I mentioned a couple of posts ago that it is entirely possible that we have seen the last large-capacity iPod. 160GB might be the max that Apple goes for music devices.

Maybe. Who knows …

The reason very well could be due to the movement of cloud-based music storage. Apple has bought a few different properties and land that could be the basis for their movement to online storage … probably at a monthly or yearly price point. Exciting, but … hmm. Again, my point is that many of us have music collections that far exceed 500GB. It’s ludicrous to think that Apple will provide a fairly decent-sized hard drive for EVERY SINGLE PERSON who wants to use a cloud-based service.

So what are the alternatives? Is there anything out there right now that can provide a similar service? At what cost? Can I get all my music and stuff to my device?!

Yes you can, and little to no cost.

How about “free”? How about “$20”? No subscription rates, no annual or monthly fees … your library, your device.

I’ve done some digging around and have come up with a pretty good list of applications and programs that will keep you earlobes deep in Funkytown.

Audiogalaxy
This is a *great* audi0 library streaming program. Best part–it’s free.  You create an online account on their website, then download and install a desktop application. Once you install it, you specify what folders you want it to scan for music. It finds all the audio files within those folders. Once it completes the scan, it catalogs what it finds on its server. Next, download the Audiogalaxy app, install it, and log in  using the account info you created on AG’s website. Voila! You have access to your entire music collection!

One drawback: you cannot delete files by simply selecting them from AG’s user interface. “Erm … why would I want to delete music from my library?” Let me give you an example. Right now, I have Terry Oldfield’s and Sally Oldfield’s entire discographies on AG. I … meh. I don’t particularly want to listen to them, nor do I care if I have them in my AG library. In order to get them out of AG, I have to move them to a separate file that’s not in my AG database, then I have to rescan the AG folder. Kind of lame … and I’m not a fan.

Of course, it works best over wi-fi, but it holds up extremely well with as little as two bars on my phone. Buffering is minimal.

Zumocast

First off, if you don’t already have Zumocast downloaded and installed, looks like you’ll be waiting a couple of months before you can get it. Bummer, since it’ll stream audio, music, docs … pretty much anything. So … that sucks. I was looking forward to watching Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Guess that’s not happening. Yet. When it was available in the App store, it was free. Here’s hoping it returns as the same.

The beauty of Zumocast is that it will stream audio AND video. That’s pretty slick … except it’s not available right now. Someday …

Sorry if anyone finds the ellipses condescending (YOU know who you are!!). 🙂

ooTunes

Not free. $19.99. And it uses a browser to stream. And it hella-sucks to set up. Unless your last name is “Gates” or “Jobs,” I wouldn’t mess with this. No program should be this difficult to set up.

Air Video

Similar to Audiogalaxy, except it doesn’t play music files; it streams only video files. However, this was too good to pass up. Same process as AG: go to website; download desktop app; install; search for vid files; download iPhone app ($4.99, no freebie version); xyz, blah blah blah. End result: 1300 video files streaming to my phone. Yah. I can deal with with that. I would like to be able to have “one app to rule them all,” as it were, but I can wait until Zumocast is back up and running. Meanwhile, this app will be fine.

There is one *tiny* little drawback, and it’s probably just some tweak that I haven’t properly configured … I can’t get this to work over 3G. It works great on my home wi-fi network, but I don’t know about wandering out of my router’s range. I’ll have to test that later. But if you’re just bumming around the house and you have a wireless network, it’s definitely worth the $5.

End result of all apps tested: Audiogalaxy for streaming all your music; Air Video to stream your vids … UNTIL Zumocast is re-released!