Avvenu has a new product that allows you to listen to your iTunes music connection from any web browser on a Windows PC, Mac, or Windows Mobile 5 smartphone. MobileCrunch covered an early version of the product that only worked on Windows Mobile phones here.
The base computer storing the music must be a Windows PC. As long as that base PC is powered on and online, your entire iTunes music library will stream to the browser on the remote computer, and playlists will also be available. Avvenu also allows users to store up to 250 songs on their servers, allowing you to play those songs remotely without your base PC online (this is getting into a legal gray area).
Avvenue plays only unrestricted MP3, AAC and WMA files, no iTunes DRM’d songs will work. Users can also share some music with others – but only the 250 songs stored on the Avvenu servers. An email is sent to the recipient, which as a link to open a browser window with a Flash player that plays the song. Here’s an example that was sent to me by Go2Web2, which also wrote about Avvenu this evening.
The ability to listen to this on a phone is what really intrigues me. Hopefully Avvenu will come out with a version that works with Macs and the new iPhone as well.