Another Y Combinator startup launched at the SXSW festival: Echodio. It lets you back up your iTunes music library to the Web and then stream it from there. At launch it only supports streaming through Boxee, the media browser. But in a few weeks it will launch its own Web player, which will allow you to stream your iTunes songs from any computer with a Web browser.
TechCrunch readers can sign up today for 300 invites good for 5 GB worth of music storage each (up from the normal 1 GB). Simply use the promotional code TC/DC when prompted during set-up. The download currently works only on Macs.
Launching with Boxee seems a bit odd. Most people will want to wait for the Web player to become available. But the idea of backing up your iTunes playlists to the Web and literally turning it into a jukebox in the sky is appealing. Lala does something similar. And it seems like a feature Apple should build into iTunes as well.
Until that happens, there is Echodio. You download the app, and it installs a plugin to iTunes. You create a new Echdio playlist and put in all of the songs you want to back up. Then you can stream it through Boxee or eventually Echodio’s own Web player, which will have two-way sync so that when you play a song via the Web it will count as a play in iTunes. Ratings and other tags get synced as well. But the most useful part of the syncing feature is that you can sync iTunes between two or more different machines. The startup is also working on an iPhone app (I guess for over-the-air syncing or for all the songs that you can’t fit on the iPhone’s own iPod).
