Center View and Music store integration

[Martin Aumueller]

I'm not too happy with this kind of requirements for integrating music stores, 
and I don't think that we can justify them.

I think Amarok should only care about providing the best possible user 
experience, not about making money. Ok, it's nice if we have some amount of 
cash, but if someone is willing to code and maintain a plugin, then it should 
be included with Amarok svn, no matter if we receive a share of the sales. If 
some music store promises to share its profits with us, then this might drive 
some developer to code a plugin for the store. But if there is some other 
motivation for doing so, then that's just as good. That's just how we handled 
plugins for media devices, and I don't think that we should deviate from this 
route for music stores. We don't expect to profit from the extra digital 
audio player sales to Linux users, which good media device support might 
create, either.

On Thu Mar 1 2007, Mark Kretschmann wrote:
> On Wednesday 28 February 2007 23:41, Bart Cerneels wrote:
> > This is related to the results of the FOSDEM brainstorm session, mainly
> > the Context View idea, which I'm re-branding the Center Pane.
> >
> > Now that the context browser is in the center and always visible it might
> > be a opportunity to rethink it's concept.
> > This is related to music stores because I don't think the current tree
> > view browser will scale when music stores get a bigger catalog. Consider
> > a music store that has a web-like interface, it's easier to browse, looks
> > better, albumart, browsing through a catalog based on related artists,
> > genres, recommendations, etc.
> > To implement a store like that we need screen real estate. The only place
> > I can think of that we have that is in the center pane.
> >
> > Now what is interesting is that, when implemented right, context and
> > music stores are just themes for the Center Pane. A reminder: Themes
> > control Widget that display data supplied by Scripts.
> > The things we can show in the center pane are only limited by the
> > complexity of the widget it uses.
>
> While we're at this topic, let me repeat my proposal that I had presented
> on IRC:
>
> 1)
> We need to create a set of minimum requirements for a store to be included
> in Amarok. Requirements could include:
>
> * No DRM.
> * Allows free preview of the music.
> * Maybe also ethics: Is the store allowed to offer any kind of music (e.g.
> Nazi music)?
>
> 2) The store must fullfill our minimum requirements, and make a deal with
> us (we get a share from the sales, like we do with Magnatune).
>
> As a result, stores need to be *certified* by us, to be allowed to bundle
> their store interface with Amarok. This also implies that we *cannot* allow
> stores to offer plugins for download on their website, which are loaded at
> runtime in Amarok. This would totally circumvent any of the requirements
> I've listed above.
>
> All store plugins (be it C++ or a scripting language) should be certified
> and bundled by us with Amarok, and ideally put into KDE SVN.