MyStream is a device-to-device music broadcasting app which allows the users to stream to others the music they are listening. Imagine the scenario where you are listening to a song and you want to share it with a friend, instead of sharing earphone, MyStream app can stream the music to your friend’s device so both of you can listen to the song together.

Immediately when starting the app, you get a welcome screen telling you how to get started. The first step is to create a User ID. You can also connect to it through your Facebook account. Click on the MyProfile tab in the menu at the bottom and add a picture and join the community as well. You’ll need to add in the genres of the music on your playlist, such as rock, pop, country, etc.

The next step is to set up your playlist. Use the MyPlaylist tab in the menu at the bottom and create your playlist with the music you have on your phone or iPod. What it is missing here is a “Songs” option. Any time you do something iPod-related to either play music or make playlists, there are usually options of adding through artist, album, songs, genre, etc. This includes all that, but not just viewing by “song.” There’s also a “Save” function on it that can be easily missed. If you don’t click Save after adding your music, nothing will be added and you’ll have to go through that process all over again. You also can’t add any music on your device that hasn’t been added via iTunes or something similar. Songs added to your iTunes off a CD won’t work with this app.

If you didn’t do so when you were setting up your profile in the beginning, you need to set the Privacy and Streaming options. If you want others to be able to view your playlist, make sure you leave these options turned on. In the MyStream setup process, this is steps three and four.

After this, you’re ready to listen to other users’ playlists. Going to the Streamers tab in the menu at the bottom will take you to a listing of all the other uses that are signed on. You can either listen to the same thing they’re listening to simultaneously, or you can listen to ninety-second samples of all the songs in their playlist. If you’re with someone who also has an Apple device, they use the same app, and you can listen to music together, but both on your own devices.

Ideally, that’s exactly how it’s designed to work. However, I couldn’t find any other Users other than myself. I did read in the FAQs that if you’re having trouble locating other Users, you can turn off WiFi and turn on Bluetooth. It explained that sometimes public WiFi is protected. I’m in a hotel moving my son into college, so I thought this might be the problem. However, after I turned WiFi off, and turned Bluetooth on, I still showed as the only user. I was only able to listen to my own playlist, something I could do without this app.

Ideally, the most people that use this app, the better the app would become. To be able to listen to others playlists and have choices, you need to have multiple other people signed in at any given time. It’s a great idea, and one that could possibly become very popular, but until it does, the usage of the app is limited.

The Premise

Raise your hand (or mash your keyboard) if you pirate music. I thought so. How do you feel about it? Indifferent? A little guilty? Uncomfortable? Well, with Spotify, you get the choice of a free account or a paid one, so if for some reasons, you object to paying $5/month for the best music application since Napster, then there’s still something in it for you.

The Offering

There are 3 plans available on Spotify – Free, Unlimited and Premium. The main differences between these three accounts is that the free account subjects you to the occasional ad, the Unlimited account has no advertising, and the Premium account lets you download up to 3,333 tracks to your computer and/or mobile device so you can carry them around with you. The sound quality on the Premium account is also higher (320kbps ogg versus 160kbps ogg). I’m personally on an Unlimited account, and it sounds great so I’m not sure how much benefit there is sound-wise unless you’re running it through an amazing home theatre setup. Keep in mind that Spotify is currently limited to people in Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom or the United States. For the paid accounts, there is no need to use a VPN to access Spotify outside these countries – you just need to make sure you can pay with a credit card or Paypal account registered in these countries. There are also many people selling US gift cards for Spotify on Ebay.

The Interface

Spotify’s main interface is very much an iTunes clone, but prettier. You run searches from the top left search box, and browse your results in the main window on the right. Double clicking a track starts it playing almost instantly, and you can jump through the track as if you were listening to a downloaded file. Clicking on an Artist’s name will bring up a list of everything Spotify has on that artist, as well as some artist information. Up the top there are tabs for Biography, Related Artists and Artist Radio. The biographies tend to be quite good, and the related artists section is very useful for discovering music similar to things you already like. Artist radio just plays a selection of related artists at random.

You can create queues in Spotify, much as you would in iTunes. If you have an artist’s page open, just right-click on the name of an album and click “Add to…” then “New Playlist”, and a new playlist will be created on the left. What I tend to do is create an initial playlist, then browse related artists, queuing additional albums until I build up a decent list of interesting and varied music.

Problems

There are a couple of issues with Spotify. Firstly, not all music is correctly categorised under the right artist – especially if the track was produced by a couple of different artists. As far as music that’s not available on there, the only thing I was not able to find was the genuine soundtrack to the Blues Brothers. There were many “tributes”, but not the real deal unfortunately. However, like I said – that was the only album I couldn’t find.

Wrap-up

All in all, the service is really quite good. If you’re tired of playing around with torrents, feel guilty for downloading pirated music, or just want easy access to music, Spotify’s well worth a try!

In your Android, go to the market and install HomePipe Free. Similarly, in your iPhone/iPod Touch, go to the app store and search and install the HomePipe Free app.

Launch your HomePipe app on your mobile device. Sign up for a new account.

On your computer (Windows or Mac), check your email and click on the confirmation link. This will bring you to the installation page where you can download the HomePipe desktop agent for your computer.

Once installed, HomePipe will run in the background and setup your computer as the server. When running, HomePipe will automatically make your “Documents” folder visible to your mobile devices.

In your mobile device, log into HomePipe. You should see your local folder as well as the remote computer that you have set up.

Things that you can do on HomePipe

Streaming music

You can stream music from your iTunes library to your mobile devices.

Viewing document

You can view your documents on your phone as long as it supports the document format.

Manage your document

In addition to viewing your document, you can also download, copy, move, email, rename or even delete your document on the remote computer.

Uploading document from mobile device to remote computer

HomePipe allows you to do a 2-ways file transfer. If you have a file on your mobile device that you want to transfer to your remote computer, you can also do that in HomePipe.

Adding multiple computers

Most of us have more than 1 computer that we used daily. It can be your home and office PC. The best thing is, you can connect them all to HomePipe. What you need to do is to install the HomePipe agent onto each computer and they will automatically show up on the mobile device.

Accessing other folders

By default, HomePipe only make the “Document” folder visible to your mobile device. You can, however, add other folders that you want to view while on the move.

In the HomePipe Web interface, click the Sharing/Settings link next to the chosen home computer.

Click the Make Another Folder Available link.

From there, browse and add the Folder you want make accessible and give it a good name.

Accessing from remote computer

Other than your mobile device, other ways that you can use HomePipe to connect to your home computer include:

• any browser on any computer. You can easily access your home computer as long as you have access to Internet and a browser.
• Webdav. You can also connect to the remote computer using Webdav, from your file manager. You have to connect using the address: https://dav.homepipe.net/<your@email.address>/<yourShare>/

Overall, I find HomePipe to be an useful app for accessing your document on the move. What do you think?

First a little perspective – I LIKE to listen to music, especially when I’m at work or riding the bus on the way back home. But, I don’t really like any of the radio stations that play in my area and then there are those times when I just want to listen to a particular song and waiting for my favorite online radio station to play it, just doesn’t cut it.

Times like these are when I miss my desktop at home the most because that is where I store all my music collection. I’m sure you all will agree with me on this and if you’re a music lover, I’m also pretty sure you must have faced this problem yourself.

Today, I found a solution for this problem. AudioBox.fm !

AudioBox is an online cloud based audio streaming service for your own music. What that means is that they provide you with space on their servers to upload your music and then listen to it using an awesome full featured web application.

The best part about AudioBox is that you don’t even need to install any application on your computer/mobile to stream songs from their site. It all works using an HTML 5 based web application.

Uploading Music and Getting Started

AudioBox offers up to 1 GB of space FREE for you to store your music. Just Sign Up, pick the free plan, choose a username and password you’re good to go. One short email confirmation and you’re all set to upload 1 GB worth of music to AudioBox’s cloud.

Once you’re inside AudioBox, launch the music player by clicking the Cloud Web Player link on the top of the page.

This will take you to an iTunes like HTML 5 application that lets you upload music to AudioBox’s servers and play it at your convenience.

Click the Upload Media button in the top left corner of the page to upload your music files. Once all your music has been uploaded, you can start playing by simply clicking the play button, or double clicking the particular song that you want to listen to. AudioBox works almost like a real desktop based music application.

The free version of AudioBox lets you stream music to a desktop only using your web browser but if you upgrade your plan, you also get the ability to stream music to a mobile device like the iPhone.

Have you ever felt the need to listen to a song your desktop when you’re away from it ? Does AudioBox sound like the application that’ll solve your problem ? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: RossinaBossioB

If you are looking around for new options of Web radio, here are 6 of them that you can consider.

1. Deezer

The first one I came across was Deezer. It has playlists, radio stations and full albums to listen to. Deezer really lets you explore new music in all kinds of different ways. What I liked most about this site is the options; it isn’t just radio or playlists.

Deezer is laid out in a way which gives you plenty of way to start. Right in the center of the homepage are a few of the featured albums or radio stations. As you move down the page, you are presented with more options like featured playlists, songs topping the charts in different countries and a few featured webradios

2. Pandora

Pandora is one I have used a lot. The main reason I use Pandora so much is the app for my Blackberry. Having all of the basic functions and all of my stations with me where ever I am has been really great. When I am at my desk or on my laptop, I don’t always want to have my browser open.

Pandorabrowse (Windows) and Pandoraboy (Mac) allow such access.

What I do not like about Pandora is it play mostly well known groups. Also when you “thumbs up” several songs, it really narrows the amount of songs it plays.

3. Grooveshark

Grooveshark is a pretty cool site for finding new groups. The site and player has a iTunes feel to it. When you type a query into the search bar, it pulls up a window with a long list of possible matches. The selections had a pretty wide variety with a lot of groups I had never heard of. When you find an album you want to listen to, you can add either a single song or the entire album to your playlist.

Signing up for a free account gives you options to save songs, playlists and share the song via email, Twitter, Facebook and a few others.

4. Imeem

Imeem is a little different than the others in the way it pulls up the results. If you were to type in the artist Tricky into the search bar, it pulls up a bunch of individual songs with the word or artists with tricky in it. From this window, you can click the blue bar at the top of the list and add all of the songs in the results to a playlist. The playlist plays in a pop out window.

5. Playlist

Playlist is a great site for sharing music with friends. You can share an entire playlist of songs you have randomly chosen. Other sites typically let you share a single song or artist. On Playlist, you can see other people’s playlists in their entirety. You can also create a playlist of your own while listening to other people’s playlists. This is done simply by clicking the add tab to the right of the song playing. It will add that song to your list.

6. 8tracks

8track is another great site to share playlists with people. Much like some of the other sites, it is very easy to share your musical selections with others via social media. With 8track, it is easy to find and listen to random playlists. When you search for a particular artist or tag, it will pull up mixes created by others which include that artist or style of music. I really like this because you are not getting one artist, you are getting several all with similar styles but in the same genre. It is really easy to find new music this way.

Overall, I still use Last.fm and Pandora the most because of the mobile and desktop application options. I know I would use the others more often if such options were available to me. (My Blackberry 4.5 OS isn’t supported… I need an upgrade ASAP)

What sites do you use to discover new music?

Image credit: onkel_wart

GNUMP3d – The GNU Streaming MP3 / Media Server

Platform: *nix, Windows, OSX
Browser/Client Player: Client
Supported formats: MP3, Ogg Vorbis
Configuration: Text File

So far, I think GNUMP3d is my favorite simple music streaming application. According to the website it runs on Windows as well as the UNIX type systems you’d expect from GNU. I’ve only tested it on Linux and it’s been a breeze.

To install GNUMP3d, you just download and extract the tarball from the GNUMP3d website, and run

make install

Configuration is done through a plain text file, instructions are provided on the website.

Once it’s up and running, you point a web browser to the address you’ve set up (like http://localhost:8888) and you should see a screen similar to the screenshot above. From here you can click directories or individual tracks. Each click will result in the server generating a playlist file (.m3u) which your host computer will open in whatever media player you have set up for M3U files. I tested it through VLC but the website notes that others like WinAmp and XMMS work as well.

Another handy feature found in GNUMP3d which seems to be rare with this type of software is that it allows not only streaming but plain downloads of the music files. You can download the MP3 as easily as you can stream it.

One thing I felt was missing from GNUMP3d was user access control. I’d like to be able to set permissions so that only those with the correct username and password can access my music collection. The README stated that similar functionality had been there for a previous release, but had been removed as it didn’t really do anything to improve security.It did, however, let me restrict connections based on IP address. This worked well for me as I intend to stream my home music collection from work, so I set it to only accept connections from my employer’s IP range.

Vibe Streamer

Platform: Windows (also reported to work through Wine)
Browser/Client Player: Browser
Supported formats: MP3
Configuration: Graphical

Vibe is the music streamer I’ve tested most in Windows.  Like GNUMP3d, it runs a mini webserver which gives you a browsable list of available music files. Unlike GNUMP3d, it is set up through a normal Windows graphical program. Another difference is that Vibe uses an in-browser player to play the music, instead of relying on a client-side program such as Winamp or VLC.

The one feature I really liked about Vibe was that it was very easy to set the server to only accept connections from someone with a proper username and password. It didn’t seem to use HTTPS so I can’t make any claims on how much that really improves security, but it’s a nice feature. It would at least stop someone from casually strolling on to my server and using up my bandwidth.

Icecast

Platform: Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris
Browser/Client Player: Client
Supported formats: MP3, Ogg Vorbis
Configuration: XML file

Of the software I reviewed for this article, Icecast was by far the most difficult to set up. Configuration is done through a XML file using a lot of unfamiliar terminology. I read over the docs on the website which clarified a few of the options, but there was a lot I had to figure out on my own.

Icecast streams music like a regular radio station, with a certain selection of music being beamed out to the world. You don’t have the control over music selection you have with the other options I’ve covered here. This is good from the server side, as you only need to send out a single stream which all listeners will hear. For my purposes, I just want the stream for myself while at work, and I’d like to choose my music selection as I go, so Icecast doesn’t meet my personal needs very well. If you intend to stream music to many listeners, the Icecast style might be the best way to go.

Apache

Platform: Just about everything
Browser/Client Player: Either
Supported formats: Anything
Configuration: Apache config is a BIG topic better handled elsewhere

That’s right, the plain old Apache webserver is all you really need to stream/download your music. It’s probably not the BEST option in most circumstances, but it’ll do the trick. You simply install Apache according to the instructions for your operating system, and drop your music files in the web folder. That’s it. You won’t have any nice graphics, no playlist support, nothing fancy just a list of files that can be clicked to download or stream, depending on client/server configuration.

IMPORTANT – As with any internet-connected server, be very careful about what you place for public access. Any of the software listed here could potentially have some kind of security flaw. On top of that, it’s probably a bad idea to host copyrighted music to the whole internet. Stream at your own risk.

What other software do you use to stream music over the Web? Share with us in the comments.