Monday, January 29, 2007

Music...to go

Anyone who knows me remotely well knows how jazzed I get from technology. Not technology for technology's sake, mind you, but technology for the purpose of squeezing a little more fun out of life. Or for the purpose of squeezing out more life in the first place. If it has a bottom-line benefit that regular folks can understand or appreciate, I get excited.

A friend of mine turned me on to something called the Avvenu Music Player a couple of days ago. It takes all that lovely music that you have bottled up inside iTunes or your iPod and frees it. Want to get at your tunes remotely? Can do. Want to share your music with your friends? No sweat.

We'll set aside the legalities of sharing music for another day. But my take is simple: anything that helps build out the community of sharing that makes music such an experience of humanity is by definition a good thing. If it broadens our knowledge of what's out there and points us toward a richer base of artistic output, then you've got to applaud the effort.

The product is in beta now, and it's free to try. (See the Digg here.) The geek in me will be playing around with it in the weeks to come.

Your turn: As someone with a significant stake in tech, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this new offering. I'd also want to know if anyone wants me to share a playlist from my own library. I have highly eclectic tastes in music, so I don't want to scare anyone. But if you're feeling adventurous...

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

i'm technically challenged, i rely on my kid to help me with anything like that. i can barely load a song onto the i-pod, much less figure out how to do any of that. and isn't music sharing in canada legal?

Anna said...

I would love to hear a sampling of your playlist...
I'm in!

Anonymous said...

I think it's an interesting idea, but as a non-iTunes user (I know, scary - but my mp3 player is a Creative Zen Vision M, and we're a PC household, no Apple presence at all, so I'm a Napster and Rhapsody child), it wouldn't do anything for me.

Though, a peek into your music library would be interesting.

utenzi said...

My tastes in music are kinda boring. Mostly 50s R&B with some 60s and 70s pop mixed in. I've got an old MP3 player with a gig on it but that new iPod nano (the paperclip one) is calling my name. Small and cheap.

Anonymous said...

ARGH! I only wish I was at home right now to download the software on the computer that has all my files. I will definitely check this out! Thanks for the heads up!

Joan said...

I would love to or hear a random sampling of your music! I did a "meme" on my blog having to do with what was on my Ipod and it was kinda fun.

:-)

Anonymous said...

If you want to share your iTunes playlist with us using the Avvenu Music Player, follow these steps (steps will tell you how to embed a share link into a web page:

1. from the Avvenu music player, make a share to yourself (enter your email and click share).
2. go to where it says 'click here' in the email, right click and 'view source'
3. look for a line that has several "href = https://share.avvenu.com/service/2785/datashare/........." strings in it
4. its the very first sequence.
5. copy that string into a browser to test it (it should boot the player, not just a picture)
6. if it does, embed that link in your blog with the click here

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm not real tech savvy, but I did download it, as it sounds quite interesting.
By any chance....will it allow me to take songs from my iTunes and "get at them" to tranfer to like my blog?
Because iTunes won't allow me to do that. I'll check this all out more in-depth and thanks, Carmi.

Anonymous said...

Yes, you can share your iTunes music via your blog using Avvenu.
1. download and install the Avvenu software on your iTunes PC.
2. Create your username and password.
3. Now log in to Avvenu via your web browser and launch the Music Player.
4. The music player will present your iTunes music/playlists. Select a playlist and "share" it to yourself.
5. Now follow the steps from my earlier post.

When sharing a playlist for the first time, allow ample time for the playlist to be uploaded to our secure media server. It is from the Avvenu media server that we stream the shared playlist. This ensures friends can listen to the music even when your iTunes PC is off-line. The time it takes to upload the shared playlist to Avvenu's media servers depend on the number of tracks and your upstream bandwidth. Your iTunes PC must be also online and connected to Avvenu until all the playlist has been uploaded.