Reble, Reble, I Like Your Playlist
Erick Schonfeld
23 comments »
In the old days, when people had stereos (remember those), if you wanted to listen to a friend’s music collection, you had to go to their house. Today, you check out their iLike playlists on Facebook, their Last.fm profile, or any of dozens of other social music sharing widgets and Websites. Now you can add Reble.FM to that list. Reble.FM is free software you download to your desktop that lets you stream songs from any friend’s PC that is also online and is running the Reble.FM client. It just launched in public beta today. Says founder and key-coder Nick Meyer:
Playing music on my friend’s computer should feel just like playing a song on my hard-drive, and you should be able to add any of your friends’ music to playlists. That’s what we’re going for with Reble.
Reble is a scrappy YCombinator startup. The software is built on the Jabber open-source instant messaging platform You are basically IMing with your friends and hooking into their iTunes or other music library. You can only see the music of friends on your contact list, and can only stream a song if no one else is listening to it at the same moment. It is a one-to-one system.
But the more friends you invite, the bigger the music library that you can access. The software only works on Windows machines right now, and only streams DRM-free MP3s. Eventually, it will let you buy songs that you like from digital music stores like iTunes or Amazon.
The download-only client will be a nonstarter for some users, especially since there are many other Web-based options for sharing your playlists with your friends. It does beat uploading all your songs to some Website, or only being able to listen to a random shuffle of your friends’ songs. But even the Web-based music sharing services are making on-demand music streaming possible. Last.fm, for instance, now lets you stream any song three times in full before reverting to its default random shuffle. For those of you who try out Reble, please tell us your impressions in comments.
I can’t write the impression right now… I have angry friends… They are mad at Techcrunch. John, Jay, Peter…
and some college buddies got layoff.
I don’t know what to say. Reble is Good. I haven’t tried it.
I tried to prove my friends wrong. Techcrunch does not destory startups.
I’m gonna sound like an old timer but it was way cooler to go hang out with your friends, listening to music, etc - IM+Reble won’t beat that.
The reflection on the R is wrong.
We have got something similar going called Wejay (check it out over at http://www.wejay.se), which also is a way to hook up your music with that of your friends. Wejay has got a heavier focus on the music and associated meta data (such as artist bio, album reviews etc.). It is currently in pre-alpha, but the curious is welcome to try it out and feed us some comments!
Over and out
Ted Björling
http://www.wejay.se
@1: Ha ha, … what? Are you the same guy that was in the Aviary thread?
In any case, how is letting your friends play files off your computer (whether one at a time or not) not getting the attention of the RIAA? Doesn’t this encourage the “making available” argument?
So it’s a downloadable app that lets you build a social network and then share music with your friends. This sounds exactly like what imeem started out doing 4 years ago, before they abandoned the software and became youtube for music - good luck guys, keep on carrying the torch for p2p and software downloads.
Hi!
The idea sounds nice at first sight, but I also loved Pixvillage (it was like reble.fm but for digital photos). Both have the same problem I guess, you always have to be online with your friend(s) at the same time to share content. Beside that disadvantage it has an advantage because your personal hdd storage (for music, pictures etc.) is huge compared to free online storage (e.g. flicker, photobucket etc.). But you need to be online at the same time, manage a buddy list (invite, add and authorize people) and your personal internet bandwidth can get under stress (for a moment).
Verdict: None of my buddys is using pixvillage anymore to share photos, but instead facebook, flickr and co. I gonna try reble for music. But since last.fm seems to get more and more songs in full length I don’t see many people to jump on the reble train.
Greetz
What? No mention of SimplifyMedia? They have only been doing this for the last few years already…
Sharing specific folders or whole itunes librarys, multiple people can listen at once, and it’s for mac or pc.
http://www.simplifymedia.com
the problem is that last.fm doesn’t have everything, in particular user generated music will be missing, so reble lets you see stuff that last.fm hasn’t. however imeem.com is all user generated and beats the pants off last.fm for selection, so reble.fm vs last.fm might be a debate worth having, but reble.fm vs imeem is a no brainer win in favor of imeem.
A nice idea, but how good is it? You can listen to so many radio stations online that I just don’t think it would be worth to do it from your friend’s computer.
Does anyone know if Reble plans on enabling users to play music for more than one person at a time? The wanna - be DJ’s are already using social networks like Stickam and NowLive to play music to the masses, and people are trading songs like crazy on Skype and Limewire. I’m not sure if I get Reble’s differentiation.
Nobody likes other people’s music. I recall on time a couple invited us to a jazz place. They were snapping their fingers and grooving, but jazz makes me physically ill and nauseous. The only thing worse than jazz is avant-garde noise.
it’s actually sweet. my favorite part of anywhere.fm was browsing “friend radio” — this is even better because you can browse and pick individual songs (instead of playlists). discovered a lot of new music this way.
Anyone ever heard of AIMster?!?! Anyone still remember why they got shut down?!
Some people never learn. Nothing new. Please move along….
I love “scrappy” now seems permanently attached to the phrase “Ycombinator startup.”
@5. I don’t know… I’m like everyone in techcrunch readers. I’m trying to aviod the wrong deviant behavior from techcrunch. Not to give involve the problems.
It’s seems my friend accuse techcrunch for destory number of startup in pass and modern times. I said to my friend you have no proof….
He said… Google it.
I refuse too.
I don’t know if techcrunch destory any startups. Do techcrunch destory or mock any startups?
#16
Don’t let the negative get you down… persevere and listen to the constructive feedback to better your product!
I welcome such!
when will this stop. One idea - one startup. Even if this is not a new idea. You can check out the VLC player streaming options
In line wit Reble is Movie MAZIC which allows users to share their favorites with friends and friends can scrap about the same. Check out http://moviemazic.com/showuser.php?id=61
Imeem are dead ducks ! the deal they signed was the beginning of the end - albeit some time off.
http://www.michaelrobertson.co.....ute_id=250
Sure there is lots of ways to listen to your friends music. I personally like mixlister because you can add to each other’s playlists and customize your playlist. The tags are also good because you can find a playlist for any occasion and to suit any mood. http://www.mixlister.com
@7
i actually use last.fm and it’s a good source for new music recommendations, but for music sharing and streaming i use maestro. reble and maestro are similar, but with maestro you only need the desktop client running the first time you play a song - after that it stores your songs online so you don’t need your computer on at home to play your music online (i use it at work all day, soooo clutch). it also lets you make friends and play their music in the same way, so you constantly have a big library to pick from. website is getmaestro.com