Who is behind Leftob?

Giorgos, René and I, Olliver (the author of this FAQ). We run the Petcord netlabel and are musicians ourselves.


Where are you located?

Giorgos lives on the Island of Crete in Greece, René in Spain and I in Germany. Germany is also the place where our servers are located.


What does the word Leftob exactly mean?

I'm afraid I can't tell for sure ;-). Leftob was the result of me spending some time with inventing words that could be pronounced the same way in multiple languages. I suppose it must have started with variations on the word laptop, and from there it was a minor leap to leftob music. Creating nonsensical words may appear strange at first glance, but it has the advantage of avoiding issues with taken domain names or trademark violations (and encounters with overly litigious lawyers).


What is Leftob's agenda?

To play the music we ourselves enjoy, find relevant and are permitted to broadcast. Popularity concerns are secondary to us, but of course we are happy if someone is listening to our selection nonetheless ;-).


What led to the launch of Leftob audio cast?

Initially it was the frustration about not being able to find a netradio station that played the kind of music I wanted to listen to. There was no radio station I could find that could give experimental netaudio artists a chance to get noticed by an audience not familiar with the netaudio scene. Rather than waiting for a miracle and someone else stepping in, I discussed my idea with Giorgos and soon we followed a "do it yourself" approach.


Is there a reason why you do not play commercial artists?

Music distributed by traditional record labels comes with restrictive licences that prohibit any kind of broadcast unless you agree to pay a fee for the privilege of playing these works. By concentrating on labels and artists who grant the right to share their music, we can keep the expenses for running a netradio station low and avoid hassles with litigious businesses. As a non-profit project, Leftob cannot afford the costs involved with playing proprietary music and therefore opted to neglect it entirely.


I created a work that might fit to your programme. Is there a way you can play it on Leftob?

It depends ;-): If your work has been released as Open Source audio at archive.org or by a netlabel under the terms of Creative Commons then all you need to do is to get in touch with us and provide us with download links. In case your work has not been published yet, you additionally need to grant to us an exclusive and royality-free licence to play your music. This can be done quite easily by adding an explicit permission to your submission text, but it has to be there, because otherwise we are not allowed to play your music by German copyright law. The same applies to a work that has been released on a record label and you still own the copyright for. Note that in case you no longer own the copyright for your works we cannot play your music unless the current copyright holder consented to the broadcast.

Please note that even if all formal requirements are met, we shall only play music that we like and that fits into the Leftob programme. We don't care about authoritatively sounding testimonials or references and our final decision about the music selection is not negotiable by any means.


Is there a way to play the programme with Windows Media Player? It does not seem to work

The problem, according to third parties who looked into the issue, seems to be related to Windows Media Player not knowing what to do with the *.pls extension (which makes it the only media player known to me that cannot handle it). Sadly just switching to the alternative *.m3u extension that Windows Media Player knows will introduce issues with ITunes users. The easiest solution is to install an audio player that is capable of mp3 streaming. In case this is not an option (i.e. by corporate policy) a potential work around may be to create a text file with the following contents:

http://stream.cordpet.com:8448/

save it as leftob.m3u (or whatever name with *.m3u extension you wish to use) on your desktop and run this file whenever you want to listen to the programme. This seems to work around the problem, but we have no further info whether this applies to any Windows Media Player variety there is.


I can listen to your programme but not visit your page. What is wrong?

As a defence against compromised servers, hackers and spammers, repeated offenders are denied access to our websites, sometimes by firewalling. Whilst trying to avoid locking out legitimate visitors, this is not always possible. But we are constantly monitoring our logfiles and by the time we discover patterns that seem to coincide with human visitors we review blocks and lift them. So in case you have reason to believe to be erraneously locked out, try again in a day or two. Alternatively, you may request a whitelisting by sending a notification to leftob at gmail full stop com. Please be sure to include the ip address so we can review the netrange it resides. We apologise for the inconvenience and would be happier to not have to resort to such drastic measures, but the vast amount of abuse attempts we are noticing on our servers does not permit any alternatives without negatively affecting our operation.