7. Easiest For Handling Giant Collections: Subsonic
We've used "the cloud" for documents and bills, but now services are available to store your music and let you listen wherever you may go. We wade through the best new ways to listen to your tunes.
Subsonic is a free music streamer than can accommodate even your biggest music libraries with ease. It requires about $15 and some time to set up, and it should be known that it’s not a true cloud service -- it just uses your home computer or server to stream music to your phone or mobile devices. This does allow almost endless configurability of your streaming experience.
First, the downsides: Subsonic has none of the awesome volume, tone, and equalizer controls of some of the other music streamers. But, Subsonic holds its own – it has bitrate adjustment options right inside the app, it can support up to three individual Subsonic servers, and has cool menus for things like recently added or most played tracks.
You can also adjust how many songs Subsonic will stream in advance, and how much SD storage it can take up as cache (you can even set it to unlimited). For example, set it to 2GB, and it will cache the last played 2GB worth of music, making
Subsonic a real music geek streaming service. Also, be wary: the Subsonic server is free for a limited trial, but after that, you’ll need to cough up $15 to register your server for mobile streaming. You do get a nifty Subsonic domain prefix, though, to make the process of connecting to your server a lot easier to remember.
In addition to being portable, Subsonic is highly configurable – you can limit max bitrate on both WiFi and mobile connection in case you get skips or want to cut down on traffic. You can also switch Subsonic into Offline mode, and it will only show the media that has been cached – perfect for trips with slow or interrupting Internet connection.
- 1. Easiest to Access from Anywhere: Google Music Beta
- 2. Easiest to Organize: Amazon Cloud Player
- 3. Best Way to Find Unique Artists: Bandcamp
- 4. Most Creative Way to Share: Soundcloud
- 5. Finding Music For Dummies: Nutsie
- 6. Best Free Storage: mSpot and More
- 7. Easiest For Handling Giant Collections: Subsonic
- 8. Apple Music Streaming (iTunes Cloud or iCloud?) On The Way
WOW! I was just thinking about something like this for my music library. Just would like to have a backup of my music and be able to stream it no matter where I'm at. Also, damn paying, I want a good free service that is secure and offers a nice big storage space. Was thinking of trying Evernote or one of the other popular cloud services.
Good read, Toms!
You should also mention AudioGalaxy. It has many of the features of most Subsonic clients, and yet everything is free.
since most of the services mention here aren't available in my country, i'm stuck with grooveshark. funny that it doesn't get mentioned here. the other one that is available for me is soundcloud, but that is not exactly a music library service.
my Windows XP can not install the battery, does it cause no sound in my computer?
You've missed the first and the best one, Spotify. I know it's not available in the US yet but it will be. And it's the best. You can use it on anything, it's been around for ages and it just works. It's easy to use and has loads of music to search from.
You've missed the first and the best one, Spotify. I know it's not available in the US yet but it will be. And it's the best. You can use it on anything, it's been around for ages and it just works. It's easy to use and has loads of music to search from.
We look forward to being able to test Spotify in the U.S.!
So far Spotify is ahead of the pack. Works on Android and iPhone. Can synch up on up to 3 devices offline. No more iTunes libraries to manage. AMazing library of music. 10 Euros a month. However, Spotify will and can lose its edge very quickly as they do not seem to invest much into the software.