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).
Nothing new — MP3Tunes has been doing this for AGES!!!
I saw this at SXSWi yesterday, and downloaded it last night, seems good so far, will be interested to try it fully when I get home. Seems like what I’ve been waiting for for years.
How many of these clones can come out of Y Combinator (and other places)? Dropbox, Syncplicity, Zumodrive, Simplify Media, and on and on. Please stop!
Hi Niall from Echodio here –
I’d encourage people to take the product tour to see the complete feature set we’ve launched with. We’re doing full iTunes to iTunes sync of your tracks + metadata (tags, ratings, etc), as well as streaming support for BOXEE. You can check it out here – http://www.echodio.com/tour
We’re hoping to bring you the web player in the next 2-3 weeks.
Chuckle.
So you basically do what others have already done on the web… Ok so you have an iPhone app. You can thank Apple for your product not already being done. As I understand it when approached by a website that has already done what you are doing they were highly discouraged and basically told that Apple wouldn’t allow it.
Chuckle good luck they had a head start and have hit the skids. The iPhone app would have helped them anyway, too many potential lawsuits and a lack of gutzy investors did them in.
Good luck, but please whatever you do don’t act like you are doing something new…
Wake up and Smell the Coffee…
so can you stream your friends files, or is this only for synchronizing your own computers?
Meh… this is semi-useful. I have no need to use a separate app to do this when so many other ones do it already.
Which ones? I haven’t found anything else to transparently sync iTunes collections on different Macs over the internet.
What makes them different to other cloud music players?
TechFilipino
was a bit interested to check it out… then found it it was only for mac. fail.
Dude, what are you talking about! Mac has like 8% of the market share!
I’m kidding of course.
The FAQ clearly says it’ll be on other platforms later on. iTunes is primarily Mac software which is why I’m assuming this Echodio was made for the Mac first.
with all the ipods and iphones and other people using itunes on windows I think iTunes for windows is more popular than iTunes for mac. But since it’s apple software it is fair.
Genius work here!
The web player might even be convenient enough to convince me to switch back to iTunes!
What could be more convenient than streaming your library from anywhere?
Brilliant, how come nobody else has done this already? Syncing my iTunes collection between my laptop and my desktop has always been a pain. Glad that they finally solved it.
I’ve used echodio and I was impressed at how fast it sync’ed files between my computers. It works great.
Curious that you ZumoDrive is not mentioned – I’ve been using it for the same thing and it seems to work quite well.
This is absolutely brilliant. Everyone’s talking about all the other apps for syncing files etc but Echodio has its appeal because it tightly integrates with iTunes. There’s absolutely no configuration, and I like that. The fact that I now have 5 gigs of storage is also awesome.
Been waiting for an app like this for a while but all the other available options aren’t this seamless. Syncing up my music now.
Nice one guys. Process is super slick.
just installed and playing around with it. Nothing really special. Syncing itunes meta data is not a big deal for me. I don’t like that it runs as a background process, even if I close itunes, its still running. All that matters is my music is accessible to me, and there are several, solutions that do the same. Just the fact that it runs even when itunes is closed, made me uninstall it.
Well, i am looking for an app which could sync my meta data. It is useful if you have a sync music collection between different Macs and when you edit something on one computer, it would be showed on others (like correct the name of the song, etc.)
I rated that collection for years (fortunately, my songs were backed up but not meta data). So this app could do it, i would give it a try
And i would really want to save my star rating in my Itunes, i have lost them once due to harddrive failure,
I want one！~
What is the plan now with iTunes 8.1 doing the database different? Services like this could be dead.
I’ll stick with Lala, it not only lets me stream my iTunes library from any browser already, but I can have multiple playlists.
Like the design work though.
Nice post! Check out my site too at http://macmaniapodcast.com.
Echodio sounds like a good idea but I would contend MP3tunes is several generations more advanced in the features and capabilities. MP3tunes will sync your itunes library (as well as all other popular media managers). It works on Mac/Win/Lin. You can then play your music on any browser via a web player or even have a Pandora like radio experience where one click gives you a custom mix of music.
But it doesn’t stop there. You can send songs to any phone, you can stream your music to any of the popular net radio devices like Logitech’s Squeezebox line. (without any PC turned on)
We also demoed the first car player! So your music is synced from your locker to your car automatically. The upcoming product is from Clarion.
And of course you you can use other devices like your Tivo, Wii, etc. to stream your music.
hey didn’t anywhere.fm (another Y! C startup I think) do this as well?
MP3tunes looks cool but I think it will ultimately fail (or atleast not be the market leader) because of it’s horrendously generic name.
“MP3tunes” sounds like spyware for your PC and “music locker” sounds like something from High School gym class.
They should consider giving their service a clean “web 2.0″ name (even if they’ve been around lonegr than that which is probably why they are the way they are), changing “mp3 locker” to something hinting at cloud storage, as well as getting a more modern UI similiar to dropbox or zumodrive.
I’m sure the service is great, though.
Mauvis, MP3tunes.com has been around since 2005. Try it out sometime…