As I posted yesterday, Simplify Media allows you to share your iTunes library over the Internet with up to 30 of your closest friends. Now that I have it running on three out of four of my computers, here’s a few follow-up notes.
- The software does not yet run on Vista. (Which is of course my personal laptop’s OS.) According to the company “a release for Windows Vista will be available shortly.”
- One of my friends has reported that the software is “not reading the data from my external HD.” My main collection is not on my main drive but on a secondary internal drive so that seems to work. I have not yet tested sharing a folder on an external drive myself. I’ll report back if I receive any additional news on this issue.
- Simplify Media only shares the contents of your “Music” category in iTunes. Items listed under “Podcasts” and “Audiobooks” will not be shared.
- I claimed via Twitter that I’d making “a week” worth of Bowie tracks available. For the record, I’m sharing just four days, 1368 tracks, or Bowie. Sorry if that’s not enough for some of you
Just one additional comment: Simplify Media is a good company name but the software itself needs a name of its own. “Simplify Meida” just isn’t a great name (maybe it’s just me) for this program.)
I’ve also noticed an excessive amount of re-buffering (every 5 seconds). I’m not sure if that’s due to the senders network, mine, or some component of the program.
I only get re-buffering when it changes song.
Michael, thanks for the write-up. You can add audio files (like podcasts) by adding directories in Simplify Media using Computer Settings. And, if you want to try out a pre-release version for Vista, shoot me an email at paul at simplify media.
Does this work with mp3 and wma files or only i-pod?
It’ll work on anything that will play in iTunes as far as I can tell. MP3 & AAC yes, WMA unknown but I assume yes.
Hey all. i’ve been using mediamaster.com for some time now for the same purpose. I don’t know that you can share your music directly with 30 friends, but you can stream “radio shows” or whatever to your friends, and its always worked for me without problem.