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Ogg Vorbis Share Reaches 12.3% on P2P Traffic 450

Posted by timothy from the lies-damn-lies-and-maybe-just-maybe-truth dept.
prostoalex writes "According to CacheLogic survey, 61.44% of the peer-to-peer traffic nowadays is video, with audio taking distant second place, representing 11.34% of global traffic. Moreover, 12.3% of all the music files traded on P2P networks are in Ogg format. Almost all of the OGG files are traded via BitTorrent protocol with most of the growth coming from Asia, CacheLogic says."
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Ogg Vorbis Share Reaches 12.3% on P2P Traffic More

Ogg Vorbis Share Reaches 12.3% on P2P Traffic

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  • Downloading Garbage (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bigwavejas ( 678602 ) * on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:28PM (#13290741) Journal
    Percentage figures like these are going to spell doom for torrents. They're going to do nothing but light a big fire under the MPAA and RIAA's asses (Not like they needed it). Expect more fake/ spoofed files masquerading as legitimate movies/ music. People should start thinking about using some bolt-on software for their EDonkey (or ??), much like http://donkeyfakes.gambri.net/ [gambri.net] ,or they're going to be downloading a lot of Garbage (and not the Shirley Manson type either).

    • Re:Downloading Garbage (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:33PM (#13290771)
      Why do you automatically assume it's copyright-infringed music? Moreover, why do you assume it belongs to the RIAA or MPAA? Considering that it's "mostly in Asia" it could very well be legally-copied (or infringed from organizations other than the RIAA) Asian music.
      • Why do you automatically assume it's copyright-infringed music?

        Probably because I can't think of any artist that likes to give away his/her music for free. Course you could probably pick-up some freebie folk-tunes or a nice head-bangin country tune recorded by a freckled head kid from the county fair.

        • Re:Downloading Garbage (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ZephyrXero ( 750822 ) <zephyrxero@[ ]oo.com ['yah' in gap]> on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:54PM (#13290885) Homepage Journal
          Actually many smaller/independent artists release all, or a large portion of their music for free on their websites...usually at a lower quality of compression, but free none the less... It's a great way to let people hear your music if you don't have the thousand$ to pay for play on the radio ;)
        • You should try Google for example. I just found this site [rezal404.org], too bad it's in french but I guess there are a few sites like this one on the internet. Another good one is Magnatune [magnatune.com] but you have to pay on this one.
        • > Probably because I can't think of any artist
          > that likes to give away his/her music for free.

          What?! I can think of any number of artists who love giving their music away. Some of us even have the audacity to believe that you should do art for the sake of art and the experience, that finance need not come into it, and that there should be no notion of ownership over ideas or anything else which can be reduced to a digital format.

          There are commercial artists who I respect for their music, but I don't

          • Re:Downloading Garbage (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Mozk ( 844858 )
            I can't think of anything on which I disagree with you there.

            My belief is that art is not something that money should be made off of. Art is a form of expression or talent. Artists claim that in order to make their art, they need money. You don't need money to express yourself. You don't need to get money for expressing yourself. While making art can be your profession, it should not be your source of income. Artists should have real jobs that contribute something. While entertaining people is somewhat cont

        • Re:Downloading Garbage (Score:5, Informative)

          by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @09:15PM (#13290984) Homepage Journal
          The Grateful Dead [archive.org]

          And hundreds of other bands in Archive.org [archive.org]
        • Well there's quite a few here [podshow.com]
        • Probably because I can't think of any artist that likes to give away his/her music for free.
          I take it that in your world, MP3.com never happened.
    • Why bother?
      You got a perfectly fine md5 hashtree from the honest distributer/uploader of the file, which guarantees you get what you want.

      Wait, you are downloading warez and stuff from unknown sources without any reference what it could be besides the filename? Well, thats your bad...
    • [QUOTE]Percentage figures like these are going to spell doom for torrents.[/QUOTE]

      Legitimate distributors of trailers, demo reels, and animated shorts use bittorrent. I've likely uploaded and downloaded many gigabytes of completely legal bittorrents, for instance the new Blender Siggraph 2005 demo DVD.

      http://blender.org/cms/fileadmin/movies/Siggraph_2 005_DVD.iso.torrent [blender.org]

      LetterRip
    • On a global scale, 46% of P2P traffic is video in Microsoft formats.
      Percentage figures like these are ..... going to do nothing but light a big fire under the MPAA and RIAA's.

      Suit up guys.... Lock and load. We're going after Bill.
      The Bill??!
      Yep.
      But he survived an attack from Washington.
      We're the RIAA. We're bigger than Washington.

    • A paraphrase of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's media campaign of 1971 ("War is Over, if you want it").

      I no longer accept anyone's definition of copyright or the expectation of any person or corporation that they can legally deny access to any digitized recording, image, or written work for any reason.

      Think I'm "stealing"? Think what you like, I don't care.

      'The LAW explicitly says...". I don't care. The people who pass laws are directly paid by the corporations to pass la

  • Go Ogg! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:28PM (#13290742)
    Better compression, better sound, better freedom. 'Nuf said.
    • For all its advanced technology the Vorbis crew still can't give us an easy download to a standard, official Directshow decoder.

      Brilliant! A codec I can't use without trapsing around the intarweb for a third party Directshow codec or getting program specific support! 'Nuf said.
    • Actually there is more to be said. The fact that Ogg is 12% of audio files demonstrates that either

      The study is flawed and is only monitoring a niche population not the general population.

      Or

      The record industry has been successful and mainstream users are not trading audio they way they used to, that only a niche population is engaging in large scale audio piracy.

      Ogg is good technology but it has not been embraced by 12% of digital audio users.

  • Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by okayplayer ( 670828 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:28PM (#13290743)
    Open source music on open source protocols... Who would have thunk?

    • Re:Wow (Score:2, Troll)

      by aristotle-dude ( 626586 )
      Yeah, too bad all that music being traded is pirated eh?

      This does not make open source look good.

  • Traffic statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Paska ( 801395 ) * on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:31PM (#13290758) Homepage
    > According to CacheLogic survey, 61.44% of the peer-to-peer traffic nowadays is video, with audio taking distant second place, representing 11.34% of global traffic.

    Is this really a huge shock? After all your average movie is (let's just say) 500 megabyte, with your average song at around 2 megabyte - of course video traffic is going to outweigh audio downloads by a great amount.

  • OGG (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:31PM (#13290759)
    What's wrong with Mp3 and WMA?

    • Re:OGG (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hungrygrue ( 872970 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:46PM (#13290843) Homepage
      Both are closed formats. To the best of my knowledge, the only way to play wma files under Linux/BSD is to use Microsoft's DLL files which is illegal (Though if you have a legal copy of Windows I suppose that is a grey area. I and many other Linux users, however, do not own or use Windows). MP3 support requires a license fee http://mp3licensing.com/ [mp3licensing.com] OGG is an open standard with no strings or restrictions.

  • Slightly OT (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jtwJGuevara ( 749094 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:32PM (#13290762)
    The linux community at large seems to have a strong sentiment in favor of using ogg over mp3. I personally tried ogg but in my media player of choice (xmms) the equalizer had absolutely no effect on ogg files whereas with mp3 files the equalizer worked, thus making the mp3 sound much, much better than the non-equalized (don't know the technical name for it) sound of the ogg file. Does anyone know why this is? Am I missing a good thing by not using ogg or is ogg just hyped up a bit much?
    • Perhaps the OGG decoder bypasses the equalizer or the equalizer is built into the MP3 decoder. I don't see why they would do this though.
    • I am curious why the "equalized" audio would sound a lot better than not, maybe there is a defficiency in your speakers, or audio outputs?
      • It's personal preference. I prefer what is normally referred to as the "Rock" setting that has high bass, high treble, and a low mid. There is a big difference in the sound between this setting and the default midlevel setting for everything... at least to my ears.

      • Re:Slightly OT (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cbr2702 ( 750255 )
        Most speakers, especially computer speakers, have a non-ideal frequency response. So ""equalized" audio" by compensating for this deficient frequency response can make imperfect speakers sound much better.

    • Re:Slightly OT (Score:4, Informative)

      by vonstauf ( 827404 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:44PM (#13290831) Homepage
      Not being at my desktop because I'm fair away in cube land, I can atleast attest that my XMMS player that came stock with Slackware seems to do just fine with the equalizer and ogg files. I'll test it out when I get back to the bat cave. This bug [xmms.org] seems to be what you're dealing with. Here are some comments [xmms.org] about it.
    • The ogg codec ignores the equalizer levels while the mp3 one doesn't. There is an add-on equalizer module that equalizes anything, however, but is slightly buggy. All this is in typical linux fashion.
    • Does the equalizer work for WAV files?

      If not, then most likely the reason is that their EQ is completely MP3-specific. The process of MP3 decoding generates for each frame a set of 32 frequency components extracted from the compressed bitstream, which are then converted back into the time domain ("pcm synthesis").

      Probably they implement a crude EQ by manipulating the frequency bands which are already available as an integral part of the decode process.

      I think you could do the same with ogg, but it sounds li

    • Re:Slightly OT (Score:3, Informative)

      by flithm ( 756019 )
      Get yourself a real equalizer [sourceforge.net] for xmms.

      I was in the same boat as you (except with FLAC instead of OGG). EQU freakin' OWNS all over the place. You have no idea how good music can sound until you've tried this thing out. 31 bands!? [sourceforge.net]. Of course you can do fewer bands if you want.

    • Re:Slightly OT (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Phat_Tony ( 661117 ) on Thursday August 11, 2005 @12:15AM (#13291861)
      "The linux community at large seems to have a strong sentiment in favor of using ogg over mp3"

      I can give you one reason it's not as big on the Mac as it is on Linux- support. The Macintosh OS-plugin [sourceforge.net] for Ogg never made it out of Beta, hasn't been updated in 15 months, and doesn't work with Quicktime 7- which includes pretty much everyone who's updated to Tiger or run software update under Panther. I mean no offense, I'm glad that people volunteer their time to make things like Ogg for free, but to be practical- I don't pay anything to rip to MP3, AAC, or Apple Lossless, and right now all my Ogg files won't play for who knows how long. It makes the format a pretty risky choice for Mac users.

      Yes, I know that there are other applications that play Ogg files on the Mac, but they're not competitive with iTunes, and I'm not going to change players depending on what music file I want to listen to.

  • Nice misleading title (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:34PM (#13290778)
    12.3% of MUSIC transfers, which is 11.34% of all traffic -- so Ogg makes up 1.4% of all P2P traffic. Which ain't bad at all, but is nowhere near 12.3

    • Re:Nice misleading title (Score:5, Funny)

      by leoxx ( 992 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:39PM (#13290805) Homepage Journal
      Yeah, not many people download movies in OGG format, and the ones that do probably spend a lot of time trying to figure out why the sound works perfectly but the picture is so garbled.
    • Which ain't bad at all, but is nowhere near 12.3

      Don't let reality get in the way of statistical manipulation! I think it's great that BitTorrent (and ogg) are becomming "respectable", but really, these numbers don't mean a lot.

    • As someone pointed out earlier, movies are much larger than music so of course p2p traffic will be dominated by video if you only care about bytes. Comparing music and video by bytes is like comparing apples and oranges. A much better figure, which I am sure it hard to figure out, is number of movies vs number of songs or albums.
    • 12.3% of MUSIC transfers, which is 11.34% of all traffic -- so Ogg makes up 1.4% of all P2P traffic. Which ain't bad at all, but is nowhere near 12.3
      It's worse than that. The article (and summary) say that Ogg is 12.3% of music, but they don't mention Vorbis. Either the submittor or the editor has decided that Ogg = Vorbis and put that in the title. But at least some of that Ogg traffic will be FLAC.

  • Ogg Vorbis Popularity (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ryg0r ( 699756 )
    IMO, I think we need oggs in cars.

    I used to ripp all my CDs straight to ogg, but seeing as I cant play ogg in my car, I've abandoned the idea.

    Why no play the original CD's? I hear you say, because my car got broken into and they were all stolen.

    Ogg's for cars would definiately be a great idea.

    • PhatNoise (Score:2, Informative)

      by GianlucaM ( 906711 )
      According to PhatNoise (PhatNoise.com) the latest firmware revision for their PhatBox supports OGG Vorbis up to 192kbps. You have to email them to get that information, because it's nowhere onthe site. I'm tempted to buy one.
    • There are ogg players for cars, as I understand it. You could also get a portable ogg player (if all your music is in ogg format, this isn't such a bad idea) and hook it up to your car directly. I do this with a tape adapter and my iPod.
    • Rip your CDs to FLAC instead for archiving, then transcode them to whatever lossy format you prefer when you need to put them on a portable device.

  • That still means a lot more music files (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alphanos ( 596595 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:36PM (#13290789)
    "According to CacheLogic survey, 61.44% of the peer-to-peer traffic nowadays is video, with audio taking distant second place, representing 11.34% of global traffic."

    If we assume that the average audio file is 5MB, which is probably too large, then there would only be a file-to-file equivalence if the average video file was less than 30MB, which is very small. You can't fit a single half-hour episode of some anime show into 30MB unless you have ridiculously poor quality. So it's reasonable to conclude that a much greater number of audio files are being traded, and video files use more bandwidth because video files are bigger, rather than because video files are more popular than audio files. An actual ratio would require data on the size of the average traded video file.

    • If we assume that the average audio file is 5MB, which is probably too large

      Recorded music on BitTorrent is usually albums, not singles. Albums on BitTorrent are at least 40 MB in most cases.

  • Great news (Score:3, Interesting)

    by darthgnu ( 866920 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:37PM (#13290796) Homepage Journal
    I only hope this percentage has an actual meaning... On the plus side, it will be a pleasure to download those CD's that have "rip" ""protection" in ogg. I proudly buy my music, but I cannot stand _any_ DRM, I rip all my CD's in ogg, and get them on my neuros music player. Great quality, smaller file size, I love it.

  • Asia (Score:2, Redundant)

    by rm999 ( 775449 )
    12.3% are in the open-source OGG file format (almost all of which are exclusively traded on the BitTorrent network, particularly in Asia).

    I think part of the reason ogg is bigger in asia is the iPod. The iPod is much bigger in the USA than asia, and it does not play ogg. Asia has players that can handle ogg, so people go with the superior format. I would like to see the day when my iPod can play ogg (i'm not holding my breath, apple isn't exactly known for adding more features to the old iPods) or americans

  • Hmm, that's interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DarkYoshi ( 895118 ) <elispiro@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:39PM (#13290809)
    61.44% of the peer-to-peer traffic nowadays is video

    I wonder what percentage of that is video minors are allowed to see?

  • Ogg Vorbis faces a challenge of intertia (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chrysrobyn ( 106763 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:56PM (#13290894)

    I tried out several encoders in 2001 when considering compressing my music library. I tried double blind tests on the best realistic equipment I'd be using (then a 10 year old amp and pretty new Bose 501 speakers -- both are now clearly 4 years older) using my PC sound card's RCA outputs. Not an audiophile setup by any means, but certainly a bit better than the PC's internal speaker.

    In my tests, Ogg Vorbis at 192KBps, MP3 (LAME) at 256KBps and something else.. WMA? at 256KBps were not decipherable from the original CD to my ears. Interestingly enough, I favored Ogg Vorbis even more because when I backed it down to 128KBps the artifacs I could hear sounded better than MP3's at 168. My choice was made -- Ogg Vorbis at 192KBps would be my preferred codec.

    So I went around looking for what could play it. Only a few pieces of software (winamp and xmms were the two I cared about) and zero hardware. I had aspirations of taking music with me, so that left all but MP3 out of the game at the time.

    I currently use iTunes to store and organize my library of 400+ CDs and synchronize a subset to my 1st generation 5GB iPod. Now that I've put that much effort into a single program, either another organizer will need to beat iTunes by being more comprehensive, useful, intuitive and stable, or iTunes will have to support Ogg Vorbis for me to encode future CDs in a codec other than MP3. Once iTunes encodes and plays Ogg Vorbis files, then I'll see about an iPod or similar that will play them (these days I'm in the iPod Shuffle price range). Since iTunes is a free (as in beer.. but where's all this free beer people talk about?) encoder, I'm not willing to pay for the inconvenience of switching to a new program.

    • So I went around looking for what could play it. Only a few pieces of software (winamp and xmms were the two I cared about) and zero hardware.

      Zero hardware? Not so. Cowen/JetAudio's iAudio, iRiver, MPIO, Rio, IOPS, Samsung, Neuros, ISM; all offer Ogg Vorbis-capable players.

      In addition, many Symbian phones can use OggPlay to playback Ogg files.

      Also, current versions of WinAmp handle Ogg, and there's plug-ins for the older versions. Xmms has always handled Ogg, IIRC.
      • He did say it was in 2001... and he mentioned WinAmp and XMMS as supporting Vorbis :)

        I just wish I had the cash to buy a new MP3 player - the iRivers look quite appealing, but I already have a 30GB iPod which makes it hard to justify ATM.

  • Amazing where your media goes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:57PM (#13290902) Homepage
    My brother took a copy of his Black Adder DVDs back with him to China in Xvid+Vorbis format (to save damaging the originals).

    6 months later I buy a pirate copy in Mexico to show to a friend because I don't have *my* originals with me, and it was the same files (or at least, the same checksum when I checked with him). Also on the disk was a vorbis codec and instructions about how to install it... and how to rip new media with it to best effect.

    Something to think about.
    • Oh dude, no way, that reminds me.

      My friend's little brother went to Amsterdam last year and while he was out drinking with some buddies, he met this really hot Dutch girl who asked him back to her place.

      Long story short, he gets drunk, passes out, and, swear to god, wakes up in a tub full of ice with a kidney gone!

      Seriously... :P

    • My brother took a copy of his Black Adder DVDs back with him to China in Xvid+Vorbis format (to save damaging the originals).

      6 months later I buy a pirate copy in Mexico to show to a friend because I don't have *my* originals with me, and it was the same files (or at least, the same checksum when I checked with him). Also on the disk was a vorbis codec and instructions about how to install it... and how to rip new media with it to best effect.

      If you encode the exact same files (ripping a DVD is much

  • Portable music players (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The OPTiCIAN ( 8190 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @09:07PM (#13290943)
    Are there any portable music players that support .ogg vorbis yet? (and are they any good?)

    • Re:Portable music players (Score:5, Informative)

      by isolationism ( 782170 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @09:34PM (#13291072) Homepage
      Plenty of the iRiver and Samsung offerings support it. My 1GB samsung YP-T6 is (slightly) smaller than a Shuffle, has a screen and more than 2 play modes, an FM tuner, a mic and line in with direct encoding capability (128kbps, but good enough for dictating notes etc.) and plays MP3, WMA, and OGG just fine. It also connects to Windows and Linux as a regular mass-storage device and so doesn't require iTunes or any of its open-source alternatives.

      It's a pity OGG support isn't more wide-spread, and worse still that lots of people bitch about wanting mp3s, completely oblivious to the closed-source brick wall the "next generation" of mp3 formats is going to present. I naturally will be smug with my OGG-playing YP-T6 and EPIA running Linux/Freevo as a set-top multimedia player.

    • Are there any portable music players that support .ogg vorbis yet? (and are they any good?)

      Cowen/JetAudio's iAudio, iRiver, MPIO, Rio, IOPS, Samsung, Neuros, ISM; all offer Ogg Vorbis-capable players.

    • Are there any portable music players that support .ogg vorbis yet? (and are they any good?)

      Yes [cowonamerica.com], and yes [cowonamerica.com]. Linux friendly, also.
    • iRiver IFP 899 [calum.org]

  • Commies! (Score:3, Funny)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @09:13PM (#13290976)
    "Almost all of the OGG files are traded via BitTorrent protocol with most of the growth coming from Asia..."

    This provides more proof that open-source is a communist plot -- most open-format audio files traded on those illegal p2p networks come from Asia, home to the largest communist country on Earth! Protect American business and ban p2p and the GPL!

  • Ogg on P2P (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nunchux ( 869574 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @09:44PM (#13291117)
    I never really use them anymore, but I remember that if you're looking for something on the P2P networks that isn't a top 40 hit you're at mercy
    of the seeders/uploaders/whatever you call them. If the parties ripping the music files decide to use Ogg over mp3 and the downloaders want the song, they're going to find a way to play them. This goes double for binaries groups... I remember quite a few times having to find new players for the various formats people would use, because I really wanted to hear more obscure (and otherwise unavailable) recordings.

    I also wonder, though this is pure speculation, if non-mp3 (and non-wma?) formats are gaining popularity because of the floods of garbage mp3s. The RIAA and whoever else is responsible probably aren't bothering with the marginal formats, at least not yet.
    • I'm finding that most collections I download are in FLAC. If you know where to look, you can find lots of non-top 40 songs.

      I've found that the searching and begging for seeds is too much of a hassle. allofmp3.com is a lifesaver for older stuff, and if they don't have it I go to iTunes.

  • I hope Steve Jobs reads this article (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nice2Cats ( 557310 ) on Thursday August 11, 2005 @06:05AM (#13293001)
    ... because I'm sick and tired of Ogg Vorbis not working with iTunes. This is turning into the the next one-mouse-button-is-fine issue with the Mac, except that I don't feel like waiting 20 years this time. How hard can it be to include one single little free format?

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