To install:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nuvola-player-builders/beta
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nuvolaplayer

This is what you will see on the first run:

Being a Grooveshark fan, the first service that I clicked on is, of course, Grooveshark. This is what you will see. You can perform a search and add songs to your playlist. Everything is just what you see in the browser.

The same goes for Google Music, Hype Machine and 8 Tracks.

Note: Although Google Music is only for US citizens, with a simple US-based VPN connection, you (those who do not reside in US) should be able to activate Google Music service with your Google account. Once the service is activated, you won’t need a VPN to access your music anymore.

System tray icon with Player Control

Nuvola Player also comes with an app-indicator (or system tray icon) with the ability to control your music. You can Pause/Play the current song and go Next/Previous song in the playlist. There is even a Thumb Up/Thumb Down button.

Conlcusion

Nuvola Player is basically a browser wrapper that contains links to various cloud services. There is nothing new that you can’t do on your normal browser, but the convenience of having several cloud music services at your fingertips and the ability to run separately as a native app make it a winner.

What do you think? Is this kind of music player suitable for you? Or you prefer the good old Rhythmbox and Amarok?

Nuvola Player

We’re a family that puts great importance on our music, and because of that, we have every musical device that’s able loaded up with our favorite music. My daughter and I both have MacBooks that we’re using, and my husband has a Hewlett Packard laptop. When my husband got a new iPod, he decided he wanted to take over control of his music on his laptop instead of having me do it on my laptop. Since an iPod can’t be synced with Windows and Mac at the same time, the dilemma became how to get the music from the MacBook onto the HP, then onto to iPod. Sure, there’s old-fashioned ways, such as making CDs to transfer, but in this electronic age, it’s not necessary. iTunes Match did it all for me.

iTunes Match does have a hefty price tag on it for $24.99 a year.  That’s what kept me from signing up when it was first released with iTunes version 10.5.1. However, for our uses of music, it became worth it. To sign up for iTunes Match, open iTunes on your computer and find the link on the left side underneath iTunes Store.

iTunes Match begins by gathering information about your library. It needs to know exactly what you have on there. Depending on how much you do have on there, it can take a while. While you can link up to ten computers and iOS devices to iTunes Match, you can only have it upload one library at a time.

iTunes now matches up the songs you have on your computer with ones in the iTunes Store. Since not everything is available in the store, it won’t find everything in this step.

For all those songs it couldn’t match up, iTunes Match now uploads them into the cloud. This was the selling point for me with the service. My husband was putting stacks of CDs into iTunes on his computer. I wanted access to that too, yet didn’t want to spend the hours combing over it all. For the CDs he uploaded that just came through as “Track 01,” “Track 02,” etc., it wasn’t very helpful. iTunes Match couldn’t match that to anything in the store and just put it in the cloud that same way. I’ll have to go through at some point and identify and edit those to fix it. Again, the time for this step will vary depending on your own library. My library had over 2000 songs in it and the whole process took hours.

Once iTunes Match has finished uploading artwork and songs and has matched everything to the best of its ability, you’re free to either add another computer or link up your iOS devices. Initiate it on a second computer the same way you did for the first one, except click “Add This Computer.”

To initiate iTunes Match on your iOS 5 devices, go to the Settings app, and choose Music. change the option for iTunes Match to being on. It will ask for your password and warn your about replacing your library. The service will remove your library and replace it with what you just uploaded to the cloud. For me, I have music I don’t keep on my devices as it’s things I no longer want or things I downloaded for someone else. However, once you have enabled iTunes Match on your device, it gives you an option to only show your downloaded items on your device. It’s still avaiable to you in the cloud, but you don’t have to sort through it.

For the purposes of this article, I chose the option to have the cloud visible in my iTunes library on my iPad. The items that are not in my library on my iPad, but are in the cloud, have a little cloud icon next to them. The coveted library my husband was looking for is now in the cloud. We had changed the album name to “Jeff’s Mix” to keep the songs together, and had replaced album artwork with special pictures of the family. I’m not even sure where those pictures are anymore to redo it. However, that adjusted playlist is now in the cloud, with the pictures. It was on my MacBook, and now with iTunes match, we can download it to our devices, and my husband can download it to his computer, and then put it on his iPod.

With the music stored in the cloud, you have a choice of playing it from the cloud, or downloading it to your device or computer. If you want to download it, tap the cloud icon next to the song or album you want downloaded. It seems to take a little longer this way then downloading it from iTunes straight up.

The advantage to downloading the songs and not playing them off the cloud is that you then have the option of using other music apps. I prefer to play my music using the SoundHound app, and after I downloaded the song off the cloud, it then appeared in this app as well. I also added the service to my iPhone, making all of the music we have ever downloaded in iTunes, or have uploaded to these two libraries, available on all iOS devices and both computers. Doing the same to my daughter’s computer will improve all this even more.

Noow is a pretty new competitor to the media playback game. Its claim is that it can play back HD video with amazing quality. Lets see how it stacks up against VLC.

The desktop applications

Both are applications you will need to download and install onto your machine. The look of Noow is clean and modern.

There are options in the left sidebar to video sources like Hulu and YouTube. Also near the bottom of that same sidebar, there are some links to podcasts.

VLC has a more plain interface. It is not as stylish as Noow’s player, but has everything you typically access right there in the open.

Noow media types played

Noow can play MPEG, AVI, DivX, H.264, Flash Video, QuickTime, Windows Media. There is not a full list of file types anywhere I could see.

While installing Noow, you may want choose custom install so you can turn on support for QuickTime, MP3, AVI, MPEG, Windows media files. These are not checked by default.

VLC media types played

VLC has a full list of media types it can play. If you take a look at the file types, I doubt there are many out there that VLC won’t play.

Having the ability to play a specific media type can take a lot of the guess work out of deciding on the player you want to use.

Noow special features

Playback location – If you need to stop a movie or video before you finish it, Noow will remember the location where you stopped and automatically start you there when you open the file again.

RSS feeds – Get the latest video from your favorite site using the RSS feed option.

Torrent files – You can use files from Bit Torrent

Space – You can set aside a certain space on your hard drive for your downloads and be notified when it is full.

VLC special features

Stream – You can stream your audio and video files to other devices. This can be super cool if you set up an old computer as a media server.

Remote – Your Android device can be used as a remote to control your media playback.

Appearance – You can download different skins to change the look of the player window.

Conclusion

I am still leaning toward VLC. My reasoning is, I am using Windows 8 for most things recently and Noow was a bit choppy playing video. I don’t expect all of the applications to work perfectly on a new OS. Noow worked great for me in XP. VLC has been a great all around media player for as long as it has been around. They usually adapt to new formats very quickly.

What kinds of features help you choose which media player to use?

One media streaming dilemma that still faces some Xbox 360 and PS3 users is the ability to stream content from another device, such as a desktop or laptop computer. If you have home movies, pictures or photos, a collection of MP3s, or other content that you have downloaded to your computer, it is a pain to have to copy that content to your game console. For Windows users, they can connect their Xbox 360 to their Windows computers without much difficulty. For the rest of us, there are third-party tools. One in particular that I have been using lately is PS3 Media Server.

PS3 Media Server

Despite the name, PS3 Media Server can actually stream to a number of UPnP-capable devices, including the Xbox 360, Android phones and tablets, XBMC, iPad, and Sony Bravia Internet TVs. It is also cross-platform and free and open source, with builds available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. It is written in Java and can stream supported content formats directly or even transcode incompatible content before streaming.

Installation and Setup

The Windows and Mac versions comes with .exe and .dmg files respectively. The installation process should be familiar to you. For Linux, there are no distribution-specific packages, so you will need to download the .tgz file and extract the contents. You can copy the extracted files wherever you want and then just execute the PMS.sh file. As it is platform-independent, you might be able to get it to work with other Unix-like OSes, such as FreeBSD, as long as Java is installed and working.

After startup, the first screen will show you a detection process where PMS will look for a PlayStation 3 on your network. If it finds one, it will show a picture of one at the top and immediately make itself available to it. Regardless, it will continue searching for additional devices. If it finds an Xbox 360, it will display a picture of one on the bottom half of the window.

Your content will now be ready to stream, but you still need to tell PMS where the content is. To do this, click the “Navigation/Share Settings” tab. At the bottom is a section called “Shared folders”. Click the folder icon with the big plus emblem and select the folders you want to add to your streaming library. Once you have selected the folders you want, you will notice that the top middle button labeled “Restart HTTP Server” has become available. Click it to refresh your new shares.

There are many other features you can configure, such as image thumbnails, network features, and transcoding settings. To support transcoding, you will need to make sure you have Mplayer/MEncoder and/or FFMPEG installed. If you intend to stream HD movies while transcoding them, you will need a powerful computer. My laptop was unable to do it without stuttering through it. Without transcoding, everything streams fine.

At your game console, you should go through the normal process of attaching media streamers and playing content. On the Xbox 360 for example, it will detect your PS3 Media Server and play content from it as if it were a Windows machine. If you have trouble connecting, always go back and check the “Status” tab on PMS, and if necessary, restart it. You should now be able to enjoy your computer’s content from your living room anytime you want it.

PS3 Media Server

Upon opening GrooveBug, it presents you with a listing of the music you have stored on your iPad. All of the artists are listed there alphabetically. You can click on one of these artists, or click random if you’re not sure what you’re in the mood for.

Also on this home page are several unique music genres. Rock, pop, classical, etc., aren’t there. What is there are categories such as Chicago Blues, Acid Rock, and Bossa Nova. You couldn’t ask for a more eclectic mix. This is content that GrooveBug is featuring, and just in case you aren’t sure if you would enjoy a certain genre, they provide you with a percentage explaining how much of the music stored on your iPad fits nicely into the category.

Believe it or not, 1.3% of my music falls under the Bossa Nova category. I’m not sure how, but I suspect a movie soundtrack is the culprit. Clicking on this category takes me to a page explaining what Bossa Nova music is and showing me several artists that fall within it.

If you click on an artist that is listed in one of the provided musical genres, or if you click on an artist from the list of music stored on your iPad, it takes you to a bio page giving you a quick intro to this artist. While you read, pictures of the artist are being streamed behind the information. These pictures are large and fill the entire background. Clicking on the Info in the bottom left corner gives the Image Attribution. If you click the link to read more about the artist, it shows you the Wikipedia page.

The next page shows all the music the artist has recorded that’s available on iTunes, allowing you to listen to a forty-second sample, and linking to iTunes to download it if you choose. It reads much like a complete discography. If you click on a song you already have stored on your iPad, you can listen to the full song. Those same great images continue to play behind the music listing. On the following page is a listing of YouTube videos of the artist performing. Clicking on these videos opens up the video within the app, and gives you the option of viewing it in the YouTube app or sharing it.

The next page shows all of the most recent news stories of that artist. Clicking to read more opens up the news story within the app, with these stories coming from a variety of Internet sources. Moving ahead to the last page offers a page of artists whose music is similar. What makes this page interesting, though, is the graphics. Pictures of the similar artists are displayed on an old-style record album, and as you scroll through the listing, it spins the album to show you the corresponding pictures.

GrooveBug is almost worth it just to see these amazing graphics, but what ultimately makes it worth it is the great content, both in the new artists you can find in the eclectic genres, and the bios, pictures, and news of the artists you’re already listening to, but perhaps don’t know enough about. The best part of all is that it’s a free app, costing only your time in downloading.

GrooveBug

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!

Cog is a lightweight music player,  which supports many audio file-types including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Apple Lossless, Musepack, Monkeys Audio, Shorten, Wavpack, Wave/AIFF and much more. It also offers HTTP streaming, as well as some neat features like gapless playback, support for Apple remotes, Last.fm integration and Growl notifications. Additionally, it lets you specify which audio output device to use, should you happen to have more than one.

Layout

The layout is as straightforward as they come. It has a window which serves as the playlist, into which you can drag and drop music from Finder or the “file drawer”. You are able to save and load playlists, and both m3u and pls formats are supported. There are also options to turn on shuffle and repeat as one would expect from any music player, and you are able to search the playlist to jump quickly to a specific file.

Music Library

Some people find iTunes’ management of our music folders less than ideal, in the way that it reorganises and renames files and folders. As mentioned earlier, my music collection suffered a catastrophic setback a few years ago when iTunes decided to delete the entire collection of files. I was able to recover most of it, but needless to say I’ll never trust iTunes again. Thankfully, Cog takes a very hands-off approach to managing your music.

Cog has what it calls the “file drawer”, which is basically an integrated finder window attached to the main playlist window. The first thing you’ll need to do is specify which folder to use as the base for the file drawer in the application preferences, as per the image below.

Once you’ve done that and saved the preferences, just click the little folder icon on the top left and the file drawer will expand out. Adding music is then as simple as dragging and dropping folders or files from the drawer.

Shortcut Keys

Cog supports the Apple remote and also lets you specify shortcut keys in the preferences, under the “Hot Keys” tab.  It also offers full support for media keys, should your Mac keyboard have them. One issue you might run into, however, is that iTunes might also start when you use one of these keys. Thankfully, there is a solution. Simply download and install this little utility, and iTunes will no longer run when you hit one of the media keys –

Conclusion

All in all, if you’re looking for a music player that won’t chew up a lot of RAM and is fast and functional, Cog’s the app you’ve been waiting for.

You can find and download the latest release of Cog here.

1. iLyrics

iLyrics is the good place to start simply because it’s currently a free app. As its name implies, it will find lyrics within iOS apps. It does. It works very well at displaying the lyrics that it finds for the songs playing. The problem is that it doesn’t find all the lyrics. I listen to some very obscure music. Additionally, I’m a big American Idol fan, and I download songs throughout the season, but these don’t come up with lyrics in this app. It’s easy, but not always effective.

2. LyricFind

LyricFind works much the same as iLyrics. One difference is that it also includes album and artist info. It’s a great addition, although it doesn’t have the aesthetic appeal that iLyrics does. That’s all in the free version. In the paid version, there is also the ability to search by title, artist, and known lyrics. You can also submit lyrics that you have found yourself, or corrections, and they will see about changing or adding them..

3. Instant Lyrics

The simply named Instant Lyrics does a better job of finding the lyrics than some of the others do, but the reason is because it works through Safari, and also costs $1.99. It utilizes multiple lyrics search engines in Safari to search for the lyrics you’re looking for. The problem with this is that it requires a lot of bouncing around. After that song finished playing, you have to initiate the app again, call up the next song, and it then goes back to Safari again. If you’re playing a lot of songs, it’s not very applicable. However, you can have it store your favorite songs for quicker recognition.

4. Soundhound

Soundhound used to be much more limiting than it is. The free version used to only allow a certain number of music searches, but now it’s unlimited. It includes iPod controls to all of your stored music and will also bring up the lyrics. Again, it’s only if the app can find it.

SoundHound has one other large benefit. It can identify songs by listening to it play on another device, such as the radio, TV, etc. In that way it works very much like Shazam. Yet, it also searches for songs by your voice. You can sing or hum into it and it can find those songs based on your own knowledge. It also has a field where you can type in name and artist. Once it identifies a song, it comes up with links to download it, album art, a google search of lyrics, etc.

While there is no lyrics app for the iPad that does everything I want it to, from finding, displaying, and editing of lyrics, it seems Soundhound offers me the most options, and is free as well. While it doesn’t find all the lyrics, neither do the others. On top of all that, it has that great search function. For the more obscure songs that it won’t find, I can always bounce back to the Lyrics app.

What about you? How do you find lyrics for your songs in iPad?

iTunes Genius on a Mac

The Genius option did go through one small change. They took some of it away. It’s not clear whether it just wasn’t as popular as they expected it to be, or whether they just thought the Ping service would be that much more popular, but they did take away the suggestions that were always made in the right side.

With the Genius options as they stand now for iTunes 10.3, it will suggest songs, TV shows, and movies based on what you have bought through iTunes. I don’t really care for their music choices for me, as the music bought on my account is also purchased by others in my family who don’t share my musical tastes.

Using the music that you have in your library, iTunes will create several Genius Mixes, creating them by genre. It will put alternative rock together, classic rock together, etc. It can be a great way to listen to music without having to skip around too much.  You can also choose a song in your music library and ask iTunes to create a Genius Mix around it. If you go into the Store menu at the top of the app, you can either turn off the Genius option, or update its choices

iTunes Genius on an iPhone

On an iPhone, your choices are broken up differently. In the iPod app, if you click on “Playlists” at the top of of the list, it offers a choice of creating a Genius Playlist off of one song. These lists can also be saved from your computer or your devices, if it creates one that you particularly like.

If you want song suggestions based on prior purchases, open the iTunes app and click on “More” at the bottom, then the “Genius” option. It offers suggestions for music, TV, and movies. Genres can be chosen to narrow down these options as well. It will also tell you why it’s making that suggestion, such as suggesting The Who based on a purchase of Bruce Springsteen.

Again, I don’t follow the Genius suggestions too much for music, or even TV and movies. Where I find it extremely useful is with the App Store. I buy a lot of apps, and I’m always interested in knowing about others that might be kind of similar, whether it’s a music player, writing app, etc. Opening the App Store, if you click on the “Featured” menu, it has an option at the top right for “Genius.” If you click on that, it will then allow you to “Turn on Genius” and make suggestions similarly to the way it made music suggestions.

iTunes Genius on an iPad

The choices on an iPad are very similar to the choices on an iPhone, being that they’re both running the same iOS and similar apps. Here the option for making a Genius Playlist based on a song is in the lower left corner of the iPod App.

To get Genius song selections on the iPad, open the iTunes app and click on the *Music* menu at the the bottom, followed by the “Genius” tab at the top. Again, the choices can be narrowed by genre. This will give you recommendations by both song and album.

This is a place where the Genius recommendations are very useful. As with the iPhone, open the App Store app, the click on the “Genius” option at the bottom. This will again offer you an option for “Turn on Genius,” then will make app suggestions for you. I had to turn this option off, as it caused me too much of a slowdown in the app. To turn off the Genius app choices, or to turn off the Genius music choices, click on your account name at the bottom of the “Featured” page of either the iTunes or App Store menus, then click on “View Account.” You can both turn it off here, or also turn it on.

Under iTunes 10.3, it looks very much the same as any other build of iTunes, but it has the one key difference in that it’s already working within the confines of the cloud. Much has been said about the cloud, but it seems more like a mysterious and ominous entity. For anyone that has any doubts about it, this slight occurrence of it in iTunes should give a hint of how great it could be.

If you click on “Purchased” under the store menu, as always, it shows all the songs you have purchased on iTunes from that computer. However, if you glance towards the lower right, underneath that listing it says, “Download Previous Purchases.” This rather inconspicuous listing does far more than it appears to.

Clicking “Download Previous Purchases” takes you to a listing of Music, Apps, and Books that have been downloaded previously. This means all materials to have ever been downloaded by your iTunes account. It doesn’t just mean the ones you have downloaded using that current computer, or the ones that are loaded on that system. It means all to have ever been downloaded by the history of that account, including ones downloaded to a different computer or unsynced iOS device.

If you click on Music, you’ll see a list of the fifty most recent purchases, as well as an alphabetical listing by artist. Next to each artist’s name is a number, and that number is how many songs have been purchased by that particular artist. If you click on “Not In My Library” on the far right, it will show you a listing of only the songs that have not been purchased or synced on that computer. You can click on the small cloud icon, and it will immediately download to the computer.

A listing of purchased apps also appears in this listing. Note, however, these are the apps for iOS devices, not applications for a computer.  Just as with the music, you can choose either all apps to have ever been purchased on your account or just apps that aren’t downloaded onto the particular computer you’re working on. Clicking on the clouds again downloads them immediately.

For something new to iTunes, iBooks purchases are listed here as well. Previously the only way to download iBooks was through the app on an iOS device, but now they are not only listed here in your purchases, but you can also shop for them directly from your computer. If you go to the iTunes store you can shop for them just as you would music and apps.

This all makes it so much easier to transfer music, as well as apps and books from computer to computer and to all your separate iOS devices. Previously it all had to be done by syncing the devices with the individual computers or devices they were purchased on. Now all your purchasing history is stored in the cloud allowing you to literally access it anywhere. This means you don’t have to carry huge libraries on all your computers and devices, allowing your to choose what type of materials you want uploaded on different devices and at different times.

Set-Up

Google Music is currently in beta invite-only mode for US users. So, if you live in the US, head over to music.google.com and put your name down for an invite.

Once you receive an invite you will be able to log-in to Google Music, just as you do any other Google service. After logging in your music library will be empty. The first thing you will have to do is select “Add Music” from the top right to download the Music Manager.

The Music Manager, as in the description, is a simple tool to upload all your music. Hence, it does not have a lot of functions aside from the ability to choose your music source, schedule uploads, and throttle bandwidth.

Slowly your the online music library will begin to populate as your files are uploaded. Be warned, this process takes a long time!

Playback and Features

Depending on your internet connection playback can be seamless or a little flaky. At home on my broadband connection a song takes about 2-5s to buffer after it starts playing. Subsequent songs load instantly. The quality of the song depends on the quality of your original track and playback quality seems to marginally lower than the original. In fact for most tracks it is hardly noticeable.

The music library also features the basic playback controls, in addition to the seek bar, shuffle, repeat, and volume controls.

There is also a binary rating system whereby you can “thumb up” or “thumb down” any of the songs.

You can also create “instant mixes” which are randomly generated by Google Music. These can be really quite random at times!

Google Music has a couple of interesting features, however don’t expect it to replace your desktop media player completely for anything other than basic playback.

Android App

My favourite aspect of Google Music is the Android app that allows you to stream all your songs from the cloud to your smartphone.

Market Link | AppBrain

The app, like the web-based library, is quite barebones giving you the option to browse through your synced music and play it back.

You can also create “instant mixes” straight from your phone.

Conclusion

The services offered by Google and Amazon will face stiff competition from Apple, who have announced that it will be launching a new service at its upcoming WWDC Keynote called “iCloud”. In the space of a few months three of the four biggest companies in technology have launched or are about to launch competing music streaming and syncing services and with rumours of a partnership between Facebook and Spotify, the fourth horseman cannot be far behind.

However, right now only the services from Amazon and Google are available and between the two Google is my favoured music player for a number of reasons. Firstly, Amazon only gives you 5GB of free space (approximately 2000 songs) whereas Google allows you to upload 20,000 songs for free, irrespective of quality or size. However, there is a note on the Google Music page that states that the free service is available for a limited time only. It is uncertain at this point what the charges for Google Music will be. Secondly, Google’s interface is a lot more streamlined and easy to use. Thirdly, I own an Android smartphone and the Android Music app syncs with Google Music seamlessly allowing me to stream all my songs.

Until Apple rolls out its service, a fair comparison will be difficult, so let us wait a while and come back to the battle of the online music services.

Overview

First, let’s explain a little bit about exactly what Cloud Player can do. The free service gives you 5GB of storage space as part of the Amazon Cloud Drive. Cloud Drive alone is all you need to just store files, and it’s Cloud Player which makes it worth the effort for music. You’ve got your choice between a web-based player or an Android app. This article will focus on the web based portion, as it applies to all readers.

To get your 5GB claimed, just head over to Amazon and log in/sign up (as of this post, the signing up is available for US customers only).

Adding Music

For starters, you’re a little bit limited in what will work with the Cloud Player. It’ll work with DRM-free MP3 or AAC files, no Vorbis, FLAC, etc. If you’ve got DRMed music, you’re out of luck. But then again, you probably already know that.

The “proper” way to work with this service is to use the Amazon MP3 Uploader, which is an Adobe Air application. It’s not the only way, however, which we’ll cover in a moment. For those who wish to use the uploader, you’ll be asked to install it when setting up your Cloud Player account.

It will scan your computer for music on startup, but you do have the option to stop the scan and manually select the music of your choice, or optionally import from software such as iTunes. Unfortunately, it will attempt to scan your drive again the next time you launch the uploader. And the next. And the next…

If you can’t or won’t use the MP3 Uploader, there’s always the plain old Cloud Drive uploader. Just log into the Amazon Cloud Drive just as you would the Cloud Player. Upload the files to your music folder or subfolder of your choice.

And they’ll be available in the Cloud Player web interface. Speaking of which…

Cloud Player Web Interface

Now that you’ve got you music up, its time to do something with it. On the left you’ve got a navigation panel similar to many local music player applications where you can view your collection by Artist, Genre, etc. Cloud Player even handles the fetching of album art (if it can).

Playlists are fully supported as well, and items are added to the playlist by dragging them from any browsing view and dropping onto the playlist name.

The Non-Free Experience

If you wish to go beyond the free service, you can purchase new tunes from the MP3 Store or some additional capacity to hold it all. Amazon worked in some pretty tempting bonuses as well. For example, if you purchase any MP3 album from their web store, the album is automatically added to your Cloud Drive and your drive capacity is expanded to 20GB for free (for a year).

If you’re interested in expanding your storage space without necessarily buying an album, the prices are as follows (as of the time of this writing)

5 GB FREE
20 GB $20.00 / year
50 GB $50.00 / year
100 GB $100.00 / year
200 GB $200.00 / year
500 GB $500.00 / year
1000 GB $1,000.00 / year

Conclusion

Until Google and Apple launch their theoretical competitors, there’s little basis for comparison for the combined Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. This author is still getting used to the idea of Amazon as a leading edge tech company instead of just an online retailer, but to date their cloud offerings have been generally well received. These two new services are certainly impressive in their simplicity, and both do precisely the job they were designed for and seem to do it well. It would be nice to see some external APIs become available to allow things like local client integration or drive mapping, but that may be in the works. For now, Cloud Player seems to be an extremely simple and capable tool. Often when writing software reviews, we try the application, write about it, and move on. This time, I think I’ll really use this in my daily life. At least until something better comes along.

As you know, syncing music/video between iTunes and your iOS devices is an one-way affair. You can only transfer music and video from iTunes to your devices and not the other ways around. If one day your iTunes library is corrupted, all the data will be gone even though you have a copy in your iOS devices. Wondershare iMate is able to sync and transfer your music and video from the devices back to iTunes. What’s more, it supports photos and ebooks as well.

In addition, Wondershare iMate include DVD ripping feature and ringtone maker so you can rip your DVD into iOS compatible format and quickly sync with your mobile devices.

The giveaway is available at http://www.wondershare.com/store/special-offer.html and is available from now till Apr 2nd, 2011. Grab it while it lasts.

Note: Wondershare iMate is for Windows only

I have a lot of music, videos, and pictures on my personal computer, but sometimes I am not at my desk and I still want to view my media content. Fortunately, I have an Android phone and with Skifta I can easily stream these files to my phone through a WiFi network.

Register for a Skifta Account

Registering for a Skifta account is free and allows you to use the advanced features of the app.

Install Skifta on your PC

Step One: After registering and before you can stream media from your PC to your Android device you will first have to download and install the Skifta database application (get Skifta for other devices) to your PC.

Step Two: Once the app is installed you will have to wait some time for the app to configure.

The Skifta application will now run in the background and you no longer have to worry about it. If you wish to remove Skifta, remember to uninstall the Skifta background app.

Step Three: Launch Windows Media Player to configure your network settings.

Step Four: Click on “Stream” and “Allow remote control of my Player…”. This ensures that Skifta on your Android device can read the data on your computer through Windows Media Player.

Step Five: Next click on “Stream” and “More streaming options…”. Here you can enable which devices are allowed to access your network. Ensure that you have allowed your Android device access to your “Homegroup”.

Your media will now be configured for streaming.

Install Skifta On Your Phone

Step One: After configuring your PC, install the Skifta Android app on your device.

Step Two: Ensure you are connected to a WiFi network (the app only works over WiFi)

Step Three: Launch the Skifta app on your Android device.

Step Four: Once the app launches, wait for the app to update.

Stream Media From Your PC To Your Android Device

After installing Skifta on your computer and your Android device, you can start streaming media.

Step One: On the main page of the Android Skifta app you will have to select a media source. Skifta allows you to stream content from your PC, other devices connected to your local network and even “channels” on the internet such as your Facebook Photos and podcasts like Revision3.

Step Two: Next you have to select the device you want the selected media to be viewed on. If you want to simply stream content to your Android device, then simply select your device.

Step Five: Now you will be able to start browsing and playing the media on your PC (or whichever other channel or device you selected earlier).

Step Six: Select the media type you wish to stream to your Android device. The media that is in your Windows Media Player library should appear in this list. Be warned if the list of media you are trying to load is quite large (for example a large number of videos) you may have to wait some time.

Step Seven: Finally, select a video to play it on your Android device.

That’s it! Provided the file you are trying to play uses a compatible Android media format it should play without a problem.

Conclusion

Skifta is one of the easiest streaming apps I have come across. As long as you follow the setup as described in this article you should have no problems streaming videos, music, and even photos. Having said that, unlike competing products Skifta does not convert the video on the fly. So, you have to first ensure that the video you are trying to stream is in a compatible format. This can be problematic, however it is not a deal breaker.

Recommended Reading:
AudioGalaxy: The Easiest Way to Stream Music to Android And iOS
How to Install VLC-Shares In Ubuntu And Stream Videos to Android

AudioGalaxy is very easy to use. There is almost zero setup required.

Go to AudioGalaxy and sign up for an account.

Once you have completed the registration, download and install the AudioGalaxy helper (currently only available for Windows and Mac, though it is said that the Windows version works in Linux under WINE).

Once the AudioGalaxy helper is up and running, you should see your collection of music appears in the AudioGalaxy site. You can then create your playlist and play your music in the browser.

To get it working in your mobile device, download the app for Android or iOS.

Sign in to the app and you will see your music collection in the phone. Just like any music player, you can view by artists, albums, genre and add songs to playlist.

You can then play the songs you want and even set it in repeat or shuffle mode.

All in all, this has to be one of the easiest way to stream your music. Almost zero setup and it works out of the box. You don’t even need to install iTunes or any other media player to get it working. One thing though, to be able to stream your music, the host computer needs to be running and connected to the Web at all the time. You also need internet connection on your mobile device to access the music. Other than that, this is almost perfect. What do you think?

By default, Grooveshark is only accessible via a browser. To use it, the usual way is to open your browser (or open a new tab), go to the Grooveshark site and start listening to your music. This isn’t really the most user-friendly way. What if, with the help of some tools, you can have a better Grooveshark experience? Let’s check them out.

1. Control Grooveshark from browser tool bar

Looking to control your Grooveshark without having to switch to the Grooveshark tab everytime? sharkZapper for Grooveshark is a great Google Chrome extension specially made for that. After installation, you can control your Grooveshark right from your Chrome icon bar. You can Play, Rewind, Next the song and even mute/volume control. It even shows the Album Art and a search box for you to search for songs.

In Firefox, you can use the Grooveshark Remote Control to control Grooveshark without breaking your workflow.

2. Block Grooveshark ad

Seriously, I would not want to block the ads in Grooveshark because firstly, I don’t find them intrusive, and secondly, it is a source of revenue for Grooveshark. However, I know that many of you dislike the ads and can’t wait to kill it even before it appears. The easiest way is to install an ad blocking extension. The most popular is Adblock extension (Google Chrome, Firefox). The ad will miraculously disappear after you have installed the extension.

3. Add keyboard support for Grooveshark

For those who prefer keyboard shortcut to mouse click, KeySharky adds the necessary keyboard shortcut for you to control Grooveshark. Once installed, you can press “Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Z” to play/pause the current song or “Ctrl + Shift + Alt + D” to skip to the next song in the playlist. There are also other useful keyboard shortcut like mute, increase/decrease volume. You can even change the keyboard shortcut to other keys that are more convenient for you.

keySharky (Firefox | Chrome)

4. Display lyrics for now playing song

If you love to sing along while your favorite song is playing, Grooveshark Lyrics (Google chrome extension) can display the lyrics when the song is playing.

5. Import iTunes playlist to Grooveshark

If you already have a huge playlist in your iTunes, the last thing that you want to do is to reconfigure this playlist to your Grooveshark account. Groovylist is a web service that can convert your iTunes playlist to Grooveshark format. It supports Last.fm and Spotify as well, so you wouldn’t miss out any of your favorite track.

6. Using Grooveshark as a desktop app

While Grooveshark is great, it will be even better if we could run it as a native desktop app. GrooveWalrus is one such app that allows you to run Grooveshark as a native desktop app. In Groovewalrus, you can search for the songs and mass add them to the playlist. The interface is user-friendly, so it should be easy for anyone to use it.

7. Remote control Grooveshark

There are times where you are not directly in front of your computer, but still want your Grooveshark music to continue playing. This is where remote control for Grooveshark becomes useful. If you own an Android phone, you can install the Grooveshark Remote (market link) app in the market. This app, works in conjunction with a Firefox extension, allows you to control the playback/pause/previous/next of the songs in your play queue. It is rather minimal at the moment, but at least it works.

For iPhone and other mobile devices, there is no native app to remote control Grooveshark yet. What you can use is GrooveBud Google Chrome extension to control Grooveshark remotely from another web browser. In this case, you can open up your mobile safari, load the Groovebud Control Player and control your play song. I have tested it on a first gen iPod Touch and it worked, but the interface is overly simple and nothing to be desired.

8. Download music from Grooveshark

There are plenty of ways to download songs from Grooveshark. Orbit downloader is one of the most popular one. While installing Orbit Downloader, make sure to select Grab Pro in the installation option and check the box for your browser. Once installed, you can then playback the song in Grooveshark and get Orbit downloader to record the song in MP3 format.

GrooveDown is a desktop-based Windows software that can also be used to download music from Grooveshark. The usage is even simpler – search for the song(s) you want and click the Download button.

9. Using Grooveshark on your mobile device

If you can’t get enough of Grooveshark and want to access it even when on the move, Tinyshark for Android is your best choice. With it, you can search and play Grooveshark music while on the move. My experience with it is that it can be laggy at times, but this is the best you can get from the market.

What other ways/apps do you use to improve your Grooveshark experience?

I am always plugged into new songs on my portable iPod or desktop computer, regardless of whatever I am doing. However, I also enjoy finding new songs that are still missing from my iPod playlists. In such situations, Internet Radio saves the day.

Radio channels streamed from the internet is a great way to listen to latest tunes as well as old classics. Things are pretty random with radio streaming, so if you are looking for a tool that will let you enjoy online radio stations from all over the world, try Nexus radio.

With a collection of over 15 million tracks and 11000+ radio stations listed, you will never get bored with music streamed with this free application.

Download Nexus Radio and install the tool on your computer. You will need to sign up for a free account to get started with it. Once you have successfully registered for a free account, use the login credentials to sign in.

NOTE: If you are using Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the program may crash several times. It is recommended to start the player in administrator mode, to avoid the annoyance.

There are 17 tabs that you can use to control different parameters of the radio player as well as use it properly. I took a quick look at the tool and listed below are the most needed tabs along with the tasks that are included within them:

1. Music Search: This tab lets you search individual tracks, there are four sources to choose from and the count of the tracks is more than 15 million. Once the search is complete, choose the song and use the playback buttons to play, pause or stop the track. This is a great way to look for tracks you just can’t live without.

You can also use the “Save Song” button to download any selected song to your computer and listen it offline.

2. Stations: This tab lists more than 11000 radio stations from all over the world and all of them are categorized as per genres. Click a genre from the left tab and select the station from the middle pane. Use the play button to start playing the channel.

Use the “Quick Record” button to record the currently streaming radio station. There are an overwhelming number of radio stations available, so finding your favorite one is not a problem at all.

3. Record: This is one of the great features of the tool that lets you record live radio stream on a scheduled time. Choose a Genre from the dropdown at the top of the middle pane. Select the radio station, choose date and time from the left pane and hit “Save” to save the recording schedule.

4. Filters: If you are want to record a specific song or songs from a specific artist, creating filters will help you.

Go to the filters tab and click the “Add/Remove” button (just above the playback controls) and select “Add Filter” and enter the artist or song name. After you have added a filter, you will be prompted to activate it. You can also turn it off/on from the “Options” button located beside the “Add/Remove” button.

5. Equalizer: The tool has a built-in 10 band equalizer to adjust the sound quality of the radio stream or the songs playing. The equalizer worked perfectly for me and the sound quality can be optimized to great level to soothe your ears.

6. Effects: Next to the equalizer tab, there is an “Effects” tab which complements the equalizer effects, by letting you control the pan, speed, echo and reverb settings of the songs played.

7. Tagger: The tag editor can be found under this tab and can be used to edit the ID3 tag info of any track on your PC which is quite neat if you are using any portable device to sync songs with your computer. Although I feel a bulk editor would have been better.

8. Trimmer: The tool’s inbuilt trimmer can be used to cut selected portion of any song on your computer. There are times I need to change my cell phone’s ringing tone. Till date I have been using some dedicated online tools to get this task done. I’m glad to find another reason to stick with this free tool now.

9. Options: This tab contains all the additional options relevant to the tools working methods. You can set to start the tool as Windows starts, change the default download location or hide/unhide song pop ups within this tab.

The other tabs included in Nexus Radio can be used for visualization during playback, see top 100 song charts, watch music videos, install or uninstall plugins, see history and many more other things.

By far, I am more than satisfied using the program considering its all in one usability. Barring the case of crashing on several occasions, the tool worked just as fine otherwise. Do try Nexus radio once and let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

Creating a Playlist

Playlist creation is actually incredibly simple, although it does hide a little, at least until you know where to look. Head to your home screen and open up iPod. Now, just as in iTunes on your Mac or PC, in the lower left hand corner you should see a plus sign. This is the button used to create a new playlist, and it looks like this:

A simple click will give you the following screen, allowing you to name your brand new playlist. Enter your name and click the save button to add songs, and we’ll be off and running!

Adding Music

Now that we’ve created the actual playlist itself, its time to add the music! To do this, your mobile iTunes brings up a list of songs. If you don’t have much music, sorting by song like iTunes does by default might be fine, but if you’re like me, you’ve got a ton. In this case, just use the filters at the bottom of the screen to sort your music. For example, the first window below is my iPad sorted by default, then by artist. This make is much easier to find what you’re looking for. Once you do, simply click the plus sign to the right of each song you want to add to your new playlist!

Editing Your Playlist

Once you’ve added all the songs you want, tap “Done” in the top right corner to tell iTunes you’re ready to actually use your playlist. iTunes first though will take you to a screen where you can edit the playlist you’ve just created. As you can see below, you can delete the songs by clicking the red minus sign on the left side of each song. In addition, if you look to the right side of the screen, you will see three horizontal lines, tap and drag these markings to change the order of the songs. You can also click “Add Songs” in the top right corner, or “Done” when you’re finished.

Play it already!

Once you’re all finished and have clicked done, you’ll be greeted with the window below, your actual playlist. Tap on a song to start playing your new list, or click the “Edit” button in the top right corner to add or delete songs, or just change their order. You can even do things like add more than one instance of the same song for new ones you always want to hear twice!

Wrap-Up

Apple’s been making waves in mobile music since the advent of its iPod, and hasn’t skimped on the iPod app for iOS devices that do more than music. As a capable player, I use it practically everyday at some point, but its definitely not my only mobile music solution, let alone my only music player in general! What do you use, and what could make the iPad’s iPod app better? Tell us in the comments!

Luckily, it is not difficult to get your playlist across the cable to your phone. Here are four ways that you can use to sync iTunes music to Android.

1. Sailing Media Sync

Sailing Media Sync can sync your iTunes music, playlists, podcasts and photos from iPhoto or Aperture onto your Android device. It is currently available in two versions: free and premium. The free version copies all your media files every time it performs a sync. It does not keep a record of what has already been sync. Depending on the size of your media library, the whole syncing process can take a long time. On the other hand, the pro version costs $22 and it can intelligently updates your phone, resulting in a faster sync.

The usage is simple. Plug in your Android device with the USB cable and turn on USB storage mode. Sailing Media Sync will automatically detect the device and prompt you to perform a synchronization. You can select from the list whether you want to sync music, podcast and photos.

Sailing Media Sync is available for Windows and Mac.

Download Sailing Media Sync

2. iTunesMyWalkman

iTunesMyWalkman is a open source application that helps you to synchronize the contents of iTunes playlists to your mobile phone or other portable device, including Android phone.

There are several advantages in using iTunesMyWalkman.

1. It works on Mac 10.4 Tiger. Most applications only work on Mac Leopard and above, so it is good to see that iTunesMyWalkman plays well with Tiger too.

2. It includes iTunes scripts and Folder Actions so it can automatically detect your Android phone and synchronize your music and playlist right within iTunes.

3. It is able to re-encode your music on the fly to save space. This is useful if you have a small storage space in your phone, or that your phone does not only support the media format in iTunes.

4. It is able to sync your camera pictures to your hard disk or iPhoto.

Note: If you have a large media library, it will be very slow the first time you perform the synchronization.

iTunesMyWalkman is available for Mac Tiger and above.

Download iTunesMyWalkman

3. Dazzboard

Dazzboard is different from all other apps. It is a web app that works within your browser (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari).

Before you can use it, you have to download and install a plugin from the Dazzboard site. After the installation, you can visit the website again and it will prompt you to launch the web app.

Within the app, you can select the music/video/photo/playlist from either device (your computer and Android phone) and transfer to and fro from each device. in Windows, you can even sync your Android applications to your desktop.

Dazzboard is available for Windows and Mac.

Download Dazzboard plugin

4. DoubleTwist

This article won’t be completed without DoubleTwist. DoubleTwist is a great media player that many even touted it as the “iTunes for Android”. After you have installed it in your computer (Windows or Mac), it will automatically import your iTunes music and playlist. When you connect your Android phone to your Mac, it can detect your phone and give you an option to sync your media content.

Double Twist is available for Windows and Mac.

Download Double Twist

Premium software

While this article is about free tools, there are several premium apps that can sync iTunes music to your Android phone as well.

1. TuneSync – TuneSync allows you to sync your iTunes playlist wirelessly. There are two parts to TuneSync, an Android app and a desktop app. The Android app costs $4.99 (there is a lite version though) while the desktop app is free to download. TuneSync works on both Windows and Mac.

2. iSyncr – Other than the usual syncing, iSyncr also supports smart playlist, song ratings, play counts, podcast and videos. iSyncr also comes in two parts: Android app ($2.99) and a desktop app (free). iSyncr is available for Windows and Mac

3. The Missing Sync – At $40, this is one hell of an expensive app. However, it is also the best synchronization app out there. Things it can sync include calendars, Fliq notes, SMS messages, contacts, music, photos, videos, docs, podcasts and call history. It also supports wireless sync.

What do you use to sync iTunes music to your Android phone?

Why SyncPod?

There are many reasons why you want to transfer music back to your Mac.

1. You can only sync your iDevices with one Mac. If you want to sync the music to iTunes in another Mac, there is no way you can do that.

2. There are times when your Mac crashes and you have no backup of your music library. The music in your iPhone is the only backup you have.

3. Your friend’s iPhone contains songs that you love. You can immediately plug in his/her iPhone to your Mac and transfer the music over.

Usage

1. When you first install SyncPod, it requires you to first install the iPhone Disk (comes with the installer) package. This package allows the application to access the filesystem of your iDevices over USB.

2. When you open SyncPod and plug in your iPhone, you will see the iPhone entry in the left panel.

Select the Music option and all your music files will appear in the right panel. There are three options at the bottom of the panel. You can transfer music to any location in your Mac, import music to iTunes or transfer files from Mac to your iPhone.

3. Simply check the files you want to transfer and click the corresponding button at the bottom. That’s it. Didn’t I say it is very easy?

Free Giveaway

SyncPod costs $19 to buy, but iSkysoft has gladly agrees to sponsor 15 free license keys for our readers, and you could be the winner!

Here’s how you can participate and stand a chance to win the license key:

Step 1

Be our Facebook fan or follow us in Twitter:

STEP 2

Fill up the form below. This is to make sure that we can contact you when you win the license. We promise that we won’t spam you.

Update: This giveaway contest has ended.

STEP 3
Share this post either in Facebook or Twitter, AND leave a comment below.

This giveaway begins now and ends Thursday, 11th November 2010 at 2359hrs Eastern Time This giveaway contest has ended.. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Share and enjoy!