WeStream: Streaming Music From A Torrent File
WeStream is a new applet that allows you to listen to individual music tracks, streamed from .torrent files. The applet is developed by BitLet, has a great interface, and is compatible with all Java-enabled browsers.
WeStream works in a similar way to BitLet’s web based BitTorrent client. All you have to do is go to the WeStream page, enter a link to a .torrent file that links to music files and hit play. The applet will then scan the torrent for files that are suitable for streaming and provide you with a web interface to control playback and volume.
Currently, WeStream supports OGG and MP3 encoded audio files, but more file types will be included in the near future.
There are a few important conditions to achieve an optimal streaming experience. Most importantly, there should be enough seeds and peers to guarantee a decent download speed. Besides this, the playback time will depend on the filesize of the tracks – the higher the bitrate, the more bandwidth is needed.
Below is an example of WeStream for a torrent from Mininova’s featured torrents section. By clicking on this link you can load it in your web browser.
From a technical viewpoint, WeStream prioritizes the bits at the beginning of each song, otherwise it will be impossible to stream anything before the entire track is downloaded. However, like most other BitTorrent clients, it also gives a high priority to rare pieces in order to guarantee an optimal swarm speed.
The applet seeds the torrents as long as you keep the browser window open. Daniele, the developer of both BitLet and the new WeStream feature told TorrentFreak: “It would have been easy to design the streaming client to be extremely selfish, and make it care only for its needs. Ideally, we tried to avoid it: Westream should behave as most torrent clients, with a slightly different piece choosing strategy.”
WeStream is a great tool for people who want to listen to some of the tracks before they download anything, or for people who want to let their friends listen to an album without having to send all the files over first. Above all, it is a great looking innovation from the BitLet team that shows how much is possible with BitTorrent. We might just see this implemented in some of the popular BitTorrent sites soon.
