Sharing your music

I found this interesting article.

Of Macs & Tux
Sharing is Good
by Rom Feria

I remember watching Sesame Street when I was a kid and one of the values that they taught was Sharing. I remember Cookie Monster sharing a piece of cookie with Ernie even if cookies are his favorite. Ain't it cool if kids today still have Sesame Street to help them out?

Unfortunately, today's kids have this concept of sharing that is instilled upon them by their parents. It is a different kind of sharing -- the illegal kind. Their parents pirate software and music and so kids think that it is cool to the same thing. Sad, isn't it?

Anyway, today's topic is a similar kind of sharing, i.e., music sharing but the legit kind. The assumption here is that you own your music -- music that you have bought from legitimate sources like the brick and mortar shops or online stores like iTunes. How do you share them with your peers?

The iTunes Player has a built-in feature of being able to share music with computers within your local network. Just go to iTunes-Preferences-Sharing. You can share your entire library or just selected playlists. You can even secure it with a password so that only those who know the password can access it. In addition, files with digital rights managements (DRM) require authorization before other computers can play it. Cool, huh? Well, what if you want to share it beyond your local network?

This is where Simplify Media comes in. Simply Media provides a free tool that allows you to access your iTunes library over the internet. In addition, it allows you to share it with up to 30 friends.

First, you download the small application from http://simplifymedia.com. Installation is straightforward and you just need to register (don't worry, it is free). Registration is needed so that your screen name will be added to the database for faster searching when your friends invite you. Next, you will be asked for the library to share and that is it! Easy, huh?

Next, you invite your friends to join the network so you can share music over the internet. Friends who want to access your library will send you a request and you may or may not allow them access. Everything done within iTunes Player. Your shared library will appear under the Shared Libraries section of iTunes along with your friends' shared libraries. SimplifyMedia also preserves the DRM -- only authorized computers can see DRM'd files.

I tried this with my friend in the US and Canada and whilst the quality of streaming is hugely dependent on the bandwidth that you have. I had pretty decent results. Connecting to the US is flawless whilst connecting to Canada resulted in some rebuffering. All these done whilst my ISP is having problems with its international link. Guess what? I am writing this whilst streaming music from my friend's collection in Diliman.

So, why not give it a try? SimplifyMedia works on both Mac and PC. Unfortunately, iTunes is not available on Linux so there's no Linux client.

Enjoy!