Simple and brilliant
Simplify Media actually manages to achieve what most music consumers have always wanted: a chance to connect to and enjoy each other’s music without the usual problems associated with that.
Simplify Media is a new plugin for iTunes on PC and Mac platforms (with later releases coming for Windows Media Player and WinAmp). It allows your friends to connect to your music library and listen wherever they are — and you can listen to their music collections too.
You can also connect as many of your own computers to the network as you like, so you can listen to your home collection at work — or connect from your laptop while out of town (something I intend to make good use of in the near future).
Genuinely social software
The great thing about it is that you’re forming your own network among actual friends and family. You can have a maximum of 30 friends in total, whether they’re connected simultaneously or not.
If I’m friends with Joe and Dave (I am, as it happens) then I can listen to their music, and they can listen to mine. But they can’t listen to each other’s music unless they actually make friends with each other.
I mean, I’m sure they’d get on fine if they ever met, but they probably both have 29 other friends of their own they can be getting on with. And it’s far more valuable and satisfying to look through and listen to the music library of someone you know and care about than to simply rummage through some stranger’s box of virtual records.
Quality streaming
The streaming just works. Brilliantly. Several of my friends are in New Zealand, which is not known for its generosity of bandwidth — and yet I managed to listen to the whole of the new SJD album ‘at a friend’s house’ while waiting for my copy to arrive via post from Smoke CDs.
The quality of the stream was great — only one or two minor glitches throughout — and the sound quality was the full 160kbps it had been ripped at. The album is superb, of course.
Peer-networking and copyright
The emergence of micro peer networks has, of course, been long awaited, and the ‘Shared’ feature within physical wired networks on iTunes has just been waiting for some bright spark to pick it up and make it work across the internet.
And there’s nothing more interesting than somebody else’s music collection. Except maybe the contents of their bookcase.
Now, before you get upset about copyright, consider this:
The only way I can think of to turn this from a bunch of friends sharing and recommending their music to each other into an infringing scam would be to charge for membership to a particular network that had a massive library.
So, for instance, I could charge £10 per head to join my group, and sell it on the basis that I have 5,000-odd CDs of a particular kind.
Perhaps there are some people whose libraries I would pay good money to be able to listen to at my discretion. Will Holland would be one such person.
But because of the limitation of 30 members, that just isn’t worth anyone’s time and energy (certainly not as a get-rich quick scheme) — and setting up multiple networks in order to get several groups of 30 just isn’t cost effective, because each network would require another internet-connected computer.
So… Quantic’s better off inviting his own friends than charging me money.
Can I borrow this one?
This is much more like going to a friend’s house to listen to a new record. You can only listen to one person’s music at a time (who wants to listen to two songs at once anyway?) and you can only stream — not download. You already know the people you’ve invited, or have been invited by, so it’s a genuinely social thing.
Unlike MySpace — or even Facebook, the SimplifyMedia friends I have are, without exception, more than welcome to come to my house, drink my coffee and flick through my record collection.
In other words, it’s a beautifully self-regulating system that encourages the social discovery and sharing of music with all of the infringement designed out — and without the use of DRM.
I’m very impressed.
_______________________
Try out Simplify Media with your own friends, then leave a comment here letting us all know what you think of it. I’d be interested in any added features you’d wish for or problems you might encounter. Whose music collection would be your dream contact — and why?
I’ll pick three commentators at random and invite them to join my network. I have a few spare spaces and we’re all friends here…
12 Comments, Comment or Ping
Paul
I gave it a try a week or so ago, and it was hit and miss. Of course, the biggest factor is the connection speed, and I did find that on a friend’s collection, I could listen to a 192kbps track, but not a 256kbps track, for example. But on another friend’s library, streaming worked perfectly at these bitrates and others.
One thing I did find, when it buffers too long on a track whilst playing, it won’t pick up from where it was, and will often skip to the next track.
It isn’t perfect - but the software is. It works perfectly well, especially if you are used to iTunes Sharing on a home network for example.
Having to have a private network is good too. If only there was some way to see who was listening to what? (Perhaps in the library name, or in the App itself?). I found myself asking over MSN what a buddy was listening to. Its like when you have a mate poring over your record collection and how interesting it is to see what catches their eye.
Jul 23rd, 2007
Stef Lewandowski
I have to say this is great. We were using something similar in the office for a while, but it could only share over the local network.
The only problem with Last.FM is that it relies on the music being on their servers, and because I listen to a lot of unreleased/demo stuff this makes a lot more sense to me.
Jul 23rd, 2007
Darren Landrum
Damn, something like this comes out right when I decided I was annoyed enough with iTunes to finally seek out a replacement. Unfortunately, I don’t know what that’ll be just yet. I haven’t looked at Winamp for a while. I wonder how it’s come along…
Jul 23rd, 2007
Boy Wonder Records (Anthony Herron)
Whose music collection?
easy . . .
John Peel
Jul 23rd, 2007
Nick
Holy schlamolas!
Thanks for the tip, Andrew. Being an ex-Irishman (now in San Francisco), I’m currently streaming from my friends laptop in Northern Ireland…I’m releasing his record in October here in the states and I just listened to a live recording he did yesterday, streamed via this thing.
It’s makes things less cluttered (I don’t need to download individual mixes of the same tracks), and no need to wait for the download. Ace!
I’d pay good money to stream Tom Yorke’s iTunes, that’s for sure.
Jul 23rd, 2007
Dave Harte
It worked pretty well for me the other weekend when we did some brief sharing Andrew. Any buffering was occasional but didn’t spoil the enjoyment. As mentioned above, a facility to see what other people are listening to would satisfy a lot of curiosity but as when I used to go round someone’s house to listen to records I’d often put on stuff when they were out of the room that I’d rather they didn’t know I liked (you know the sort of thing: nodding to The Clash when they’re in the room and then slipping on their sister’s Kate Bush album when they popped out to make a coffee).
Dave
Jul 24th, 2007
Nick
Oh, and I second the call for a “Log” of some kind of what your friends listen to from your collection.
Jul 24th, 2007
Greg
Really amazing!
I’ve got 2 computers : a desktop and a laptop. But my laptop is about 6 years old and has a harddrive of only 4Go (just like my iPod ^^ ). So I can’t put nothing else than software on this one. But thanks to that plugin I can now listen to all my music from my bedroom (without adding a USB-harddrive)!
Thanks a lot (and sorry for my language, I’m a french-speaking belgian…)
Jul 24th, 2007
ian
sounds cool - though it’ll be interesting to see the industry’s reaction to this kind of PASSIVE sharing; the limitation on 30 folks browsing my hard drive isn’t the point so much as the here-browse-my-whole-collection
but anyway
darren - re winamp, you might want to check out http://www.winamp.com/remote
our crew here at Orb created a version for them to stream your home tunes to any PC anywhere and to mobile phones with any kind of streaming player… actively share streams of playlists or single songs
Orb itself has been very popular on the TV via game consoles since december, so i’m able to stream my friends’ playlists sitting on my couch right now
Jul 24th, 2007
Dubber
I guess one way to see which of your songs your friends are listening to would be to add them as friends in Last.fm and then look at their ‘Recently Played’ list.
Or ask them to tell you…
Personally, I’m more inclined to email my friends to tell them which of their tunes I’ve been enjoying than I am to ask them what they’ve been listening to of mine.
Jul 24th, 2007
Darren Landrum
That Winamp thing looks cool, and I might play around with it later, but for now, I went ahead and re-installed iTunes so I could try out this plug-in.
…
Now I guess I need to make some friends.
Jul 25th, 2007
Darren Landrum
Oh, I did forget to answer the question, though: Who’s music collection would I most like to be able to listen to?
Fortunately for me, that one’s easy: Mark Lamarr.
Jul 25th, 2007
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