Listen To Your iTunes Library On The Web With Anywhere.FM
Nick Gonzalez
61 comments »
Anywhere.fm has launched a new online music player that looks and feels a lot like a web based version of the iTunes player, sans the music marketplace. Like iTunes, you can load maintain a music library, reorganize your songs into play lists, and veg out to visualizations. Anywhere.fm’s iTunes bulk uploader makes it easy to get up and running with your existing library.
The company leverages the web to add portability and a social layer to their music player. There is currently no cap on the number of songs you can upload to the player, so you can create a potentially unlimited music library you can listen to anywhere. Streampad is a nearly identical product with less polish.
Like a host of other social music startups, Anywhere.fm has also added music discovery features. While not as robust a discovery engine as a Last.fm and company, users can find new songs by listening to their friends’ play lists and will soon be able to find new friends based on a music compatibility score. However, due to copyright concerns, playlists from other users can only be streamed as radio stations. Playlists must be a couple songs long and played in a random order. Although, Anywhere.fm isn’t following official online radio play guidelines like Lala, which require station play lists to be at least three hours long before publishing.
The company competes in the increasingly crowded online music locker services like Mp3tunes, Maestro, imeem, Streampad, Songbird, and MediaMasters. The service does benefit from being simple, free, and social, but incumbents have a steady head start. Hype Machine, RadioBlogClub, and Blogmusik are also other low hassle ways to listen to music at work.
Anywhere.fm is looking to make money outside of charging users for their service. They are considering the obvious step of affiliate music sales for songs you don’t own, inserting audio ads in radio streams, and selling music directly. Currently the player lists indie music from Garage Band.com, which could turn into a direct point of sale.
Anywhere.fm is a Y Combinator startup.
Update: Good video review is here.
I own http://www.run.fm - anyone wanna buy it ? hehe
I’ve been using this for a couple weeks. I started the day of the Pandora outage and I haven’t switched back. Totally sweet!
Awesome! You finally posted about it! I’ve been an anywhere.fm private Beta user since they started and I love having my entire music library available anywhere (at work!), I even produced a how-to video about the site! its on you-tube, but you can see a full-res version at my site (www.shagunr.com) or this link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/anywhe.....review.wmv
Apple has a patent on that UI, at the very least.
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdo.....;DB=EPODOC
I love how you go to anywhere.fm and it starts straight away playing you some great music. The player looks super slick. Good job guys!
Getting music on there isn’t as painful as i thought it’d be. I’m actually using it at work, so kudos on making something actually useful!
tried this at work and it’s actually useful, wish i had this before my HD exploded 2 weeks ago.
This site looks badass, right when you get there. Definitely one of the best looking interfaces for these type of sites.
Slick, slick UI, though I’m more impressed by friend radio. The ability to listen to both my own music and my friend’s music is huge and something iTunes would never do. I’m looking forward to uploading all my music here… great job guys!
Nick, I was a bit misled by the title. The title made it sound like this was exclusively for iTunes, as in… maybe it streams my iTunes library, and only my iTunes library, and no uploading required.
A more appropriate title would have been “Listen to Your MUSIC Library on the Web With…”
I’ve been using the service for a few days. My thoughts? It’s pretty rockin’ and easy to use…the best way I’ve seen to listen to your music at home or work or anywhere!
The user interface is great, the streaming audio quality is excellent. It’s easy to upload music or listen to friend’s playlists. I’ve been using it at work for a couple weeks now, perfect for those of us working in offices.
Nice UI… worth the look if just for that. This is way slicker than using Pandora, last.fm or the other online radio sites I use for music at work.
This looks awesome. It might look like iTunes but it’s definitely a lot better than iTunes since you can find and discover other peeps music. It’s great to really have the music travel with you, anywhere you go.
Its good to see that they are trying to make money outside charging users but I think inserting audio ads may not be very good.
In a crowded market like the online music one, you have to look around on what extras you can give so that you outpace the competition otherwise it can be very difficult.
simplifymedia.com?
Start with friends you know have good taste.
Anywhere.fm is a solid service. I definitely recommend you check it out.
This is definitely worth checking out. I’ve been a beta tester and I am impressed by the experience and how slick it looks. It’s pretty easy to upload my songs, and once they are up, works like a charm! I use this all the time in the office to listen to my song library. Can’t wait until all my friends are hooked so I can listen to theirs!
Wow, this looks like a great idea. Especially the iTunes loader feature. I am going to try this once I get a new computer. My main horse is dead, thanks to rain exposure.
Very slick user experience. I love having my music with me, even on my work machine. I don’t have to carry around a spare drive with all my music and can just upload all my stuff and fire up my browser. Very, very cool. I’m not an audiophile, so can’t comment about the quality of the music, but it sounds good enough for my ears.
Great job!
Awesome UI, easy to use, does what it’s suppose to. What more could you ask for?
Very neat!
Whoa! You linked to my video in the post! Thanks guys.
Cool!
I started using it recently and it’s great!
Rajesh Shakya
Wow, it just works. I can play my music anywhere I want without carrying around an ipod. Sweet!
Consumer want their tunes the way the want it and when and where they want it. Making our tunes portable will cause us to be happier and making us happier will cause us to spend more. And at the end of the day everyone will be happy.
Hint Hint. Make us happy and we will come(spend).
This is awesome!
Though Nick: c’mon, no link to Hype Machine?
Slick Interface. The only issue is, will they be able to scale and handle mass uploads…
Usually site slows down, user lose interest pretty quickly.
I use MXPLAY Widget which does all these things….it can even discover, list and play songs on a site automatically…..
http://www.mxplay.com
Would be cool to get this on Mobile IE and or the iPhone!
I created a Mobile IE Internet radio web app (click my name if interested), but Mobile IE doesnt have robust support for javascript or flash to stream your tunes thru it. Iphone does but streaming formats are not supported.
I guess it’s truly not anywhere as the name states.
Looks good though!
errgh here is a link to my site if interested.
http://www.techavid.com
I took me about three clicks to sign in and start uploading my library. This is a really slick execution of a neat idea - nice onw, anywhere.fm!
I’m impressed with the website, but a little confused. This doesn’t really fill a need. If I’m buying songs off iTunes then you can assume that most have an iPod. Isn’t the point of the iPod: The ability to have your music anywhere you go in a small and portable fashion?
Why would I pull up this on another computer when I could just slap out my iPod?
The mass use is already an issue, apparently. Just tried to upload using the iTunes uploader and I got this message:
“Woah, we didn’t expect 50,000 uploads within the first few days of launch! Please check again later when we figure out how to handle the load a little better :). In the meantime, feel free to use the web uploader below.”
Am I the only one here that is skittish about sending my (of course 100% purchased) mp3s to someone elses server - or disturbed by how long it would take? Uploading my library with DSL will take over a month transferring 24/7. I’m not that patient or interested in RIAA subpeonas.
If you are going to go that route at least use a service you can trust and that can handle the load. mp3tunes has been doing this for 2 years.
Wow, seriously slick player. Good job guys, very cool
I feel like I’ve seen services like this before but I find that I am strangely drawn to your player…some rough edges still (search bar looks weird) but its clear you guys actually care about the complete user experience, not just the raw functionality.
Anywhere.fm is beautiful. It just works–you open the browser and it starts playing. It’s also much better than streampad–anywhere.fm doesn’t require your home computer to stream the music.
ok, THIS is cool! For nano/iphone owners that don’t carry around their entire collection and want to access something deep in the archives while visiting relatives for example… maybe not for all, but THIS totally fills a need I’ve had for a while…
After a morning of monitoring server load, we’ve re-enabled use of the client uploaders to bulk-upload your music.
Looks awesome. We’ve been rocking spez’s guitar hero playlist in the office all day. Friend radio rocks.
really cool, joined instantly…..does anyone know 1) of any legal issues with something like this and 2) if this supports rss feeds so I can subscribe to my own feed (or a friend’s) and stream my feed to my PSP for example?
I have been using anywhere.fm off and on for about a week and I really like being able to listen to other peoples playlists. I had some questions early on and got an almost instant response from one of the devs. The mac uploader worked for me.
I really like this piece of software - but what are the legal implications with regards to the songs you upload?
This is completely illegal. It will be shut down in less than a month.
> This is completely illegal.
There’s nothing illegal about it. It’s for listening to music files you already own. The only way you can listen to other people’s music is through the “friend radio” stations, and Anywhere.FM pays the required radio fees for each play.
It’s really interesting how this differs from the similar service that MP3.com used to run (and was shut down). There, MP3.com make copies of the songs and the user had to confirm that they owned the songs by inserting the original CD into their computer. Here, users rip the songs themselves and the player is simply internet-based. MP3.com was illegal because the company was making copies of music without the copyright holder’s permission. Perhaps Anywhere.FM is legal because its the users who are exercising their fair use right to rip copies of the songs.
What a difference the advent of broadband internet makes!
The one problem I have with this is that I can only upload my MP3s and not my Apple files.
i predict a shut down in… T-minus a couple weeks.
Illegal as ever!
The comments on illegality are just silly. In fact, the creators of mp3.com started a site that does something similar 2 years ago and have not been challenged in any way. The only place anywhere.fm could run into trouble is with Friends Radio, and then only if they are not enforcing the correct limitations and/or paying whatever fees they were able to negotiate.
The problem I have with the service (and the dozen others that do the same thing) is that I don’t want to wait a month for my music to upload. I also don’t want my files on their servers, or be held hostage to future charges once they are no longer Beta, but that is another issue.
Stop the uninformed fear-mongering. Until Congress changes laws, this is not illegal. I expect better from TC readers and people in the industry like Jon.
Same problem as Clay. MP3 only. Not very intuitive on how to avoid that mistake. And you can’t undelete or remove songs you’ve uploaded. Hmm. Why?
@Steve, actually my.mp3.com was sued into oblivion. IANAL, but the detail there is that since it was pre-broadband, they did the ripping themselves of tons of CDs and then streamed them when people “proved” that they owned the CDs. Since the advent of broadband allows people to upload their own copies of music, Anywhere.fm certainly seems to have a stronger case that they are indeed providing a storage service. But the fact that they then stream the music (i.e., repackage it, make lots and lots of copies) as opposed to simply act as a repository might be an important detail. That users are giving Anywhere.fm permission to stream their music to them may be a moot point if the permission is not the user’s to give. I would bet that Anywhere.fm might get away with the streaming user’s stored music part to the user, but the Friends Radio part is probably illegal.
pretty cool, but anyway, check out the german version of this musicplatform stuff: http://www.mcracy.com, login with: delmonico, greets from munich