Apple’s AirPlay might be getting all the attention lately but it’s hardly the first solution for wirelessly streaming media to the television. Far from it. In 2003, the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) formed with its first set of interoperable products hitting the market in 2004. Since then, the alliance has certified thousands of products supported by more than 245 member companies, 29 of whom are listed as “promoter members” including such heavyweights as Sony, Nokia, Samsung, Toshiba, Verizon, AT&T Lab, LG, Qualcomm, Cisco, Microsoft, Panasonic, Intel, HP, and Motorola. Pretty much everyone but Apple. Recently, HTC joined the DLNA ranks with the introduction of two smartphones — the Desire Z and Desire HD — and a tiny media streamer known as the HTC Media Link, HTC’s first attempt to gain a foothold in the living room. Over the last week we’ve been testing the Desire Z (a Eurofied T-Mobile G2) with the Media Link, lazily streaming video, music, and images around the house using a myriad of sources and controllers from Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and Western Digital. How did it perform? Click through to find out.
Apple has quietly put into play a streaming music service, freeing iPhone users from the limited internal storage of their smartphones and instead allowing them to play content stored remotely in their iDisk cloud backup. Spotted by Michael Robertson of MP3.com, the new service currently requires users to actively manage the transfer of files to the iDisk store – there’s no automatic sync with iTunes, nor playlist support – and then select the files through the iPhone iDisk interface.
There’s also no cover art support, nor file caching. However, it’s expected that Apple will tighten up the user experience before too long, presuming this is the direction the Cupertino company plans to take their media service.
What also remains to be seen is how the music labels themselves respond to Apple’s quiet step into streaming, given users’ MP3 and AAC files will likely only have been licensed for local playback rather than for streamed distribution. UMG, for instance, specifically requires different licensing for streamed audio, versus cloud-stored files. Robertson suggests that this play is Apple “testing the waters” so as to see exactly what they can get away with.
Yanko Design has a cool new concept that is designed for wireless music streaming called simply enough the Wireless Streaming Music Centre. The design is very architectural and cool with its iPod in the middle that looks like it is floating.
I could totally see a high-end company like Bowers & Wilkins making an iPod dock that looks like this thing. The concept design has an internal HDD to allow the user to store music directly on the dock.
The concept would also be able to support additional units to bring music into other rooms of the home. The designer of the cool concept is Bluelarix Designworks.
Thumbplay is a cloud-based music service for smartphones like the Blackberry and Android devices. The service allows the user to save albums and playlists and gives access to that music when they are offline.
That means that a user can listen to their music from anywhere even when a network connection isn’t available. Thumbplay has announced a new application for Android devices and support for the iPhone is coming soon according to the company.
Thumbplay is a subscription service and it has about nine million tracks in its library. The service allows for unlimited access to artists, albums, and the ability to import iTunes playlists and favorite artists. Users of Android and Blackberry devices can get a three-day trial and service is $9.99 monthly.
The name may sound like something out of a Final Fantasy game, but we hear it stands for Music On the Go, and today MOG is doing the name proud by bringing a wide swath of streaming music to Android and iPhone. $10 a month gives you access to over 8 million songs, and during a completely unscientific impromptu testing session, that number actually included a reasonable amount of most everything we’d want. Of course, you don’t get to keep any of the 320Kbps MP3 files, merely store local copies on your phone for as long as you pony up, and even on Android (where we take task switching for granted) the merest jump to web browser stops those tracks cold. (MOG says it’s working on it, at least for the iOS 4 version.) We were also disappointed to find out the MOG Radio feature is nothing like we were told — rather than a Pandora you can tune to specific artists, the feature just seems to filter your existing queue. Playback options were also lacking in this early version (like volume and jog sliders) but at least MOG’s got a slick, robust discovery mode, and with this many songs to choose from that’s a very good thing. Both versions should be live immediately with three-day, no commitment trials, and there’s a press release after the break if you still need more info.
Update: It turns out our difficulties with MOG Radio were due to a buggy preview build; downloading a fresh version of the app this morning, the Pandora-like functionality worked just fine.
Streaming music service Spotify has launched a Linux version of their software, now allowing open-source aficionados access to their catalog. Following Spotify’s Windows and Mac clients – and their various mobile apps – the early build still lacks some of the more advanced functionality of its siblings, including cached local storage for offline listening. Most limiting, though, is the fact that it’s only available for Spotify Premium subscribers.
That’s because, the Spotify team say, they’re yet to find “a reliable way to display ads yet”, meaning they’re unable to offer the Linux version for ad-supported free users. That could change, though, as the team there work on enhancing the software; you can download it here.
Streaming music service Spotify has updated its range of subscription options with two new tiers, slotting in-between the existing free, ad-supported offering and the “Premium” pay-monthly package. Spotify Open offers limited free use of the service to would-be users who can’t score an invite, including up to 20hrs of music per month. Meanwhile Spotify Unlimited offers all the ad-free access to the Spotify catalog that the Premium package does, but lacks the mobile device support and offline playback.
Spotify Unlimited is priced at €5/£4.99 per month, half the price of Spotify Premium. All four of the tiers offer the social networking integration Spotify recently announced, which allows users to connect up networks like Facebook to their playlists as well as import local audio and intermix those tracks with streamed music. More details in the comparison chart below.
While we all wait patiently for Apple to concoct its own subscription-based, unlimited music streaming service (hello, Lala acquisition!), MOG is jumping on the opportunity right away. Er, almost right away. Down in Austin this week, the company announced that an iPhone and Android app would be out “in early Q2″ in order to bring unlimited music streaming to both operating systems for $10 per month. We’re told that a catalog of seven million songs will be available, but there’s no way to know if 6.99 million are of the “no one cares” variety. At any rate, your monthly fee will also allow unlimited streaming from the desktop, but alas, you’ll be left with nothing but hollow memories should you ever stop ponying up. In related news, Rhapsody has announced (video after the break) that offline playback support is coming to the iPhone, with the updated app expected to be passed along for Apple’s confirmation “shortly.” Granted, the Rhapsody to Go subscription is $5 per month more than MOG’s option, but with all this competition popping up, we wouldn’t be shocked to see that slide lower in due time.
It’s not being flaunted on Rhapsody’s mobile apps page yet, but the music service has quietly started pushing out a beta version of its Android-compatible app that does pretty much exactly what you expect: gives you streaming access to your Rhapsody account from the comfort of your Android handset the same way its existing iPhone version does. Since this isn’t an Android Market app — at least, not yet — you’ll need to enable installation from unknown sources on your phone before hitting the link to grab the APK, but otherwise, it should be smooth sailing. As with any other Rhapsody client, there’s a 7-day trial available if you don’t have an account, so it’s worth a shot — particularly if you haven’t had a chance to score any Ke$ha tracks yet.
Streaming music service 
