So I've had my empeg for more than six years now and I've been happy that entire time. But even though I loved my empeg, I was looking for the next upgrade and in that entire time, I never found it, which was actually pretty disappointing. I never found anything that was as efficient, powerful and generally badass as the empeg. Until now.

For me, the iphone 3G is my empeg killer. Here is why:

1) Pandora! Pandora! Pandora! This app is awesome and I'm sure most of you know about it. Although unfortunately, just today I read an article about how they might be shutting down, which would REALLY suck. I would pay for this service if they went that route.

2) I've found a mobile site where you can basically search and stream any song. Its awesome and I use it often.

3) This is the one that basically made me have my revelation and write this post: Simplify Media. This amazing little program will stream your entire library to your iphone, with album art, artist info and lyrics. WHAT. THE. F. Its definitely got some initial issues but for the most part, Simplify Media has been consistent for me. The really cool part is you can invite other people to see your library and stream their stuff just easily easily as you stream your own.


An iphone isn't really even a requirement for this stuff. I don't know about #3 but the first two things can be accessed with any web enabled smartphone. I love my empeg but it can't compete with all of these features, for me at least. The main issue with my plan obviously is reception but I've been okay so far. All three of those options will even work on Edge if you're sort of patient. Then of course there is the option of just falling back on the music stored on the actual ipod when you're in the boondocks.

So that's it. I was just pretty fired up about these recent discoveries and wanted to share. Anyone looking for a couple empegs?

Pandora isn't available outside of the US, neither are most of the other similar services.

I'm guessing because you haven't given a link that is isn't exactly a legal option.

The Simplify site has a wonderfully simple claim of "it's legal", which I can't help thinking is a over simplification outside of the US. Expect legal cases in various countries if this becomes popular.

Also, if it becomes popular then expect 3G networks to get a lot slower. If you streamed 192k MP3s for an hour long commute, I made that about 3.5 gig of data transfer a month. That would exceed the usage limits on many "unlimited" plans over here.

Do you suspect that streaming music from your home computer to your portable computer would be illegal for some reason? Maybe you're referring to the "other people" part of it, but it's clear that they are referring to a very small group, and if that's illegal where you live, it's easy enough not to do it, right?

Unfortunately "format shifting", i.e. ripping isn't even legal in the UK yet and the record industry are trying to fix it so you can format shift for a fee. So I suspect lots of people streaming music to their phones could get the record industries attention

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/200...-for-a-fee.html

N.B. British law does lag very far behind reality sometimes, I believe I am right in saying that recording something from the TV with a VCR was illegal until 2003...

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2003/20032498.htm#19

I certainly see how the combination of Pandora and Simplify Media would keep someone very happy musically.

Of course, it requires ubiquitous broadband. The 3G is one of the few devices coming anywhere close to providing that, so, in theory, that side of the equation is solved.

But don't throw out your empeg right away, though. See if this idea of your works first. I think there's a good chance it might fail on a few points:

First, even with the existence of Simplify Media, I'm not convinced it's got the same useful feature set for on-the-road browsing and searching my music collection that the Empeg has. Hierarchical playlists? Arbitrary playlist groupings? Ignore as child? Alphanumeric searches on a tactile remote? Those things might not be important to you, but I know they're critical for me, and for a lot of empeg users.

Second, 3G reception patterns. Can I take a drive from Seattle to Portland without a hiccup in the music stream? What if I drive through a tunnel? Or better yet, what about a trip from Seattle to Vancouver BC? Have you *seen* how much Rogers charges for data traffic?! I don't recall where you live, and I don't know where you travel, so maybe that might not be an issue for you.

Third, AT&T's *supposedly* unlimited data plan. I've heard rumors of people with the *original* iPhone getting cut off because of over-usage of their data channel. Imagine what will happen if they notice a 3G user streaming constantly. Betcha we see some people complaining about bandwidth throttling on their 3G iPhones soon.

One of the main reasons this solution works for me in particular is that I don't really use any of those features you mention, though I did extensively in my first year or two of owning the empeg. After a while, the empeg changed the way I listen to music. Now I'm so used to just setting it on shuffle and skipping the tracks I don't want to listen to that I don't need any of that stuff. Also, when I do get to a song whose entire album I want to listen to, thats easy enough to do with Simplify Media.

Searching is an issue right now but like I said, there are a bunch of sites up now where you can simply search whatever song it is you're looking for and it'll stream it right then and there. It finds about 90% of the stuff I'm usually looking for. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Simplify Media got updated with a search feature.

Finally, one thing I forgot to mention is that in the last few years, I've also gotten into podcasts and a couple morning radio shows. The iphone or really any web enabled phone make accessing these extremely easy now. Pretty much any mp3 link streams awesome, even if it is a 45 minute long segment. No downloading/syncing/deleting necessary. Miss a This American Life episode? No problem just bring up thisamericanlife.org on your phone and start streaming.

I use a TON of data a month, even when I was on Edge and so far I haven't had any issues but I share your concern about ATT throttling or doing something stupid like that. Reception is definitely an issue but like I said during those stretches where I have no 3G, I can fall back on the 6 gigs of music I have on the device itself.

This is definitely not the solution for everyone but it works great for me.

I think it's very interesting what you are doing. I've been using Pandora on my phone a lot lately, but only at the office when on WiFi. I haven't hooked it into the car, but I should try it to see what kind of reception I get while driving around. Simplify Media will definitely be on my list of things to tinker with this weekend, as it sounds like it is working well.

Overall, I think this is the future, and it's not that far off. With wide area networks (3G and other cellular data services are basically a WAN) continuing to advance along with the portability of devices, I think even flash memory is doomed for storage in everything. Why bother keeping 4 copies of your data in various places (desktop, phone, laptop, car) when you can just pull the data over your WAN connection instantly?

For now, it might be a rocky start as the data providers pull back that "unlimited" tag, but all it will take is one provider to do it right to force change. With every generation jump, there is always the chance for someone else to come along and do it well. 3G is here now, time to look forward to 4G.

I've been tethering Treos (a 300, a 600, a 650 and until the iPhone a 700p) for years. 1xRTT was near-ubiquitous but slow. EvDO has worked nicely. I'm just tired of the Treo as a device. I think I prefer EvDO to 3g.

In 2006 I drove Pittsburgh->Columbus->Birmingham->Columbus->Cincinnati->Columbus->Chicago->Columbus->Pittsburgh over a week.

The stream was interrupted between St Clairsville and Cambridge OH, no coverage at the time. That hole has since been filled in. For the roads I drive regularly I can tell you were the irregularities are. None last more than a few seconds anymore. One is on the Ohio Turnpike crossing the Cuyahoga. Another is on the PA Turnpike at the base of the east slope of Allegheny Mountain, as you pass New Baltimore.

It works fine in all 4 tunnels along the east-west Turnpike, as well as in all 3 major tunnels in Pittsburgh, the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and Fort McHenry Tunnel, and the Holland Tunnel. I haven't tried in the Lincoln Tunnel, the Cumberland Gap Tunnel, the PA Turnpike Northeast Extension tunnel, or the Detroit Windsor Tunnel(*), which seem like (to me) the other obvious ones I should have.

* - "Tunnel to Canada", as opposed to "Bridge to Canada". They have one of each, so they assume you know what you want. I love that.

Unfortunately, the iPhone cannot decode the 64 kbps stereo AACPlus stream of Pandora so it gets a 64 kbps mono MP3 stream instead. To me that is not a very good alternative to local files which I have mostly at 320 kbps stereo MP3. It's fine on the iPhone's speaker but not on the car's speakers.

[edit]I've tested this on my own iPhone over Edge and despite what I've read, I can definitely hear stereo separation and don't hear any compression artifacts normally associated with 64 kbps mp3 files. So they may have rectified the limitations.[/edit]


Stu

Even with the VLC jailbreak app?

What's the bitrate of music coming over the Simplify Media server?

If that's also 64kbps, I'm not interested!

If VLC can play the Pandora streams than you should be able to get the 64 kbps stereo AACPlus stream or so I've read. Sorry my iPhone is not jailbroken so I don't know if VLC plays it or not.

Stu

I'm not sure actually, thats a good question and I sent a quick email to their support to find out. I didn't know that Pandora was running at 64 kbps mono and it sounded great to me in the car so I guess my quality standards are a lot lower than you guys!

From the Simplify Media FAQ:

How does Simplify Media work?

Music is streamed directly between computers over the Internet within small groups that you control.

So does that mean I'm serving the song up directly from my computer when I'm listening to it? If so maybe its streaming at the full bit rate? That might explain why some of my songs take longer to load than others.

I dunno just a guess.

You're not interested then. Its 64kbps CBR which is umm... nice...

The Linux server software has an XML file listing the various clients it supports and the settings for each. It has this for the iPhone:

<profiles>
<name>Apple iPhone</name>
<profile>
<fileFormatsSupported>FILETYPE-MP3</fileFormatsSupported>
<bitRateThreshold>64</bitRateThreshold>
<requestedBitRate>64</requestedBitRate>
<vbrSupported>false</vbrSupported>
</profile>
<twoByteHack>true</twoByteHack>
<playerName>SimplifyMedia</playerName>
</profiles>

It certainly is. Media keeps improving to the point where there's no media at all - WAN.

But in this future, every home computer is intentionally running multiple server apps to put their content on the WAN "media". How safe is that, really? Will these server app companies be releasing timely security patches as necessary?

Scratch that, Microsoft and Sony will buy up all the personal media serving apps, then implement DRM to appease the RIAA who still believe in user-unreplicable formats like LP record.