What are YOU listening to?

July 22, 2007 7:32 AM

Simplify Media has made my Sunday morning, and if you have pals with good taste in music it will probably make your day, too. It's a small download (4 MB) that allows you to stream the iTunes libraries of up to 30 friends as long as they're online.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas (28 comments total)

Awesome!
posted by armoured-ant at 7:45 AM on July 22, 2007

I'm interested to hear from the tech savvy as to possible security risks--while understanding that they are probably minimal and I'm not terribly risk adverse online (that is, I feel I am fairly well firewalled, etc)--because this does sound great. I've got a decent library and a couple of close friends that share music. Burning & shipping CDs sounds sooooo 1998, and most of this circle are somewhat tech impaired. I've tried sharing with them through IP access and that, frankly, has been beyond them. So, mods, I'll take this AskMe if you think, or shall the mavens weigh in here?

It sounds great on the face of it.
posted by beelzbubba at 8:11 AM on July 22, 2007

I hate iTunes! The new version eats almost 100 Mbyte of RAM while running. Talk about bloatware. If you install this filesharing thingy it will only get worse.

I'll wait for the winamp version - or use Hamachi to VPN my friends. More geekery, less crappy bloatware.
posted by homodigitalis at 8:18 AM on July 22, 2007

hamachi is cool - I used to use it a lot. Gnump3d was what I used to stream my home library to my workplace, until I moved from Japan back to a country where upstream bandwith is horribly crippled.
posted by bashos_frog at 8:45 AM on July 22, 2007

I hate iTunes! The new version eats almost 100 Mbyte of RAM while running.

I'm with you HD. Both the latest iTunes and the latest WMP fail on my system. I have a huge mp3 library on an external drive and both programs jump up to 100% cpu use as soon as they go idle and become unresponsive. Then I have to kill them in the task manager.

I'm sure it is some flaw in their media detection but I can't be arsed to troubleshoot it. I switched the MediaMonkey which works just fine without all the crap of the Microapple turds.
posted by srboisvert at 9:10 AM on July 22, 2007

Interesting that you don't even need to import your music into iTunes for this to work. You just tell it which directory your music is in and it will share it.

Beelzbubba, Foldershare is not a bad way to go if you want to share music files with a few close friends. Unfortunately, it's got a one thousand file limit so if you have more songs than that, you'll need to break up your library into smaller directories. That was a breaking point for me so I'm also looking for an easy solution to share files with a less than tech savvy friend.
posted by gfrobe at 9:12 AM on July 22, 2007

Beelzbubba, I'm not terribly tech-savvy, so maybe I'll get slapped down/educated for buying into the explanation at the Simplify Media website, but it sounds reasonable to me:

First, only computers on your approved list can interact with you. All communication between those computers is encrypted and highly secure. Second, our protocol only allows streaming from your machine. No other file operations are possible, and we do not allow remote execution of code. Finally, users can only access files within the folders you select, and we filter out all non-music files within those folders.

posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 9:24 AM on July 22, 2007

Meh, the RIAA will still have their way with 'em.
posted by delmoi at 9:33 AM on July 22, 2007

If only foobar2000 would allow UPnP so I can use it to control my Roku, the world be a better place.
posted by geoff. at 10:01 AM on July 22, 2007

what port does this thing listen on?
posted by jdfalk at 10:07 AM on July 22, 2007

(yes, I read the docs...they don't say)
posted by jdfalk at 10:07 AM on July 22, 2007

Another interesting product along these lines, though with a slightly different goal, is MyTunesRSS, which puts up a webpage so you can access your iTunes from any browser by going to www.mytunesrss.com/yourname
posted by zoey08 at 10:10 AM on July 22, 2007

I'm using this with a friend of mine, it's really cool. On my machine (Mac) iTunes uses 58MB real and 429 virtual, Simplify uses 17MB/370MB (for contrast Firefox used 90/400).
posted by doctor_negative at 10:18 AM on July 22, 2007

I have been using this from my iBook at home to the iMacs at work for several weeks now. It works flawlessly

I've got an unused PC tower in the closet I'm getting ready to clone my iTunes library to and just leave it on 24/7 in the closet sans monitor or keyboard.
posted by sourwookie at 10:56 AM on July 22, 2007

Definitely looks neat, although I'm a little skittish. Wish there was a little bit more info up there - I know they're a startup, but they could still allay fears by putting more info about it. It worked for something like Last.FM et al.
posted by rmm at 1:03 PM on July 22, 2007

Anyone want to be my Simplify Media friend? Send an invite to spleenrock. I swear I've got good taste. You no likey, you just delete me.
posted by reblix at 1:41 PM on July 22, 2007

I installed Simplify Media on my Macs at home and work after reading about it in Ask MetaFilter last week and it's been working fine for me. (It doesn't seem to publish my entire--pretty big--library.)
posted by kirkaracha at 2:07 PM on July 22, 2007

anyone who wants to add me my account name is knowles. i like good music.
posted by knowles at 4:12 PM on July 22, 2007

oh wait, my screen name is selwonk, my real name is knowles. d'oh!
posted by knowles at 4:13 PM on July 22, 2007

I love this program. I'm sharing my library with friends all around the country. Plus, it's a good way of finding out which albums you can make people burn for you.
posted by ColdChef at 7:37 PM on July 22, 2007

spleenrock, you do--indeed--have decent taste. A little overlap with mine, but enough other stuff to be interesting to me. Thanks for adding me as a pal.

One problem with this program, though. Anything downloaded from iTunes can't be shared. Dammit.
posted by ColdChef at 7:39 PM on July 22, 2007

selwonk: thanks for the add. lots of stuff I've never heard before. Cool.
posted by ColdChef at 7:41 PM on July 22, 2007

selwonk: thanks for the add. lots of stuff I've never heard before. Cool. Oh, I'm coldchef.
posted by ColdChef at 7:42 PM on July 22, 2007

my simplifymedia name is "levity". thanks in advance for the adds! :)
posted by zerolucid at 8:49 PM on July 22, 2007

I'm "lucinda", if anyone cares. I have lots of mashups. And Beatles.
posted by Lucinda at 5:23 AM on July 23, 2007

gnomeloaf here = gnomeloaf there
posted by gnomeloaf at 7:43 PM on July 23, 2007

Late to the party, but I'm rocksteady, if you want to add me.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:19 PM on July 23, 2007

I am digging this program, thanks!
If it feels right go ahead and add me - czarth
posted by czarth at 3:57 PM on July 25, 2007