AIM Tunes

A few months ago I told you guy about the Buddy Tunes plugin for AIM. This basically made people's iTunes libraries appear like they are on your local network - thereby enabling users to stream music from any of their friends' machines. Since then, Simplify Media has essentially launched a productized version of this (albeit not integrated into AIM). The other approach that was being worked on at AOL before I left is now public in the AIM 6.5 release. It is called "AIM Tunes" and it is a similar concept but ditches the deep iTunes integration for a more player-agnostic approach.

Basically, everyone on your Buddy List (that has the plug-in installed) appears on your AIM Tunes dashboard (in your browser). From there, you can browse their libraries and either stream them directly from your buddy's machines via an embedded flash player - or if you want - to "pop them out" and have your default media player handle them.


You can also create a playlist of songs from all across your network - although it is currently only a single/temporary playlist.

All-in-all, it is pretty slick. It still could benefit from deeper integration into the AIM client (see who is listening to my stuff and better facilitate communication about what's being shared), Mac support, an aggregated "buddy library" view (lets me search seamlessly across my entire network), multiple playlist support, publishing, etc. But, if you use AIM I recommend giving it a whirl. I may end up just running on a separate AIM instance on my home machine (under a separate screen name) and use it to stream to myself. Then again, there are a ton of other options there... Winamp Remote (also an AOL offering), Streampad (although Dan now works for AOL too), and many others.

I'd be interested to know what you guys think of it.

Plug-ins to Share iTunes Tracks

A few months ago I told you guys about the AIM plug-in that enables any/all of your buddies music libraries to show up in the "Shared" node of iTunes. Essentially tricking iTunes into thinking that these buddies are on the same subnet (local network). The result is a streaming-only experience that you are familiar with if you already use the shared library function of iTunes - no copying, no ripping. These ideas actually aren't all that new, but they are now resurfacing after several dormant years. The AIM one works pretty well (still basically alpha therefore buggy at times). But, now that a Mac is my primary machine I have switched to Adium for my IM client and therefore I'm now out of luck.

Well, in steps Simplify Media with their iTunes plug-in that does essentially the same thing (with claimed support for Winamp and Windows Media Player coming soon). It allows you to invite up to 30 friends to join your "Media List". Technically, the number of people that can stream simultaneously off or you machine is limited by your bandwidth (combined with the bitrate of your tunes). Realistically, probably only a couple/few at one time. The 30 person limitation seems to be little more than trying to get protection under Fair Use?

I am using Simplify Media to give my friends and family access to my music library. Set up is fast, and the software is integrated with Apple iTunes.
To play my music, download Simplify Media for Mac or PC from:

http://www.simplifymedia.com/welcome.html

Once installed, click the 'invite' button and use my screen name: jherskowitz

It's simple, safe and free.

Currently I am trying it out to get access to my home library when I'm not on my LAN (also see my posts on Streampad, Orb/Winamp Remote and other remote access products). Anyone else out there using it? If so, hit me up so I can try it out.



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Now playing: Okkervil River - Love To A Monster
via FoxyTunes

MP3Tunes at Last

Last month I wrote about MP3Tunes' Oboe Locker. They recently started offering free unlimited online storage and bi-directional sync capabilities. After several weeks of starting/stopping the maiden upload process, I've finally got my stuff up there (Tip: Kick off the original sync while you are way out your door of an extended vacation). My collection netted out at just over 40GBs - at least of the DRMless MP3s that are useful to sync.

The upload process was unfortunately a bit more painful than I had hoped due to the relatively limited upstream bandwidth afforded my by my cable ISP - the rest of my online experiences suffered through the duration. I actually think the process of ripping all of my CDs several years ago was completed in less absolute time - although it was obviously much more labor intensive.

Now that I've got my music up there, I must say I like it. I have a handful of other remote-access products that I use or have tried in the past that will enable a similar use case. The problem is that I often find that either my machine has rebooted, is offline, or something has failed. And when the planets have aligned and it is all working, some of the web-based UIs I have used have felt unnecessarily heavy and slow for some reason. That is why I particularly like the MP3Tunes' Oboe Locker as integrated within Streampad. It's lightweight, responsive and easy to navigate. Also, with MP3tunes not only can I sync content from one machine to another, I can post MP3s directly to the locker (using the nice MP3Tunes sideloading browser plugins) and then have it sync back down to multiple machines (either Mac or PC). Another nice addition is that the sync utility will find/download/sync album art for all your content as well.

My only complaint at this point is that the syncs don't appear to run automatically on a schedule and/or delta detection. Other than that, now that my entire collection is easily and, more importantly, reliably accessible - I have found myself listening to more of my old stuff than I have in a long time.

Warning: Experiences On The Horizon Are Not As Distant As They Appear

I'm traveling again, and all week I have been dreading the fact that part of my journey requires a 2+ hour shuttle bus ride from the airport to my destination. To top it off, my mp3 player died on the flight, my laptop batteries were drained, I forgot a book and there is only a limited amount of entertaining things you can do with a Blackberry. Nothing scares me more than extended time with little other than my own thoughts.

But, as I got settled into my seat on the shuttle bus, I looked up to notice the sign "Free Wireless Internet Now Available on the Bus". Nice! But that only solved half my problem considering the state of my laptop battery. One eureka moment was followed by another when I looked above my seat to notice that there were AC outlets running along the roof of the bus.

So, here I am.... in the middle of nowhere, writing this, charging my laptop, streaming music from Streampad and being all-around productive. Yes, this will be a huge welcome addition to airline travel (hopefully soon), but what is more exciting is the in-car experience. Yes, Slacker is building out a dedicated satellite network to do this. Zing enables some great portable music consumption experiences via WiFi (in the Sansa Connect) - although it requires a Yahoo Music subscription. iPhones obviously support WiFi, although no one has yet to tell me how it works for streaming music from the web (and I haven't broken down and gotten one... yet). But, some of my buddies over at Sprint have been assuring me that WiMax (aka "4G") is real, and it is coming sooner than you might think.

As I've ranted about before, once we can get reliable IP access in the car (and to a lesser degree to our pocket) - the music consumption experience for the masses changes forever. Bye bye, XM/Sirus. Adios terrestrial radio. CDs, what the hell is a CD good for? The technological solution is virtually on top of us. The *real* challenge is the user experience - UI, personalization and discovery. Whoever gets those right - on mobile devices, PCs and car stereos - owns the layer between the consumer and the content. And, whoever owns that layer controls the advertising - and reaps the lion's share of the benefit.

Let the battle begin....

MP3tunes Locker (aka Oboe)

So it was recently brought (back) to my attention that MP3tunes is offering unlimited storage space in their online music locker.

MP3tunes Locker: Your Music Without Limits @ MP3tunes.com: "All your music online - free!

Oboe is an online music locker with unlimited space. With just a few clicks, access your music anywhere. Free your music from your home computer - cut the cord and sign up now.
Listen on any computer

Oboe can be accessed on any computer or web-enabled device. Now you can enjoy all your music at home, work or school. Wherever you go, Oboe follows.
Unlimited Music Storage

Yes, we really mean free (though you may have a short wait). Or beat the rush and get your unlimited space now with Oboe Premium:

* Larger music files
* Unrestricted album cover art
* Full customer support

Stock it and rock it!

With Oboe Sync software, storing your music online is soooo easy. And for your viewing pleasure, we automatically add cover art to your albums. Get it now!"

While I use a couple of different remote access products to handle the streaming of my content from my home machine to my other devices - namely Winamp Remote (powered by Orb Networks) and Streampad - I thought... "what the hell, I may as well back it up online too. It doesn't cost anything". So, I'll let you know how it goes in a couple of weeks. I've downloaded the Oboe Sync application (on both my Macbook and my home Media Center machine). Most of my music (about 10K unprotected MP3s with a ton of other DRM'd stuff that won't be included) is on the latter. I started the sync 18 hours ago, and according the app... I've only got another 258 hours to go. :-)

me*dia*or shower

Between vacation last week, and some work I've been doing on on me*dia*or - I haven't posted much lately. But, I think me*dia*or is getting pretty good. Well, at least *I* find it useful for keeping up with the news and dialog around "music 2.0".

I've turned what was once just a simple feed splicer into a full blown "river of news" feed aggregation network. I'm pulling about six dozen feeds right now - and using Yahoo Pipes to filter some of the feeds to just give me the music/media related posts from some of the more broad sources (e.g. Fred Wilson, TechCrunch, Mashable, etc.).

I've added a custom Google search box (that will search all of me*dia*or's sources), digital music job postings culled from Indeed, an embedded Meebo chat room (with the hope it will spawn real-time dialog among readers) and a Streampad widget that pulls the day's most popular MP3s from The Hype Machine (so you can listen while you read).

There are forums for quick access to on going discussions on particular topics. A secondary flash audio player where users can upload and/or point to MP3s across the web. The photo widget allows members to pull their Flickr photos directly into the network. Ning (one of the platforms used for me*dia*or - with Tumblr being the other) enables direct integration of those players and slideshows back into Facebook.

On my personal me*dia*or profile page, I've pulled in the feed from this blog as well as my Facebook status and Last.fm quilt.

Now the real question... will anyone besides me actually use it?

Facebook Shining the Spotlight on Free Range MP3s

If you are on Facebook you know that music applications are by far some of the most popular 3rd party apps across the network. The poster child for this is iLike who have basically doubled their membership base within the span of about a week after they rolled out their FB app. Also, Numair Faraz's "Audio" application currently can be found on over a half million profiles. The application is little more than a flash player that you give an MP3 url. As more people find and add URLs to free-range MP3s, the larger the index becomes so that others don't have to forage so hard.... you can stumble across a song that someone else has already found and just add it to your profile. There has been no exchange of media assets, just a bookmark. In one recent conversation John Parres captured the issue very succinctly...

I'm not hosting it. Numair's not hosting it. And Facebook is not hosting it. Butgo ahead and click the play button. It will point you to the MP3 file right over.... THERE>

Am I breaking any laws by publishing a search result? Are Numair and the Facebookers breaking any laws collaborating to build an index of publicly knowable URLs?

I, of course, am no lawyer - and don't have a clue whether/how the recording industry will look to stem this tide. But what I do know is that there is a huge trend of new services going this route... Streampad, grabb.it, Project Playlist, Webjay (although Yahoo will shut down this month), MP3Realm. Hell, I can just as easily use Google to find "free-range MP3s", build a XSPF playlist and drop a flash player into my blog. Unlike imeem and others that host the files, these (to your point) are just a bunch of pointers to locations all over the web.

If this approach gets locked down, then others will pop up. It would be just as easy (if not easier) to create an audio experience out of the freely available (and often times licensed) music videos on YouTube and others. Personally, I am not a music video watcher, but I would gladly leverage the audio track from them to build a free, legal (?), personalized playlist (or is it a station?). Who is liable then?

The damn has more leaks than the industry has fingers. Time to stop wasting time trying to plug the holes - and instead spend that energy on developing ways to leverage the power of the current.

Add Some Juice to Streampad for a Tasty, On-the-Go, Treat

I have a feeling I'm late to the game here, but as I was struggling through the process of trying to download songs one at a I time while using Streampad, it finally struck me that a great compliment to this streaming media web application is a small podcatching client. Honestly, I'm a bit embarrassed that it took me this long to come to this realization, the concept is one I'm very familiar with (and fond of) from Music Now.

Simply copy the RSS feed URL (from the details window in the lower left) for any playlist that you have created, subscribed to, or that Streampad created using their very useful PageStreamer bookmarklet:






Paste that URL into your podcasting receiver of choice (I'm using Juice - the artist formerly known as iPodder), and let it run. Now you've got all of the songs from your playlists on your machine where you can then sync, burn or listen offline.





The beauty of the PageStreamer capability is that you can easily subscribe to (and download) songs from your favorite music blog with no work required beyond adding the URL ("Open URL") and clicking "subscribe" and then taking the resulting feed URL into your client (as shown above).

When Stereogum (for example) adds a new review and MP3, it just flows to you - ready to throw on your portable device the next time you sync.

Brett Dennen

I just stumbled across Brett Dennen on Streampad.... this is my song du jour. If a song can actually grab my attention while I'm working, then I know it's got something special.

Take a listen...

Freeloader Free-for-All

There have been lots of developments the last week or so around ad-supported music services.

• Chinese search portal Baidu.com and EMI launch free all-you-can-eat streaming
• Ruckus opens up free downloads of their entire catalog to anyone with a .edu email address (including alums - if you just fib and say you are an active student)
• SpiralFrog in a death spiral - most of executive management departs

The question I have is... are startups like Streampad making this a moot point? You will notice that last week a Streampad widget showed up in my sidebar. I've just got it pulling what's hot on Hype Machine (which in turn is creating a playlist of MP3s from different locations all over the web). So, that playlist is dynamic and updates in real-time based on what people are blogging about and listening too. Or you can simply log into Streampad and search (a la SingingFish) - find a list of freely available MP3s and stream them to your heart's content via their embedded player. You could just as easily create your own playlist and embed that on your page - like this one:

Streampad also has some other cool features hidden in there. They (or is it just he - that being Dan Kantor, ex-Microsoft and De.licio.us developer) are working on remote-access to my own files (a la Orb). A small but potentially powerful music community. Integration with MP3tunes locker (find a song you like - copy it to your online locker). Also some other nice value-added mashups of listener maps and related information - as well as integrated reporting/scrobbling back to your Last.fm account.