Voyager's Golden Record For Aliens Now Available On SoundCloud

An anonymous reader writes: For years you've been able to listen to the sounds recorded on the golden records carried by the twin Voyager spacecraft online but NASA just made it a bit easier. The orginization just uploaded the recordings to SoundCloud. Now you can listen to a continuous stream of clips instead of clicking back and forth to hear the different tracks.

Interns running SlashDot tonight...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> The orginization just

NASA did, did they?

Copyright?

[MobSwatter]

Oh the phone lines are hot to the RIAA tonight!

Re:

[io333]

I'm pretty sure a few of the tracks are copywritten and have only been available on the torrent (complete) version, which NASA has never put up for listening.

Re:

[siddesu]

Copyrighted. It is a copy-right, not a copy-write. Because it is the right-holders are important, and not the people who actually write. ;)

Re:

[deviated_prevert]

There's no music on this disc, only greetings by unknown people who probably signed off to NASA anyway.

Wrong. They even put Glenn Gould [nasa.gov] on the disk so Sony most likely will be selling records and interstellar performance rights to the aliens who come to earth to find out who the hell played the piano like that and what why it has evil discordant humming in the background!

My favourite piece is the gavotte en rondeaux from partita 3 of Bach which I play on the guitar. But as far as the RIAA and US .gov revisions of who owns music goes WHO GIVES A SHIT? They are the worst bunch of fuckwad backward minded ass

Re:

[rossdee]

By the time it gets to where aliens are going to pick it up and listen to it, the copyright will have expired

Re:

[JazzLad]

It's going to take forever for them to hear it (the day after Steamboat Willie goes PD)?

Re:

[kimvette]

> By the time it gets to where aliens are going to pick it up and listen to it, the copyright will have expired

Not if Disney gets their way, it won't. Remember, "limited duration" = forever, minus one day.

tube?

[invictusvoyd]

I think it has been available on youtube for sometime now..

If only we'd known

[93 Escort Wagon]

We could've just engraved a URL onto the side of each Voyager.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, use a QR code. Don't make them type that stuff in themselves you inconsiderate clod.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Not only did "The Web" not exist as we know it when the rockets were launched in the 1970ies, but also there have not been nice ways to compress images and/or audio. Of course, a preconceived URL could've been engraved onto the probes, but then the standards for URLs etc. would've been affected by that. Or it could've been transmitted back through time, with a comment saying "do not dereference until 2015". Of course all of that would be sort of difficult anyway, given that a URL cannot be used outsid

Re:If only we'd known

[Gadget_Guy]

In space, no one can hear you whoosh!

Re:

[Tablizer]

We could've just engraved a URL onto the side of each Voyager.

A pop-up ad could offend them enough to annihilate us

Re:

[DrVxD]

Or an interstitial ad [slashdot.org] could have triggered their ADHD and move on to the next planet.

Thanks, Earthlings

[waynemcdougall]

That's actually a lot more convenient. Do you know how much trouble it is to get a needle for Gold records? I have to keep borrowing Bowie's.

Now if you could just get IPv6 sorted, I would feel much more welcomed.

Yours sincerely

Your Alien Overlord

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

And tractor noises.

So basically we're a planet infested with wild dogs and chimpanzees, with humans who can't communicate because we each speak a different language riding tractors through hurricanes, our hearts racing constantly in fear of the wild dogs that will inevitably get us.

We might as well have just forged the disc out of plutonium and filled it with the noises of nuclear blasts.

Re:

[Tablizer]

or worse, a Trump speech

Re:

[io333]

lol oh shit that's funny

Re:

[Scarletdown]

It looks like it was late enough in 1977 when these were launched, that they could have added photos of the Death Star blowing up Alderaan, and then a diagram of our asteroid belt.

Damn aliens!

[Tablizer]

"Number 9, Number 9, Number 9, Number 9, Number 9, Number 9,..." [youtube.com]

Re:

[wonkey_monkey]

Number 8 [youtube.com]

Where's the volume control?

[AndyKron]

Available on the world's only audio player WITHOUT A VOLUME CONTROL. Fuck that.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[jrumney]

If there are advanced alien species out there that would go to the trouble of decoding our message, we expect them to be audiophiles who would turn their nose up at ISO files and the CD medium they represent.

Encoded image audio?

[SalsaDot]

I was hoping for access to the audio tones that encode the images, it would be cool to get a decoder going for them, SSTV FTW

And the aliens said...

[VAXcat]

"Send more Chuck Berry"

Re:

[DrVxD]

There was a scene I always liked on The West Wing where Josh waxes lyrical about Johnson being on the disc (It's about 1:50 into This clip [youtube.com])

Re:

[blue trane]

Louis Armstrong, probably the greatest musician ever, is also on it.

Wonder what else is buried in the recording

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

William Safire was a political hack in Nixon administration, working as his speech writer. Later he wrote a NYT column in word origins and etymology. In one of those columns he was crowing about how he slipped a reference to God past the watchful eyes of the secular materialistic scientists of NASA. He basically got the year 1970 AD mentioned in the text. He was all agog that these NASA scientists did not realize AD stood for Anna Domini, the Year of the Lord, and he was proud of his little contribution in

Re:

[sudon't]

What's the alternative, C.E., (Christian Era)? I really don't see what difference it could possibly make. Either way, it's just a convention. First, the aliens would have to know it's an abbreviation for a particular Latin phrase, then they'd have to be able to translate that into their language, getting their equivalent of "Year of our Lord". Who knows what they'd make of that? But of course, they'd have no way of knowing what the letters "A.D." stand for, in the first place. It's pathetic, really.

Re:

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

CE is NOT Christian Era, it is Common Era. BCE is Before Common Era.

Of course it did not make sense to be proud of adding AD to the text, if you are seriously sending a message to be read by the aliens, who could not exist if Bible is literally true, then whats the logic? But it makes sense if you are charlatan trying to burnish your credentials in front of people who are not thinking logically.

Re:

[painandgreed]

What's the alternative, C.E., (Christian Era)?

Christian Empire

I'll Stick with Hawkwind

[sudon't]

Personally, if I want a record to give me the experience of space travel, I'll stick with Hawkwind.