News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by jellicle on Monday April 30, 2012 @10:39AM (#3909422)
Every part of the music collection to be posted... except for the music. Oh, and the art.

{facepalm}

You know, if this record collection were to be shipped to a sane-copyright country, it could be digitized and posted online for the world to interact with. But the most likely trajectory of law in the UK is that it will never, ever, become legal to post this content online in the UK.

Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by nekojima on Monday April 30, 2012 @10:24AM (#3909354)
From an updated press release on the site:

"You will be able to see the hand-typed cards that John diligently typed for every album in the collection, the record sleeves, as well as listening to tracks via spotify and itunes where available."1

I'd guess most of John Peel's collection would unfortunately not be available on itunes or spotify. Looks like there will be a listing of the albums/singles with notes, album cover and a link to buy elsewhere. Not the digital copy so many would very much prefer.

The unreleased or uncut Peel Sessions would be of huge interest to many, if those are to be released, but also many of the rare & early tapes, singles and albums of influential, famous and not-so famous bands.

1 - http://johnpeelcentreforcreativearts.co.uk/index.php?option=...

Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by zandorg on Monday April 30, 2012 @01:33PM (#3910293)
As far as I know, the Peel Sessions are (c) BBC Radio, because they were recorded in the radio studio...
Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by nekojima on Monday April 30, 2012 @02:40PM (#3910668)
Yes, BBC allowed some of the sessions to be released. Sessions from 80+ artists, of the 2,000+ artists & 4,000+ sessions recorded, were released on Strange Fruit Records before closing in 2004.

List of those releases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Fruit_Records

List of artists & date of recordings from the Sessions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Peel_sessions

Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by dazzawazza on Monday April 30, 2012 @09:51AM (#3909217)
This will be an amazing resource if it included John's notes as they say.

How they intend to get the rights to EVERY song in his collection is beyond me but I hope they achieve it.

Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by noonespecial on Monday April 30, 2012 @10:19AM (#3909338)
They aren't. They're posting just his notes. In most cases, they can't even scan the sleeve. Thanks to copyright, history will have a fabulous written record of all of the material that was completely lost.
Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by dclowd9901 on Monday April 30, 2012 @12:03PM (#3909781)
Reading your comment just broke my damn heart in two.

It's situations like copyright that make me just want to go completely underground and write applications that are illegal, unscrupulous and unethical.

Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by davepeck on Monday April 30, 2012 @01:14PM (#3910196)
Heartbreaking and infuriating. My only consolation is that I suspect an epic John Peel torrent will pop up a couple years after the archive goes live. Without the bits, the online 'collection' strikes me a hollow facsimile of the real thing.
Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by noonespecial on Monday April 30, 2012 @06:30PM (#3911907)
I suspect what you write would only be one of those three things.
Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by keithpeter on Monday April 30, 2012 @11:03AM (#3909538)
Perhaps some of the money will go to preserving the records themselves in an underground archive somewhere in London (or another UK location).

My fantasy would be filling in a reader's card, descending the staircase, and reverently removing various treasures from their sleeves and cueing them up on a BBC issue record player (think heavy machinery).

But, I suspect you may be right.

Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by dazzawazza on Monday April 30, 2012 @12:38PM (#3909978)
Oh, well. Oh. OK. So...... yeah, that'll be nice.

I am actually sure that most of the Heavy Metal bands he played would gladly hand over rights to the music and artwork. They should talk to Napalm Death.

Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by xbryanx on Monday April 30, 2012 @01:15PM (#3910204)
Would be so cool if they could contribute to existing initiatives such as http://www.discogs.com/ with links to the specialized Peel collection interface. Let's hope there's an API.
Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by davnola on Monday April 30, 2012 @04:37PM (#3911334)
In the meantime, you can listen to every track from every John Peel Festive 50 at http://peelplayer.com

Disclaimer: it's a site I hacked together in a few hours for John Peel day last year

Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by Joeboy on Monday April 30, 2012 @05:05PM (#3911500)
That's awesome, thank you. I suspect this will waste a lot of my time.

What does the site actually do? Did you have to find all the tracks manually on Youtube? Were they all findable? What happens if they disappear?

Re:John Peel’s Record Collection to be Made Public by davnola on Monday April 30, 2012 @05:46PM (#3911706)
Cheers! Really enjoyed making it!

I compiled a JSON index of all the tracks from various sources. The site loads the index and calls the YouTube API to find the best match video. Simples! I manually blacklisted and whitelisted some video ids as reports of missing/broken tracks came in last year, but it's pretty robust as videos come and go.