status page >> Tools >> settings - here you set how much bandwidth is allocated to AudioSAFE, normally 50% of your upload. What is your maximum upload speed?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-03 14:42:44
Feel free to use the uploads (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showforum=35) forum to upload problematic files, they will; your post will be removed as soon as relevant developers get the files.


I guess I will upload them secretly and give a link straight to relevant people. Besides files are large enough and probably can't be uploaded to Hydrogenaudio Forums anyway (due to your restrictions/policy/whatever).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-03 14:45:16
In the AudioSAFE Status page >> Tools >> settings - here you set how much bandwidth is allocated to AudioSAFE, normally 50% of your upload. What is your maximum upload speed?


10Mbit at the moment, and the the bandwidth slider is at 100%.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: indybrett on 2011-08-03 14:47:56
Upload speed is abysmal: - yep, that's 38KB/sec (~300KBit/sec) upload speed.


~300KBit/sec is a pretty typical upload speed for most broadband connections, unless you've upgraded to a faster (read more expensive) package.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-03 14:50:51
~300KBit/sec is a pretty typical upload speed for most broadband connections, unless you've upgraded to a faster (read more expensive) package.

Right now it's 10Mbit/sec. At night it's around 50Mbit/sec.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: indybrett on 2011-08-03 14:52:14
~300KBit/sec is a pretty typical upload speed for most broadband connections, unless you've upgraded to a faster (read more expensive) package.

Right now it's 10Mbit/sec. At night it's around 50Mbit/sec.

That's a substantial difference, lol.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-03 14:56:05
This site can test your maximum upload speed:

http://www.speedtest.net/ (http://www.speedtest.net/)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: indybrett on 2011-08-03 14:58:07
~300KBit/sec is a pretty typical upload speed for most broadband connections, unless you've upgraded to a faster (read more expensive) package.

Right now it's 10Mbit/sec. At night it's around 50Mbit/sec.

Just looking at mine...

It seems if I set the upload to 100%, then it's pretty stable at around 1Mbs/s (my max upload is 1.5Mb/s).  If I set it to throttle at anything less than 100%, then it bounces around all over the place.

Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-03 15:04:05
If you are running Windows 7 then open 'Resource Monitor' and look on the network tab, this can show actual network bandwidth graphs, if you can post a screen shot to show the bouncing at 50%
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-03 15:09:33
I'm running Windows XP SP3 Professional (vanilla, not patched, not cracked, not modified in any way) under VirtualBox 4.1.0 (Host OS is Linux). Windows XP sole network adapter works at 100Mbit/sec.

According to speedtest I have up to 10Mbit upload/download speed (depending on a server location - some sites in Europe are really slow, some are fast).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-03 15:19:55
You can email your mp3 file:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/email.htm (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/email.htm)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-03 15:21:17
You can email your mp3 file:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/email.htm (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/email.htm)


On the second run, the application no longer reports any broken files, so I don't know what it was.

Meanwhile here's a Windows session upload screenshot (http://ompldr.org/vOXFucw/upload.png).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-03 15:22:18
I have just updated the server with slightly different code on the receive, you connection to AudioSAFE might go down for a few minutes whilst it establishes a new connection. Let me know please if it helps upload speed.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-03 15:23:37
Please send one of the mp3 files which was giving issues on the first run.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-03 16:01:39
This is how uploading works here: www. media fire. com/?k3wd753jrrxlru1 (remove spaces in the link).

I'm sorry I have forgotten which files which caused errors.

Your server tweaks haven't helped at all, unfortunately.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: indybrett on 2011-08-03 18:29:32
If you are running Windows 7 then open 'Resource Monitor' and look on the network tab, this can show actual network bandwidth graphs, if you can post a screen shot to show the bouncing at 50%

I'll have to wait until this evening.  To give you an idea, it looked like a sawtooth waveform.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: indybrett on 2011-08-03 18:45:02
If you are running Windows 7 then open 'Resource Monitor' and look on the network tab, this can show actual network bandwidth graphs, if you can post a screen shot to show the bouncing at 50%


I remoted into my home machine.  It's a pretty crappy screenshot, but you can see the difference.  About halfway through I changed from 90% to 100%, and you can see it level off. Interestingly, it's not using the full 1.5Mb/s even when set to 100%.

(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-tlBEtfm_7AA/TjmIkYgCqyI/AAAAAAAAfNQ/jnn8gZ6KOK0/s800/upload.png)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-03 19:13:17
Funnily AudioSafe works fine under Wine but it's quite unusable under virtualized Windows XP (for six hours it uploaded just around 100MB of data).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-03 22:21:02
It seems like uploads are throttled at 4Mbit/sec 'cause my client never exceeds this speed. It's a little bit sad 'cause I can upload at almost 15 times this limitation.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: ron spencer on 2011-08-04 01:23:04
It seems like uploads are throttled at 4Mbit/sec 'cause my client never exceeds this speed. It's a little bit sad 'cause I can upload at almost 15 times this limitation.


So...500GB=511999MB at 4MB/Sec=about 128,000 sec=36 hours to upload....pretty costly for time and $$ from ISP.

Easier to save to hard drive and put at work in cabinet?

Until people get upload speeds=download speeds for reasonable cost I am not sure the value of cloud storage for the average user at present.

Nice idea, but economies of scale are not there yet...of course early adopters are willing to PAY.  I could see it being useful for me if I had fiber optic both ways from my house to cloud server, but this is not a reality yet.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-04 07:48:15
You calculations are really off the mark.

500GB = 500 000MB

500 000 * 8 / 4 / 3600 / 24 = 11 days 14 hours.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: evereux on 2011-08-04 08:36:06
Your calculations are closer to the mark.

500GB = 512000 MB therefore 11 days 20.44 hours. 
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-04 11:14:48
So...500GB=511999MB at 4MB/Sec=about 128,000 sec=36 hours to upload....pretty costly for time and $$ from ISP.

Easier to save to hard drive and put at work in cabinet?

Until people get upload speeds=download speeds for reasonable cost I am not sure the value of cloud storage for the average user at present.

Nice idea, but economies of scale are not there yet...of course early adopters are willing to PAY.  I could see it being useful for me if I had fiber optic both ways from my house to cloud server, but this is not a reality yet.


I have the feeling that most people who pay for broadband (not mobile) do not pay based on usage, so there are no extra payments above existing.

Unless you are doubling your music collection over a monthly period, the fact it takes a couple of weeks to upload does not effect the end result - that is all your files are backed up.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: DonP on 2011-08-04 12:04:58
I have the feeling that most people who pay for broadband (not mobile) do not pay based on usage, so there are no extra payments above existing.


In the US, many ISP's have put on monthly caps in the last couple of years.  For Comcast I believe it's 200GB/month.

Apparent motivation is that Hulu, online netflix, etc are cutting into their cable TV business, so the caps prevent you from using internet as your primary video source.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2011-08-04 12:26:57
Caps are common on cheaper packages in the UK too, though they don't apply between midnight and 6am on mine.

It's a very interesting concept Spoon. HA sounds like one of the best places to "sell" it.

FWIW DV+HD home movies are my biggest data headache (25Mbps - hours of the things!). Ripped audio (even lossless) is pretty small in comparison.

Cheers,
David.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Northpack on 2011-08-04 13:23:12
Caps are common in Germany too.

I think it would be very desireable not only to be albe to limit bandwith in % but also to have an option to limit bandwidth by mb/day and also by time (e.g. only allow upload at night)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: pdq on 2011-08-04 14:29:26
And let's not forget that as spoon's database grows, an increasing percentage of the files will not actually need to be uploaded, lowering the bandwidth requirements.

Nonetheless, I think it would be worth adding more flexibility to the uploading, limiting to certain times of day/days of week, etc.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Northpack on 2011-08-04 14:49:26
And let's not forget that as spoon's database grows, an increasing percentage of the files will not actually need to be uploaded, lowering the bandwidth requirements.

That's certainly the case for a more mainstream collection. However, a large part of my collection consists of rare bootlegs and independent releases which exist in a quantity of 100 or less. I doubt there will be much to deduplicate here...

Let's hope that there will be at least some users with a mainstream music collection so the service can remain affordable

EDIT: Hey, I have an idea! The client could calculate a number, the higher the larger quantity of your collection is deduplicateable and the more the data is related to other users. It would be the ultimate measure for the peculiarity of your own taste: 1 = totally bizarre, 100 = top of the pops
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-08-04 17:22:44
EDIT: Hey, I have an idea! The client could calculate a number, the higher the larger quantity of your collection is deduplicateable and the more the data is related to other users. It would be the ultimate measure for the peculiarity of your own taste: 1 = totally bizarre, 100 = top of the pops

If shared publicly such a statistic could create a perverse incentive to either game the system with bogus uploads or rip with false offsets and bizarre encoder settings .    Either way the incentive would work against spoon's interest (deduplication).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-08-04 17:43:07
Caps are common in Germany too.

I think it would be very desireable not only to be albe to limit bandwith in % but also to have an option to limit bandwidth by mb/day and also by time (e.g. only allow upload at night)


Very good idea. You will also be willing to allot a higher % of your upstream if you're not actually using the computer (i.e. in the middle of the night)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: kwanbis on 2011-08-04 20:56:38
You calculations are really off the mark.

500GB = 500 000MB

500 000 * 8 / 4 / 3600 / 24 = 11 days 14 hours.

Actually, 500 GB = (500 * 1024) = 512 000 MB
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: MichaelW on 2011-08-04 23:35:06
You calculations are really off the mark.

500GB = 500 000MB

500 000 * 8 / 4 / 3600 / 24 = 11 days 14 hours.

Actually, 500 GB = (500 * 1024) = 512 000 MB


Actually, by the latest standards, 500GiB = 512 000 MB.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: mudlord on 2011-08-05 03:54:15
And let's not forget that as spoon's database grows, an increasing percentage of the files will not actually need to be uploaded, lowering the bandwidth requirements.

That's certainly the case for a more mainstream collection. However, a large part of my collection consists of rare bootlegs and independent releases which exist in a quantity of 100 or less. I doubt there will be much to deduplicate here...

Let's hope that there will be at least some users with a mainstream music collection so the service can remain affordable

EDIT: Hey, I have an idea! The client could calculate a number, the higher the larger quantity of your collection is deduplicateable and the more the data is related to other users. It would be the ultimate measure for the peculiarity of your own taste: 1 = totally bizarre, 100 = top of the pops



I thought the idea of the service is a data archive.
Not an service like Apple's where they have the licenses to allow duplication of data and downloading in higher quality. Not to mention commercial contracts with major players.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: _m²_ on 2011-08-05 17:22:23
@MichaelW:
Latest. Maybe. So what? It doesn't superseed what most use even though some wish it will eventually.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: kwanbis on 2011-08-05 17:29:49
You calculations are really off the mark.

500GB = 500 000MB

500 000 * 8 / 4 / 3600 / 24 = 11 days 14 hours.

Actually, 500 GB = (500 * 1024) = 512 000 MB


Actually, by the latest standards, 500GiB = 512 000 MB.

You mean by the actual marketing crap ... a GB is a GB, GiB is some BS to mislead buyers.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: MichaelW on 2011-08-05 23:20:00
You mean by the actual marketing crap ... a GB is a GB, GiB is some BS to mislead buyers.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix)

Most buyers think a kilometer is 1 000 meters, not 1 024 meters, and don't see why it should be different for bytes of disk space.

My (jokey) point was that if you're going to be pedantic, you do need to be accurate.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: kwanbis on 2011-08-05 23:56:09
You mean by the actual marketing crap ... a GB is a GB, GiB is some BS to mislead buyers.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix)

Most buyers think a kilometer is 1 000 meters, not 1 024 meters, and don't see why it should be different for bytes of disk space.

My (jokey) point was that if you're going to be pedantic, you do need to be accurate.

Point is that computing is base 2, so the multiples are 1024, and not 1000. He was referring also to GB, you added the i as in GiB which is different from GB.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: _m²_ on 2011-08-06 12:10:05
You mean by the actual marketing crap ... a GB is a GB, GiB is some BS to mislead buyers.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix)

Most buyers think a kilometer is 1 000 meters, not 1 024 meters, and don't see why it should be different for bytes of disk space.

My (jokey) point was that if you're going to be pedantic, you do need to be accurate.

You seem to ignore the fact that he was accurate. Just followed a standard that's different from the one you preach.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-17 15:53:19
AudioSAFE enters testing Stage 2: Open beta testing, unlimited numbers.

Visit http://www.audiosafe.com (http://www.audiosafe.com) for details.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Pri3st on 2011-08-17 16:11:03
Are you planning to support Tak?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-17 18:04:14
1) AudioSafe must be made more verbose - I've recently added several flac files and synchronization has taken mere 30 seconds and now I'm not even sure if my remote backup collection matches my locally stored files (even though AudioSafe is now "idle" 100% done).

Can you please add a button which shows something like this:

Stored locally:

Files: 1234
Size: 23 456 789 012 bytes

Stored remotely:

Files: 1234
Size: 23 456 789 012 bytes

These number may differ when synchronization is still in progress. And I suppose there's no need for a button - this information can be made permanent in the UI.

2) Also that would be nice if I could browse my remotely stored files using a visual Explorer like interface to verify that everything is in order.

3) Can you please share some anonymous stats about the current progress, like how many users have syncronized their data, what's the average size of a user collection, what's the ratio between FLAC/MP3/OGG/TAK/etc files, what music genres are preferred, etc - you name it.

4) Does this application store user settings other than in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Illustrate\\AudioSAFE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Illustrate\\AudioSAFE registry keys? I'm asking because I want to backup this application settings. Ideally your application should store its settings in one file under e.g. %Application Data%/AudioSafe/settings.ini - or even in an application folder to make it portable.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Martel on 2011-08-17 18:31:54
Writing into application installation folder would require running the app as administrator on Vista/Win7 (UAC enabled). Or it would have to be installed into some shared access folder instead of Program Files.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: krabapple on 2011-08-17 19:47:20
Been uploading for 4 days and it still only shows 2% .  Think I'm doin it rong.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-17 21:06:21
What is your collection size? What upload speed is shown?

I tested with about 100GB and it took 14 days to upload. Most people if they had to restore would find it is 10x faster.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-08-19 06:36:55
7:34:46 : Could not process file :
G:\Music\MP4\xxxxx.mp4
Reason: Storage quota exceeded.

A few minutes later, got a compete flurry of similar messages for the rest of my collection.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Peter on 2011-08-19 07:40:06
Files with .MP4 extension are treated as video content and put in your general storage. Rename yours to M4A.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-08-19 08:03:54
Files with .MP4 extension are treated as video content and put in your general storage. Rename yours to M4A.


I find it hard to express my true feelings about this "feature" without violating TOS2 multiple times

I'm not renaming my files to fix obvious brain-dead behavior in your application. You're going to break at least for .asf, for .mkv. Hell, you're going to break for .ogg, too.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Robertina on 2011-08-19 13:42:02
a new venture 'Cloud Audio'.
spoon,

can you communicate who your partners are?

Is the new AudioSAFE forum's Super Moderator "PeterP (http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showpost.php?p=114062&postcount=4)" the developer of foobar2000?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-19 21:38:43
a new venture 'Cloud Audio'.
spoon,

can you communicate who your partners are?

Is the new AudioSAFE forum's Super Moderator "PeterP (http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showpost.php?p=114062&postcount=4)" the developer of foobar2000?


Private venture. PeterP is the foobar dev.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: mudlord on 2011-08-20 02:14:18
I am still waiting for your T&C and data retention policies.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: grimes on 2011-08-20 06:33:49
Maybe the business model includes re-using all the uploaded tracks/rips. Why rip music on your own if you can let others do all the work for you.

Is there a policy about what happens / Cloud Audio is allowed to do with the uploaded files?


It would be the stupidest business model ever to 're-use' potentially copyrighted audio, and reuse for what exactly?


Not the stupidest business model, if you have a deal with copyright owners (record companies) (theoretically a 1.9 Mio CDs  or 500000$ ripping deal)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Splat on 2011-08-20 09:01:52
After transcoding my APE archive to TAK a few month ago, TAK support would be great 

Is it planned for future versions?

Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-24 19:41:48
What's up with AudioSafe backup servers? Today most of the time I've got just 1-2KB/sec upload speed.

(Running AudioSafe 1.0.0.3)

And no one has answered my post (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=89802&view=findpost&p=766315).

OK, registry settings are not enough, after merging two reg files on a newly reinstalled Windows, AudioSafe has lost my collection (Z:\Audio) and started with "%USER%\My Music". I've quickly paused AudioSafe and rerun it with my "old" collection and now it wants to upload almost all files again. That's insane. Reuploading 50GB of data ...

AudioSafe has detected just 17% of my audio collection as already uploaded (or probably as duplicates). That's a mess.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-24 19:54:07
Just checked server is normal, accepting backups and reading at a level it has done all week. It is running at 1% of network capacity.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-24 19:56:02
If your account has previously uploaded the tracks, they would not be uploaded again, hence the 2 kb whilst it checks through the files again.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-24 21:41:26
If your account has previously uploaded the tracks, they would not be uploaded again, hence the 2 kb whilst it checks through the files again.


Thanks for letting us know. However that would be nice if the application actually said that ("verifying tracks" or something like that) instead of showing an abysmal upload speed

Luckily AudioSafe hasn't reuploaded all the tracks, the application was verifying them, albeit very slowly.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-26 12:49:33
A quick note to say we have released Beta 4.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-08-27 17:53:15
I was one of the people with mp4 music tracks that ended up filling my non-audio storage. This is fixed now, but is there some way to clean out this storage? I now get errors that my non-audio storage is full even for tiny .log files.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-28 10:22:57
If you create a new account (PM to tell you how to do so), then it will do as you request, the old account will automatically self remove after 6 months of not being used.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: smok3 on 2011-08-28 14:21:18
some silly questions:
a. so this is windows only right now? is it possible to cron the client to run from say 00 - 2.00 am only?
a.2 if yes, will there be an osx client?
a.3 if yes, will there be a linux client? (for example guiless ubuntu server which can take some time to sync the audio part of the files when it feels like)
b. how happy would you be with the pro users? (no duplicates there i guess. unless you can process parts of the OMF files), flac, OMF, large mp3 files to be supported? (there will be dupes on projects that use temp tracks and music, but that is not something to be restored)
c. restoration is possible on a file by file basis?
c.2 restoration is possible on a file by file basis, based on low quality proxy prelistening of the content (i want a baby-ogg first for free )?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2011-08-28 15:30:26
AudioSafe runs perfectly under Wine (in Linux).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-08-28 21:43:48
>a. so this is windows only right now? is it possible to cron the client to run from say 00 - 2.00 am only?

There are built in controls to stop and resume at set times

>a.2 if yes, will there be an osx client?

Potentially

>a.3 if yes, will there be a linux client? (for example guiless ubuntu server which can take some time to sync the audio part of the files when it feels like)

Less likely

>b. how happy would you be with the pro users? (no duplicates there i guess. unless you can process parts of the OMF files), flac, OMF, large mp3 files to be supported?

The T&C will well list the conditions, we reserve the right to end accounts which are overbearing of self created content.

>c. restoration is possible on a file by file basis?

Yes

Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: westgroveg on 2011-09-13 01:46:18
How will you cover your server costs when your down data is going to be way higher than your up with only a possibility of revenue at a unknown future date?? Not to mention the storage costs which are not cheap ethier when we are talking about lossless music collections of 500GB +

This makes no business sense, I suspect spoon will either dramatically change the service in the future or if it's very popular sell out and it will be, again, changed by the new owners

Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: SCOTU on 2011-09-13 02:26:54
There's this funny thing where rational, experienced people only tend to start businesses that they can see making money.  Spoon is both rational and experienced, and I'm sure he has a way to make money on this.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-09-13 08:01:40
If you look at the bigger picture, there is only a finite amount of audio in existence, we intend to store it all.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: mudlord on 2011-09-13 11:58:49
And then do what? Replicate it? Keep it all for yourself?

Use it to document trends and sell the info to marketers?
Its these sort of issues I am wondering about, before I think about trying this.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Martel on 2011-09-13 13:03:09
While there's a limited volume of (officially released) music, there are almost limitless possibilities to screw up the ripping process or use different encoders, ending up with different bits for the same content.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-09-13 13:13:43
Conspiracy theories aside, AudioSAFE is not a ploy to increase my 'own audio stash', when Spotify offers some 10 million tracks or so for a small fee a month, that would be better than spending 1000x more per month on servers....

T&C will appear before full launch, which will show what we intend do with the data (ideas on a post card, to...  ). At this stage the only possible use for the 'data' (in addition to providing people a genuine backup) is to create some super auto ID tagger, which is possible if you have access to content, but I am in two minds whether to per-sue such, there is a wisdom of crowds, but I have a feeling such crowds might just point to freedb quality of tagging, which is not great. Album art is the possible exception, but labels have been not so long ago claiming copyright on the artwork, they for obvious reasons cannot do so on track names.

Or possibly audio track identifier based on audio markers, it has been done before, Gracenote have such, MusicBrainz, AMG, in my testing I was never bowled over by the accuracy of such systems. I think Garf did similar on HA a while back?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: westgroveg on 2011-09-13 13:37:19
If you look at the bigger picture, there is only a finite amount of audio in existence, we intend to store it all.

I'm starting to get an idea of how this works, this must be some advanced system you have developed

Martel makes a good point though, and also optical drive offsets will mean will be near impossible for some files even with lossless encoding

Can you assure your service users that upload will remain free?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-09-13 13:50:50
>I'm starting to get an idea of how this works, this must be some advanced system you have develope

There is 8 months of coding behind it (probably double that if it was not based of existing code, such as offset finding, codecs, etc).

>Can you assure your service users that upload will remain free?

That is the whole concept, without that it is just another run of the mill backup.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-10-05 06:59:30
If you create a new account (PM to tell you how to do so), then it will do as you request, the old account will automatically self remove after 6 months of not being used.


I just realized this is...tricky...behavior for a backup resource. If you don't back up your collection at least once every 6 months, your backup goes away. If I'm not in ripping season, my collection easily stays untouched for many months at an end.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Northpack on 2011-10-05 08:06:13
I just realized this is...tricky...behavior for a backup resource. If you don't back up your collection at least once every 6 months, your backup goes away.

That would indeed foil the whole purpose of a backup system. I just wonder what reasoning is behind this deadline? The audio remains on the server anyway - the remaining account data should have zero impact on server load.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-10-05 09:21:18
It is not tricky in that:

you are warned by email 1 month before that the account is unused, simply running the client for 5 seconds will give you another 6 months.

We do not leave your files on the server, if your account is removed your files are removed.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Northpack on 2011-10-05 09:37:04
you are warned by email 1 month before that the account is unused, simply running the client for 5 seconds will give you another 6 months.

What if your are on a sabbatical or on a semester abroad and do not have access to your home computer for 6 months?
Quote
We do not leave your files on the server, if your account is removed your files are removed.

Do you mean that all audio data with zero owner relations is deleted (I thought the purpose of AudioSAFE is to collect as much decorrelated audio data as possible - or do you keep only lossless and dischard lossy files)? Even then, if my collection isn't that esoteric, most files would probably have other owners...
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-10-05 09:53:02
I will not disclose any details of how the backend is stored, only that - if you record yourself singing in the shower, upload the audiosafe, then your account closes (through your own means, or an unused account for half a year), your recording will be removed from audiosafe. If you hand your recording to a friend, that friend then backs up as well, and you close your account, you cannot expect us to remove the other backup also, it is valid in the other account.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: _m²_ on 2011-10-05 10:55:57
I don't like the policy either. 1-month long holidays happen to some and an email can be lost unread for the whole time. Computer being 1 month in repair? The same.
Spam filter deleting the message? Mail server refusing it for whatever reason?
Also, I see little reason NOT to use a spam email for services like this one, so somebody like me has no chance of reading the warning at all.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Northpack on 2011-10-05 11:46:03
Proposal: send at least two warning mails. One 4 weeks, and another one 1 week before deleting the account. And - very important - include the possibility to renew the account by replying to that email, or by some web interface (for the scenario described above).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: SCOTU on 2011-10-05 15:14:47
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AudioSAFE supposed to have a background client that runs basically all the time, so for your unused account to be deleted, you'd have to basically not run your computer for 6 contiguous months?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-10-05 20:30:13
Not to mention the client would start showing errors if it has been blocked from accessing AS for 2 months straight (say a firewall was playing up).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-10-06 07:02:35
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AudioSAFE supposed to have a background client that runs basically all the time, so for your unused account to be deleted, you'd have to basically not run your computer for 6 contiguous months?


Some people don't like to keep a bunch of services running that they don't need. If I'm not ripping new stuff, why would I need the client running? Let alone, it probably needs to scan the collection on startup, making the system slower.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: SCOTU on 2011-10-06 18:54:22
The majority of people I know, myself included, also don't like things that consume resources in the background.  However, I have the feeling that something like AudioSAFE (while I haven't tried it to confirm it) probably consumes an entirely negligible amount of resources to the point where you probably couldn't even care on my 6 year old laptop.  Having already said I don't like things running in the background, I do run a fair number of things in the background all the time because they're helpful.

>Some people don't like having things run in the background
->Some people don't like having their audio not backed up, or risking losing their backup via some tremendously unlikely hypothetical scenario.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-10-10 07:14:41
However, I have the feeling that something like AudioSAFE (while I haven't tried it to confirm it) probably consumes an entirely negligible amount of resources to the point where you probably couldn't even care on my 6 year old laptop.


If you had bothered to check, you would have seen it will use 100% CPU for a minute or so, and reads hundreds of megabytes, on startup. And that is a on a fast system, not a 6 year old laptop. It's true that once synced resource usage is small, but if it starts up automatically with Windows, you're going to have to wait more. Every little "helpful" application that starts with your system is a big contributor to a slow system boot. The more you can get rid of them, the better.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-10-10 07:17:51
My main problem right now is that it seems to have failed to recognize some files as audio, or maybe there is a video clip in my music dir, I'm not sure, and that filled the "storage quota for non-audio files exceeded". There seems to be no way to figure out what file(s) that is, nor to delete it from there.

It is now stuck at 99% and every few minutes it spews hundreds of notifications that it cannot upload the remaining non-audio files (playlists, md5, rip logs), making it essentially unusable.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-10-10 12:52:57
Issues noted.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: LosMintos on 2011-10-13 16:13:19
If you look at the bigger picture, there is only a finite amount of audio in existence, we intend to store it all.
Mee too :-). I'm ripping CDs to get there and I'm getting afraid the amount is infinite in fact (at least the amount is *much* faster growing than I can ripp).

Regarding upload. With my current (ideal) upload bandwidth it would take almost 600 days (let's say, 2 years with a continiously running PC) to upload my collection. Would it be possible to just send a harddrive (or two)?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-10-13 16:42:24
How large is your collection?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: pdq on 2011-10-13 16:53:25
Regarding upload. With my current (ideal) upload bandwidth it would take almost 600 days (let's say, 2 years with a continiously running PC) to upload my collection. Would it be possible to just send a harddrive (or two)?

Don't forget that if spoon already has some of the tracks in your collection, those don't need to be uploaded.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: LosMintos on 2011-10-14 09:47:00
Just under 3 TB FLAC including scanned album art. There are lot's of recorded vinyls; I guess, de-duplication would have no effect there. For the CDs, well, there might be a reasonable de-duplication effect. I should wait some time and let others do the upload  .
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-10-14 21:09:01
The beta testing of AudioSAFE is progressing well, we currently have approaching 2% of the worlds audio stored, it is anticipated that content storage will accelerate upon full release (we are aiming for December or January).

Also we are beginning the AudioSAFE spin-offs, the first of which is a high quality album art database, this will correctly tag your files with album art, fully automatic, even upgrade the low resolution art in your existing files. This service will be provided without cost, a community project, to give to the world not just correct album art, but quality art work. Coding on this has just begun, as they say, watch this space.

The full potential of AudioSAFE will be realized through additional offerings given the fullness of time.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-10-14 21:17:13
We are also giving serious consideration to allowing fast loading via USB HDDs for those with large collections, not 100% sure it will progress at this stage because of the logistics of physical disk transportation around the world.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: googlebot on 2011-10-14 23:15:11
I'm impressed where this is heading.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: xnor on 2011-10-15 09:04:44
I will endeavor to put up a T&C and privacy statement ASAP

Any updates on the T&C, privacy statement and/or pricing yet?

"Free backup" (I'd call it free upload) sounds nice but without knowing what restoring costs..
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: evereux on 2011-10-15 09:37:37
...


Very nice indeed.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-10-15 10:07:54
And I forgot to say, the audio safe client is being ported to the mac.

T&C I am not ignoring this, rather I did not want to put something up which changes, so or deadline for such is release from beta which might be only 8 - 12 weeks off.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: hellokeith on 2011-10-16 00:18:05
we currently have approaching 2% of the worlds audio stored

Can you share how you came to this number?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-10-16 08:16:19
Using estimates from the various meta data base databases and accurate rip.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: LosMintos on 2011-10-18 14:04:35
this will correctly tag your files with album art, fully automatic,
That would be something new and really exciting! From my experience automatic meta data or album art retrieval is never 100 % correct. Do you have a reference standard for album art (resolution, size, image type, ...)?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Hallie08 on 2011-11-02 11:43:13
This sounds like a great idea, in principle. However, in common with many others on this Forum I have a very large music collection (over 750 GB). I have what is probably above average (for the UK) Broadband speeds yet my average upload rate is around 3 GB per day (from my computer's hard drive). At that rate - and assuming that a NAS would not be slower - it would take me a minimum of 8 months to do the initial upload!

I would happily pay to make the initial upload if a viable alternative were offered - unlikely given the physical distances involved - but otherwise it remains impractical until Korean-style Broadband connections become readily available in the UK.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Garf on 2011-11-02 19:11:07
This sounds like a great idea, in principle. However, in common with many others on this Forum I have a very large music collection (over 750 GB). I have what is probably above average (for the UK) Broadband speeds yet my average upload rate is around 3 GB per day (from my computer's hard drive). At that rate - and assuming that a NAS would not be slower - it would take me a minimum of 8 months to do the initial upload!


I think it's been pointed out before, but you don't necessarily have to upload all 750GB. You only have to upload the material you have and nobody else using AudioSAFE has.

Seed didn't give details, but I suspect it works especially well if a lot of that 750G is lossless stuff.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: pdq on 2011-11-02 20:04:25
Seed didn't give details, but I suspect it works especially well if a lot of that 750G is lossless stuff.

Also, purchased tracks, even if lossy, should get good overlap.

Does the client give any indication of how well this is working?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-11-03 09:32:56
Some AS news:

Apple MAC Client to be released Soon.

Offer: Fast load your collection: if you have more than 700GB of content and are either in the EU, or USA, we will ship a USB HDD(s) to you. Load your content to USB HDD, we collect and your content will be fast loaded onto our servers. Simply email: Your Name + Address and content total size to: betatest@audiosafe.com
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Martel on 2011-11-03 10:16:20
You know you're not going to get many of those HDDs back, right?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-11-03 10:45:21
With the current Thailand flooding, exasperating this situation?...

Draft Terms and Conditions are now live:

http://audiosafe.com/TnC.htm (http://audiosafe.com/TnC.htm)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Mangix on 2011-11-04 09:53:10
is there any mechanism for deleting individual files from an account? i've done many things to my music collection including renaming the files to follow a particular scheme as well as changing the drive letter from E:\ to D:\ and as a result, AudioSafe Restore shows many [file deleted] files even though they weren't.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-11-07 14:23:48
We will add a purge deleted option to the next beta.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: evereux on 2011-11-07 17:35:49
AudioSAFE has crashed several times on me on my new Windows 7 x64 machine. It is the only programme doing so at the moment (I'm not ruling out hardware at this time) and the machine is running OK 24/7.

Here is the Windows log:
Code: [Select]
Faulting application name: AudioSafe-Client.exe, version: 1.0.0.5, time stamp: 0x4e69dc53
Faulting module name: AudioSafe-Client.exe, version: 1.0.0.5, time stamp: 0x4e69dc53
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00063683
Faulting process id: 0xbd8
Faulting application start time: 0x01cc9be17879d6b2
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Illustrate\AudioSafe\AudioSafe-Client.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Illustrate\AudioSafe\AudioSafe-Client.exe
Report Id: aa35813d-083e-11e1-b571-080027002819


If you'd like any more information let me know.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: mudlord on 2011-11-07 19:12:27
Quote
We will not sell, or distribute your details to 3rd parties without your consent


ROFL.
You do realise then, you could add in that EULA of yours, that on installation of AudioSAFE, you agree to that? 
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-11-07 20:48:30
An EULA is one where the user agrees to our terms, that statement is the opposite, where we are setting forward terms and agreeing to them ourselves.

Or perhaps I am miss reading your remark.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: mudlord on 2011-11-09 05:51:01
In most apps I seen,  a EULA is shown at installation time. If the end user doesn't support what is done, they are expected to not continue installing the application.

My remark was you *could*, legally, sell end user's information if you add that in the EULA on install time. Of course, that is unethical, but legally, nothing can be done.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Martel on 2011-11-09 09:10:33
An EULA is one where the user agrees to our terms, that statement is the opposite, where we are setting forward terms and agreeing to them ourselves.

Or perhaps I am miss reading your remark.

An EULA is still an agreement (bilateral act) meaning both parties have rights and liabilities stemming from terms given therein. As soon as a user agrees to it, the terms apply to both sides. I'm no lawyer but I think it's very similar to a vending machine purchase.

Whether AudioSAFE actually promises certain private data handling policy in its EULA is a different matter. If it does not, it may put off "customers".
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-11-09 09:43:35
I understand now

There will be an EULA shown on install, just not until it is finalized (that page is just a draft for now)

Quote
An EULA is still an agreement (bilateral act) meaning both parties have rights and liabilities stemming from terms given therein. As soon as a user agrees to it, the terms apply to both sides. I'm no lawyer but I think it's very similar to a vending machine purchase.


It is still one sided, in that a user cannot modify the EULA, whist the company can (as was part of the previous EULA that the company can modify it), look at Sony and the EULA where users are suddenly not allowed to class action them (just an example, I do not want Sony's negative perceived image rubbing off on AudioSAFE  )
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: mudlord on 2011-11-09 09:49:31
An EULA is one where the user agrees to our terms, that statement is the opposite, where we are setting forward terms and agreeing to them ourselves.

Or perhaps I am miss reading your remark.

An EULA is still an agreement (bilateral act) meaning both parties have rights and liabilities stemming from terms given therein. As soon as a user agrees to it, the terms apply to both sides. I'm no lawyer but I think it's very similar to a vending machine purchase.

Whether AudioSAFE actually promises certain private data handling policy in its EULA is a different matter. If it does not, it may put off "customers".


Exactly. Hence why I am waiting on terms all set in stone, etc, before even attempting to use this. I just like knowing my rights and all.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Martel on 2011-11-09 12:00:25
...look at Sony and the EULA where users are suddenly not allowed to class action them
Sorry for the OT but this kind of EULA would be invalid in my country (and probably most of EU). An agreement cannot remove rights (e.g. to sue someone) granted to you by a constitution or laws, no matter if you agreed to that/signed a piece of paper/clicked a "I agree" button or whatever.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-11-19 10:10:17
We have fixed the restore cost at $5 per 100GB, or $50 per 1TB

With the current HDD shortage there has never been a better time to use AudioSAFE to safe guard your collection.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Brand on 2011-11-19 13:25:56
The price seems reasonable.

A couple more questions:
1. I've already expressed my wish for a portable (non-installed) program. If that's not coming, does the installed program at least allow me to run it when I want (not on system startup), without resorting to killing any services or disabling tasks?

2. Can I select exactly which files/folders to backup, is the number of selectable folders limited?

Maybe it's already on your to-do list, but it would be great if there was a walkthrough page with screenshots and/or a video demonstration, even if the program is easy to use.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: xnor on 2011-11-19 13:43:29
The price seems reasonable.


Really?  My external 2TB hdd cost about $ ~70 per 1TB, once.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-11-19 14:32:40
The price seems reasonable.


Really?  My external 2TB hdd cost about $ ~70 per 1TB, once.


Really?
So $35 per TB is reasonable for a drive you may never need and which may die before you ever recover from it.  A drive you must keep safe from flood, fire, theft, and old age.

But $15 more a TB paid for only if you use it, a HDD which doesn't need your protection or verification, is so unreasonable it deserves a childish emoticon?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Brand on 2011-11-19 14:47:21
He actually wrote $70 per TB, but before the flooding prices were actually closer to $35 per TB, yeah.

Anyway, I agree with your analysis. I mean local backups are great and I recommend everyone to do them, but a remote backup offers some additional value.


One more question for spoon:

Is there a minimum charge for recovery or will you charge exactly per GB/MB? (Will recovering 500MB cost $0.025?)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-11-19 15:02:16
AudioSAFE placesva shortcut in the startup folder, so is very easy to manage.

There would be a minimum restore charge, our cc processor takes a minimum so would be based off that.

Any number of folders can nbd selected, normally the default selection of the music folder is enough.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-11-19 15:02:41
Oops - I swore he wrote $70 per 2TB.  But clearly not.

If anything that reinforces my point.  AudioSafe is cheaper than HDDs and you only pay if you need it and you don't need to protect or verify.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-11-19 15:47:10
To an extent AudioSAFE is a generational backup system also, let me explain, you might backup once a month to your one Hdd, any changes to the library are set to backup.

If you had a faulty program, or a virus which overwrites some of your tracks with garbage, you might only find on playback of that track, by which time it has overwritten the one on your backup Hdd. AudioSAFE would keep the old undamaged file plus the current corrupted one, the original could be restored.

Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: xnor on 2011-11-19 16:40:25
Most file synchronization and backup programs also show you what has changed. Even robocopy, which comes with windows, can show you that and mirror your music collection, personal data etc. bit by bit only copying changed files.

@Soap: Even at twice the price for the HDD I'd prefer it.  I use the external hdd regularly and it has more uses than just backing up music. Backups are very fast (eSATA), need no internet connection and restoring is free too.
Yes, to me it is unreasonable, else I wouldn't have put the emoticon there.

Sure, if you live in an area where floods or other disasters are not uncommon this may be an option. Though if your house swims down the road I'd have bigger worries than restoring my music library.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Soap on 2011-11-19 16:47:20
I use the external hdd regularly and it has more uses than just backing up music.

A - Not per GB it doesn't.  You're double-counting the value of a HDD. 

B - If you use the HDD regularly it is even more prone to failure, corruption, or loss.  You dismiss the idea of a flood while fire, lightning, theft are the more likely options.

C - You're right that music restoration wouldn't be a top priority if your house was lost.  But insurance won't give you back your time in ripping / tagging.  By the same argument, though, SATA-speeds aren't needed for restoration either, unless your music collection is your livelyhood. (In which case why is $50 so worthy of derision?)

D  - Restoration isn't free from a HDD.  You  paid for it up-front even if you don't use it.

Haters gonna hate.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: xnor on 2011-11-19 17:12:45
a) Because it is way more flexible. You can backup any kind of data, copy it there temporarily etc.

b) Right, using a hdd twice a month will shorten its life span considerably...
Surprise, I also dismiss the ideas of someone stealing or lightning destroying my external HDDs! There are things like surge protectors, but I usually don't use my computer when there's a lightning storm outside.
Sure, fire is a threat but storing data in the "cloud" isn't 100% safe either. Remember amazon's outage where they lost customer data?

c) SATA speeds aren't necessary, no, but it's nice to copy files at full speed and not worry about clogging the internet connection which I'm sharing.
I'm not deriding anything, I was just surprised of your reaction.

d) No, I paid for the HDD, not the restoration. A small but important difference.

I suggest not using the phrase "haters gonna hate" if you don't know what it means.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Goratrix on 2011-11-19 17:30:52
You dismiss the idea of a flood while fire, lightning, theft are the more likely options.


For music, I have a primary storage at home plus two backups in two different places, about 100 kilometers apart (so that's three 1TB HDD). The probability of one of those distasters is miniscule in each one of the 3 places, and zero of it occuring in all of them simultaneously (short of a nuclear armageddon). Meanwhile, in the 15 or so years using the internet, I have seen literally hundreds of online services and companies disappear overnight.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: jdoering on 2011-11-19 19:02:01
The seemingly passionate objections here seem strange IMO. If you already have a robust, offsite, multi-location strategy then more power to you. But why object to this service and the value based on non-astronomical restore cost?

The only upfront costs are upload bandwidth (cost depends a lot on your ISP arrangement and is likely negligible for a lot of potential users), local computer resources for running the program (again a personal concern with likely negligible costs for many users), and potential sharing of private data (e.g. What music is in my possession, etc). The final point is probably the murkiest but pretty much any cloud offering requires evaluating this trade off from a personal perspective.

If the above costs are nota significant concern to you then what the downside of using this as an extra layer of what-if data security just because you question the value of the recovery pricing? If your existing backup solutions never fail you never have to pay the price anyway. If something does go wrong despite your best efforts you then have a recovery option with an economic trade-off decision to make. No one forces you to restore - so the ball is in your court to decide the value of your lost collection.

Seems to me that only the personal privacy question and upfront cost of implementing the backup should factor into judging the value of the service assuming that restore fees stay on the current order of magnitude.

-Jeff
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: wdekler on 2011-11-21 18:17:00
I have lot's of remasters in my collection. Can I be sure that I get exactly the same files back when I restore?

In other words: during deduplication a file could mistakenly be replaced by the same track from a different master if some kind of watermarking is used (instead of checksums).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-11-21 21:27:11
AudioSAFE will restore lossless tracks, byte for byte (audio content), we do not use an Apple Scan and Match, where there is a % potential error introduced by fingerprinting.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: wdekler on 2011-11-22 08:18:18
AudioSAFE will restore lossless tracks, byte for byte (audio content), we do not use an Apple Scan and Match, where there is a % potential error introduced by fingerprinting.


Great! I'll be starting to upload soon.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Pri3st on 2011-11-22 09:29:50
Please add an option to know which file is currently uploading.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Mangix on 2011-12-04 21:22:58
Feature Request: Add support for .dts files. I have some and AudioSafe just complained about the storage quota for non-audio files being exceeded.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: wdekler on 2011-12-05 09:28:40
I'm planning on uploading my collection at a place with a much higher uplink capactity (1Gb) to speed up the initial uploading process . To do that I'll take a copy to a PC over there and start the process.

My question is: can I just use the same account there? Both computers will probably never be online at the same time.

Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-12-05 10:37:19
You can do this with the same account, it is best to:

Upload a location 1 with account, then uninstall AS.
Install AS at location 2, with same content (even if in different folders), and then provide account details.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: wdekler on 2011-12-05 15:42:38
Thanks for the reply spoon.


As I've already uploaded some data at my home computer I'll

- uninstall the client there
- install the client at the "fast" location and upload all data from there.
- uninstall the client at the "fast" location
- install the client at home

Or could I just disable the service instead of uninstalling?

Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-12-05 16:24:24
Uninstall is best as every ~ 3 weeks we have a new update.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: googlebot on 2011-12-05 16:38:50
Do you have any patents pending on the underlying technology?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: pdq on 2011-12-05 17:09:21
I'm not sure it's good practice to disclose what patents you may or may not have pending. It gives information to possible competitors.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: googlebot on 2011-12-05 17:35:30
IMHO only if it's rather likely for it to get rejected. If not, the competition is going to blocked anyway, if it doesn't agree to your terms. It's a different situation, if you depend on the competition's patents yourself, but I didn't expect this to be the case here. I don't want to start an OT discussion, if spoon wants to keep quiet about this, that's fine.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: wdekler on 2011-12-06 13:07:00
Will an upcoming version of audiosafe have an option to specify a temp file directory?

It currently uses the users temp directory on my SSD which I'd like to spare from these hefty amounts of writes.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-12-07 09:43:02
Only if there is a large enough demand.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: probedb on 2011-12-07 11:08:51
Will an upcoming version of audiosafe have an option to specify a temp file directory?

It currently uses the users temp directory on my SSD which I'd like to spare from these hefty amounts of writes.


Plus some people only have small SSDs with little free space so I'd say this is a necessary requirement.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: rednyrg721 on 2011-12-08 13:48:48
You can relocate temporary folder at operating system level: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_folder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_folder).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: wdekler on 2011-12-12 16:29:26
I'm aware that there are several ways to relocate the temp folder. However, will Audiosafe users realize that all their music data will be written to that folder (when there's no option to configure it)?

It was only by using procmon to monitor the upload progress that I noticed this.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: wdekler on 2011-12-12 17:34:05
Plus some people only have small SSDs with little free space so I'd say this is a necessary requirement.


That shouldn't be a problem as the 100mb+ chunks are only temporarily stored there during upload (as far as I can see).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: DirtyHarry on 2011-12-12 19:27:21
Spoon, I am very enthusiastic and interested in your new business venture. I myself have wondered in the past whether such a system could be made, and it is great to see that someone managed to develop such a system. I would like to wish you all the success with your business. I have a number of questions, which I hope that you are willing to answer.

Suppose that I have ripped a CD, but the rip contains errors (i.e. it does not correspond to AccurateRip database). Then I encode with, for instance, LAME at 128 kbps. If I later recover this file from AudioSAFE, is is still 128 kbps LAME including the errors, or do I get a newly encoded file, based on a perfect rip? In other words: is the file that I receive bit-by-bit identical?

Don't you feel that with AudioSAFE, you are doing double work? In the sence that; in the end you gradually obtain a database of the world's digital music. Such databases may already (in part) exist at for instance, record companies, and of course iTunes, or Spotify. The end result would be similar; a gigantic database of digital music. It would only differ from iTunes and Spotify in the earnings model.

Finally, considering the possible ultimate similarity to, for instance, iTunes and Spotify, aren't you afraid of the legal implications? Although AudioSAFE can technically be called a off-site back-up solution, record companies and their armies of lawyers might see that differently.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-12-12 20:10:24
>is is still 128 kbps LAME including the errors,

It would be this, what ever you provide to AudioSAFE, you get back.

I personally do not think the RIAA would go after a backup service, as they would be saying that any audio cannot be backed up, and it would have to be enforced everywhere there is an online backup service.

The RIAA are more interested where there is a dispute about future earnings, such as streaming, where someone uploads a track to a locker and streams it back, whilst not generating any revenue for the record companies.

> and of course iTunes, or Spotify

iTunes and Spotify might contain most of the worlds audio, but it is not in lossless.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: wdekler on 2011-12-13 09:17:54
Doesn't the copyright law simply state that you're not allowed to make a copy without permission of the owner? And could an online backup, as made with Audiosafe, be viewed as a copy?

I certainly hope that that's not the case with Audiosafe as it's clearly not intended to distribute music to other people.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2011-12-13 09:21:27
Laws differ from region to region, in one place (large parts of Europe) it is a copyright infringement to rip CDs, do people rip CDs in Europe? yes, has there ever been a prosecution in Europe for ripping CDs? no.

Same goes for backing up audio tracks, in parts of the world it will be copyright infringement, do people still backup their files? yes.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: DirtyHarry on 2011-12-13 10:02:29
>is is still 128 kbps LAME including the errors,
It would be this, what ever you provide to AudioSAFE, you get back.


Your answer raises more questions, that I'm sure you're not willing to answer... 
Let me just say that it sounds mighty impressive, and that I can't help stop wondering how you did it...
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Notat on 2011-12-13 15:08:37
This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_deduplication) might answer some of your unasked questions.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: haen on 2012-01-16 07:16:04
Interesting service - uploading my collection ATM (mere 11GB lossless FLAC). Restore costs looks sane.

One question - I store my music on a home server (Ubuntu) and then mount Samba share as a partition (\\192.168.1.2\haen → Z:\). I've pointed AudioSafe to the ''Z:\Music'' folder. What happens, if network share cannot be accessed? Will AudioSafe delete my music from its servers?

Linux client (with a daemon mode) would be nice. ;-)

I do hope that you got your calculations right and your business is financially  sound. Good luck.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2012-01-16 09:08:29
AudioSAFE will wait until the drive reappears, or it is removed from AudioSAFEs watch list (then the files are soft deleted from AudioSAFE).
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Mangix on 2012-01-25 18:15:19
feature request: ability to delete non-audio files.

i have a bunch of .dts files that are not recognized as audio files. i uploaded an initial version of the files but completely redid the tagging and the old versions are still up on the server and i can't delete them.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: _m²_ on 2012-02-05 11:12:24
FYI, I got an inactivity warning recently...And it was classified as spam.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: skamp on 2012-02-05 14:52:44
I will not disclose any details of how the backend is stored

Can you say how safe your storage is? If you have redundency, if you make backups? I do understand that since uploading is free, I can't expect any guaranty that I'll be able to get my data back, but I'm curious.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2012-02-05 21:29:58
Right now the data is protected by Raid 6 (that is 2 spares per raid group), in a number of months the data will also be duplicated in a 2nd building.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Porcus on 2012-03-07 15:27:42
Maybe I'm suggesitng a feature that is already implemented (I intend not upload my > 3TB until I get a better line, so I haven't tested AudioSafe at all):

What about a feature to suggest updated tagging? If you have both the capability of distinguishing different masterings with the same TOC, and sonic fingerprint which can identify them across masters (and even a lossless with a lossy), you could score the metadata variations among user popularity (both based on what they uploaded and on what updates they click-to-adopt). And through dBpoweramp you already have a business relation with major metadata providers, although I still miss Discogs.

I am not sure how much this will pay off, but a very few $$s for a package of view differences and click 'yes please update' on album basis, say, up to '100 albums in the next 30 days' (pay nothing for rejected suggestions) ...? (I for one am already quite a bit annoyed that I didn't tag my remasters properly as such.)


Also, what about joining forces with a download store -- and sites like e.g. Bandcamp? As you intend to store the majority of files sold on planet Tellus, you can offer server space.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2012-03-07 16:39:48
We release a super tagger this year sometime based off AudioSAFE.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: Porcus on 2012-03-07 18:23:17
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2012-03-13 13:24:31
An update to AudioSAFE:

We now have a Apple Mac client.
AudioSAFE contains some 2 million unique tracks, not too bad considering we are still in beta, speaking of which we hope to finalize the beta and release AudioSAFE in April.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2013-10-07 20:13:20
Sadly the project is now dead. Damn.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: db1989 on 2013-10-07 23:07:08
Do you have a citation for that very conclusive statement, or is it just an assumption you made because Illustrate have not announced the release of the product on schedule?
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-07 23:11:59
it was announced some 6 months ago.

http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?24444-AudioSAFE (http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?24444-AudioSAFE)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: db1989 on 2013-10-07 23:23:12
Thanks for the link.  (I did have a quick search before asking but didn’t find anything.)
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: spoon on 2013-10-08 20:08:35
AudioSAFE will be brought back online in the next 4 months, the design showed some limitations which require about 2 months of work to correct, there is the opportunity to do this now and correct these limitations (which would hinder AudioSAFEs ability to scale).

Existing data on the system will be migrated to the new design.
Title: AudioSAFE
Post by: birdie on 2013-10-10 05:26:06
AudioSAFE will be brought back online in the next 4 months, the design showed some limitations which require about 2 months of work to correct, there is the opportunity to do this now and correct these limitations (which would hinder AudioSAFEs ability to scale).

Existing data on the system will be migrated to the new design.


Oops, I've already erased my user from your database. Hopefully it still exists in some form so that I won't need to reupload all my music. ;-)

Thanks for reviving the project!

BTW, have you heard about WinAMP cloud? Do you have any relationship to this project as theirs seems very similar to yours?


AudioSafe has an excellent deduplicator and WinAMP guys will have to create their own - your could offer them your algorithms in exchange for ... what you choose.