Filed under: Audio, iPod Family, Cool tools, iPhone
Found Footage: Stream music from your computer to your iPhone
Simplify Media allows you to stream music from your home computer (or from the iTunes libraries of 30 of your close personal friends) to your iPhone or iPod touch via WiFi. Admittedly this video is pure marketing, but the concept is cool. I installed a copy of the 1.0 alpha build from Installer.app, and gave it a spin--or at least I tried. The program requires that you have a Simplify Media account so I had to step back and grab a desktop client first. Then after painfully installing the software, signing agreements and clicking "I don't have an account yet", I finally got signed up and added my music folders. The whole process took about 20 frustrating minutes but persistence paid off. I then returned to my iPhone, signed in with my new account, and although I was able to get correct listings of my music library, none of the songs actually played back--causing "Server is not responding" errors instead.
This is one of the caveat lector instances: Boy, does this tool sound like it's going to be great but at the same time it doesn't really work as well as you might hope, at least it doesn't for me right now (some commenters have had better luck, see below). Simplify Media for iPhone is an alpha release and presumably will be finalized sometime after the official iPhone SDK ships.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
danik said 2:10PM on 12-14-2007
worked for me in the first try... all my music is streaming fine but no video
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Ben said 2:10PM on 12-14-2007
Works fine for me!
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brian said 2:16PM on 12-14-2007
This looks promising. In the meantime, here is an alternative: http://pixelcity.com/iphone-streaming-music/
Both systems have their plusses and minuses. Mine doesn't require a hacked iPhone, there's no third-party account needed, and it is and always will be free and open-source. (I'm not saying Simplify *will* start charging... but we've seen that kind of thing happen before.) If I ever get some more free time, I'll add some features and do a screencast & demo.
OTOH, mine is browser-based and I agree with this comment from their blog: "Simplify Media Mobile offers continuous playback - and it doesn’t tie up Safari." I look forward to seeing lots of really good media-playing apps once the iPhone SDK is official.
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CraigC said 2:26PM on 12-14-2007
This is great, but WinAmp Remote has already done this for awhile, and quite well! Check out:
http://winamp.orb.com/orb/html/index.html
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ramond said 2:30PM on 12-14-2007
It worked but the quality could be better over Wifi. Sounded like 96kbit.
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ishcabittle said 2:37PM on 12-14-2007
I found the install to be painless, and it plays perfectly on the phone... I wouldn't take the OP's experience as typical.
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Michael Rose said 3:17PM on 12-14-2007
Keep in mind that SimplifyMedia also lets you share & play back music from up to 30 friends, not just your own computer. It also works anywhere you have WiFi (assuming it works).
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starkruzr said 3:34PM on 12-14-2007
Is it completely impossible to write a DAAP client for the iPhone/iPt? We've already got a DAAP server.
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Johnny said 3:34PM on 12-14-2007
I really hope Apple gets with it and introduces some kind of place-shifting themselves. It would be the perfect solution for all their different digital media accessories. When the iPhone gets 3G and is fast enough, this could make it so that the iPhone really never needs a huge amount of storage to make people like me with large libraries happy. I just love the idea!
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bill T said 4:19PM on 12-14-2007
http://webot.com also streams directly to your iPhone and allows you to get audio content for as many computers and hd's as you have access to. Meaning your library can be from 3 home networks pc, macs, or linux boxes, a machine from work, and various networkd storage. unlimited amount of content. and WeBot works on Mac and Linux as well as Windows machines so it matters not where you've got your content stored, you can get to it on your iPhone.
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Mystic said 4:23PM on 12-14-2007
Yawn, wake me up when I can stream music from the iPhone to an Airport Express.
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Scott said 4:56PM on 12-14-2007
Erica, you are an idiot, this was easy to install and use. Besides the crap apps you put out make this look like my grandma could get it up and running.
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Josh said 4:59PM on 12-14-2007
Along those same lines is Telekenisis. In addition to all the remote control functions, browsing your Mac's files, control of your iSight, it also lets you stream music and videos, from your computer, to your iPhone/iPod touch.
http://code.google.com/p/telekinesis/
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Ruppert said 7:27PM on 12-14-2007
Remote Buddy can control iTunes and AirPort Express without a jailbreak:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DfqP6ScU_g
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Jay said 7:27PM on 12-14-2007
What about the other way around: streaming music from my iPhone to iTunes/wifi? So I can play music at my friend's house without carrying a headphone adapter to get a mini jack into the %*&'n beveled headphone jack?
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darcagn said 7:41PM on 12-14-2007
It was pretty simple to install, but some issues:
1) Cannot use EDGE. If I need WiFi, it's useless to me. Most of the time I listen to my iPod when I'm on campus, and the iPhone cannot connect to 802.11x-auth networks.
2) Cannot browse by artist or album; can only view by song name; doesn't exclude the, a, and an from alphabetization. I have 13,000+ songs. It's absolutely unusable.
3) Doesn't let you set custom stream settings. I would, for example, be willing to sacrifice stereo sound for higher quality, some might not.
4) The interface sucks. It would be great if it integrated with your iTunes library, displayed album art, and in general had an interface exactly like the iPhone's "iPod" application.
Yes, I understand this is an alpha version, but I just wanted to point my opinions out. I'm looking very forward to this. My library is too big for all iPods except the largest currently offered, so I have been praying for an application like this and I can't wait until it's in a usable form.
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Gidgidonihah said 7:43PM on 12-14-2007
Jay, I don't know if you realized, but your iphone actually has built-in speakers :p
Seriously though, I've been using simplify media to listen to my home library at work already. And like everyone else has mentioned, installation was about as simple as could be. Didn't take more than 2 compared to your 20.
You might want to update the post to say the commenters' installation experience was better so as not to mislead everyone.
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webbuy said 8:03PM on 12-14-2007
I didn't think the installation was terribly difficult, and if you have reasonably well-organized playlists, even the interface is tolerable. However, it took forever (hours) to index my songs, and then I was plagued with "Server is not responding" errors on most of the music. The setup and firewall settings were OK, since some of the music did play back, but it wasn't responsive enough to be worthwhile to me.
As others have mentioned, there are many alternatives, and there's always SeeqPod.
Paul Joyce said 9:19PM on 12-14-2007
@webbuy, we're sorry you encountered playback errors. If you, or anyone else who runs into a problem, could send us an email at support at simplifymedia, we'd appreciate the opportunity to discover the cause and get it resolved.
@darcagn, we agree; without playlists, navigating a large library is a challenge. Your suggestions are excellent, and they are the types of things we will be working on.
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starkruzr said 2:19PM on 12-15-2007
Jay, you want Firefly Media Server which is already in the Installer.app repositories.
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