We've mentioned previous efforts to roll your own online iTunes backup using Jungle Disk and Amazon's S3, but frankly that seemed like a little bit of a hack, and potentially opened you up to some surprisingly large fees. Now Xackup is introducing an all-in-one iTunes online backup services called bandwagon, which uses S3 as well, but is mediated by Xackup, so the pricing is fixed at $69 year (introductory price) for unlimited storage. Xackup also includes a client, which sits in your menubar (right) and allows you to control the backup and restore process (e.g. selective backup/restore, search, etc.). Unfortunately, it appears that bandwagon is strictly a backup service and does not offer on-the-go access to your music (though I suppose in principle you could use it with your notebook to download particular tracks or albums you had previously uploaded from your desktop). Unfortunately, I can find no information on the bandwagon site concerning bandwidth limitations, if any.As I noted before, bandwagon is presently available (until the end of February) for a special price of $69 for one year of unlimited storage, after which the price will jump to $99/year. If you want to try it first and see how well it works, they also have a 30-day demo of the service available for $1.
Thanks to those who sent this in!
[Via MacNN]
[Update: the Xackup people have pulled the service because "the response has been overwhelming... [and they] underestimated the demand." They say their long-term pricing plan is "as yet undetermined."]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-23-2007 @ 4:38PM
Terence Pua said...
Final pricing/model with various limitations has not been finalized. Pricing above are introductory and could change.
- Terence (co-founder, Xackup)
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2-23-2007 @ 6:23PM
Frank said...
Hi Terence -
I've seen this question being asked on a number of blogs: how do we know we can trust your company with our data? Also, what happens if you go bust? Will we still be able to access our backups?
Thanks for reassuring!
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2-23-2007 @ 7:28PM
Terence Pua said...
1. We are a backup company. After 14 months of dev and testing and our hard earned moolah going into Bandwagon, we wouldn't risk your data for anything.
2. If we go bust, we will give users an additional 30 days to download whatever was missing in their collection.
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2-24-2007 @ 10:10AM
Jay Lyerly said...
Can multiple machines access an account? Consider a household with 3 people using iTunes on 3 different machines. Each one purchases media from the iTunes store, all under the same account. Each machine is authorized to play all the media, but propagating a new media file to all the machines has always been tricky. Can Xackup be installed on all these machines to backup/restore to the same account? Will this effectively distribute new media from any one machine to the others on the account?
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2-24-2007 @ 3:15PM
AJB said...
So does unlimited really mean unlimited? I've got a gigantic collection (2000+ Albums ripped). Is there a bandwidth charge?
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2-24-2007 @ 5:51PM
k said...
Um, if you go to their site now, you'll find a very different story... limited space, for undetermined pricing. Apparently following this post, they got a lot of traffic and are suffering under it.
To be honest, I think the whole thing was either incredibly dishonest or incredibly stupid. If you can't deliver on your promises, don't make them. It may be that they genuinely made a mistake and didn't expect the response they got, but that's business, you know... someone should've done better math.
It's too bad, I liked the idea and I liked the price, but I'm turned off now. Apparently it really was too good to be true.
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2-24-2007 @ 5:58PM
Terence Pua said...
@k- No one likes to admit mistakes but I own up to this one. Underestimation to the googol. Let me redeem myself and offer a free account...at least give it a shot [terpua at xackup dot org].
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2-24-2007 @ 6:01PM
Terence Pua said...
@Jay- that's a future feature.
@AJB- stupid mistake...http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/02/9732/
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2-25-2007 @ 12:34PM
Wolfram Enzinger said...
im wondering why nobody mentioned http://mp3tunes.com/ ? it provides a similar service at a much lower price (40$/year) and even gives you streaming direct to itunes and listening trough the webinterface.
after a hd crash i was able to recover all of music (about 40gb) synced to mp3tunes within a day of downloading.
and their client is multiplatform (uses python)
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2-26-2007 @ 4:33AM
Terence Pua said...
@wolfram- mp3tunes only backs up music, not movies, tv shows, music videos, ipod games, etc.
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3-02-2007 @ 9:10AM
Terence Pua said...
Revised Bandwagon service and pricing announced:
http://blog.ridethebandwagon.com/2007/03/01/revised-bandwagon-application-service/
Reply
3-06-2007 @ 11:57PM
Ronnie said...
Backing up a bunch of data at first requires a seed load utility. See if they can send you a USB drive, you backup with their software to the drive and put back in the mail. Then they put on server within 24 hrs then you just backup incremental stuff from then on. Very cool and fast and affordable.. try this online backup company.. Online Backup
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3-07-2007 @ 8:21AM
Ronnie said...
Oops, tried to post a link to the site but did not work
Backing up a bunch of data at first requires a seed load utility. See if they can send you a USB drive, you backup with their software to the drive and put back in the mail. Then they put on server within 24 hrs then you just backup incremental stuff from then on. Very cool and fast and affordable.. try this online backup company.. http://www.disksave.com
Reply
5-08-2007 @ 5:35AM
super_nova said...
for last few weeks i have been looking for solution of backing up/synchronizing my itunes library. i started off with searching for free software to provide me this facility and to my surprise I GOT ONE LINK. It's TezLink. Visit www.tezlink.com and give it a try. It also gives data back up/synchronization facility!!!
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