Strange music starts steaming for no reason, even when volume turned down

[Rabid Cheetah]

Using the Linden viewer.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, music will start playing.  On my parcel, not on my parcel.  Not from clicking anything, and detecting sound sources via beacons isn't turning anything up.  And it's a different stream than parcel stream.  Sometimes it's a 50's-style rock and roll stream, sometimes it's Glenn Miller's In The Mood, sometimes it's some weird alternative stuff with a voice over of Presdent Kennedy talking about going into outer pace.  If I play with the SL volume switches, including putting master volume at the lowest, I can still here this music.  There's nothing else running on my system, and and soon as I quit SL, the music stops.  Sometimes it will stop abruptly, but eventaully it will suddenly start again.  It seems to loop through various songs, as I'm currently hearing for the umpteenth time a bunch of people clapping and responding "whhhhhooooopppp!" to the singer's boogie-woogie rock and roll.  What in the world is doing this?!?!?!?!?

[ChinRey]

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Rabid Cheetah wrote:

Using the Linden viewer.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, music will start playing.  On my parcel, not on my parcel.  Not from clicking anything, and detecting sound sources via beacons isn't turning anything up.

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That sound a little bit strange but try to turn media sources beacons on and you should be able to locate the source(s).

What you experience is a typical example of Linden Lab's biggest recent bodged blunder, the updated and downgraded Media on a Prim.

An MoP player can be heard loud and clear for more than 100 m around, across parcel borders and even across sim borders and all sensible Second Life users should remember to switch Media off and keep it switched off.

But are you saying you already tried that? I think there are some versions of some viewers that won't let you kill MoP no matter what you did but I'm not sure and I can't tell which it was.

Edit:

I did a quick check of the three viewer/OS combinations I use regularly:

The essential kill-MoP function works well on the most recent version of the official viewer for Windows and also the 32 bit Firestorm 4.7.9. With the 64 bit Firestorm 5.0.1 for Mac MoP is not affected by the master volume but it should be possible to get rid of it by unchecking the Media checkbox.

[Monty Linden]

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Rabid Cheetah wrote:

...sometimes it's some weird alternative stuff with a voice over of Presdent Kennedy talking about going into outer pace.

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Sounds like 'Misson Control' on SomaFM.  A favorite stream.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Rabid Cheetah wrote:

Using the Linden viewer.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, music will start playing.  On my parcel, not on my parcel.  Not from clicking anything, and detecting sound sources via beacons isn't turning anything up.  And it's a different stream than parcel stream.  Sometimes it's a 50's-style rock and roll stream, sometimes it's Glenn Miller's In The Mood, sometimes it's some weird alternative stuff with a voice over of Presdent Kennedy talking about going into outer pace.  If I play with the SL volume switches, including putting master volume at the lowest, I can still here this music.  There's nothing else running on my system, and and soon as I quit SL, the music stops.  Sometimes it will stop abruptly, but eventaully it will suddenly start again.  It seems to loop through various songs, as I'm currently hearing for the umpteenth time a bunch of people clapping and responding "whhhhhooooopppp!" to the singer's boogie-woogie rock and roll.  What in the world is doing this?!?!?!?!?

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You're probably hearing someone else's "television" type item that uses Media-On-A-Prim. Under certain circumstances you can hear them when you really shouldn't, even when they're far away. You can prevent these items by being audible as follows:

1) When the offending sounds are playing, hover over the little "Play/Pause" indicator in the upper right corner of the viewer and click on the "More" button that appears.

2) You'll see a list of all the media that are playing. Find an entry that looks suspicious and click it.

3) There will be a slider that appears at the bottom of the listing and a button with a "magnifying glass with a plus" next to it. Click on the magnifying glass button.

4) Your camera will then slowly zoom into the object that's playing that particular media. If you right click the item and select "Manage > Block" that will permanently silence that item for you.

[Whirly Fizzle]

It's probably this bug, which isn't fixed yet: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-40937

The only workaround is to disable streaming media.

Preferences -> Sound & Media -> Untick "Media".

[ChinRey]

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Monty Linden wrote:

Sounds like 'Misson Control' on SomaFM.  A favorite stream.

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That explains why I've had exactly the same problem with exactly the same stream several times.

Media on a Prim is starting to become a serious problem in Second Life. What is the nice way for a landowner to tell their tenants "No, you can't have that lovely media player in your house, it's only for skyboxes and isolated sims."?

And what about sims with several parcel owners? Any of the owners can cover a full sim with noise pollution without even knowing it. It's easy to tell people they can just find and block each player but it has to be done and redone every time one of the neighbors adds or replaces a player. Besides, I do believe most users come to SL for some kind of experience not for playing around with the viewer settings.

Media on a Prim is of course a huge gift to griefers. If you can find a spot where you can rez, you can cover a whole sim's worth of land with noise.

It's a gift to spammers too. Upload your spam video to some website, get a parcel within 100 m of some popular hangout and add an MoP player. You probably want a rezzer that automatically replaces the player with a new one every now and then so people can't block it.

Don't like that club near your land? Rez a media player and drown out the DJ's stream with your choice of sound. Keep it up for a week or two (use temporary rezzed players like the spammers would) and voila! One less club in SL.

 

The right solution would of course have been to allow MoP to be limited to a parcel the same way voice and parcel media is and I still don't understand why Linden Lab didn't see how important that feature would be. It's not as if they didn't know about the problem. There's at least one JIRA about it and judging by Oz Linden's replies to it, it seems they just didn't get the point.

The second best solution would be to have MoP switched off by default. Then people who actually wanted to see/hear some MoP could switch it on and the ones who don't want it didn't have to bother with locating some well hidden viewer settings to get rid of it. Firestorm used to have MoP off by default and I'm sorry to see they've followed the official viewer's example here - it should have been the other way round.

 

Edit: I completely forgot to mention the "coolest" of all the uses MoP has: Buy a plot in the middle of a Horizon sim and add an MoP player. Before you know it, you have the entire sim to yourself. Land flippers and rental businesses will probably hold on to their parcels for a long time but that's ok, nobody is ever going to buy or rent there anyway.

             An MoP a day keeps the neighbors away.

[Whirly Fizzle]

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ChinRey wrote:

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 Firestorm used to have MoP off by default and I'm sorry to see they've followed the official viewer's example here - it should have been the other way round.

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Firestorm never had streaming media (or streaming music) disabled by default, but it has always had media and music autoplay disabled by default.  That setting hasn't changed.

By default, MOAP media  will not play unless you click the media face or click the media play button.

I doubt LL will ever disable media or music autoplay.  It's the autoplay setting being enabled by default that's actually the problem. Disabling autoplay by default was brought up at the TPV meeting a couple of weeks ago because of the problems it causes new users and LL thought it was a terrible idea.

Discussion at the TPV meeting:

 

 

[ChinRey]

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Whirly Fizzle wrote:

Firestorm never had streaming media (or streaming music) disabled by default, but it has always had media and music

autoplay

disabled by default.  That setting hasn't changed

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Oh, I misremember then. Sorry.

 

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Whirly Fizzle wrote:

Disabling autoplay by default was brought up at the TPV meeting a couple of weeks ago because of the problems it causes new users and LL thought it was a terrible idea.

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Yes, MoP is a bit of a Holy Cow for them, isn't it? Certainly a cow.