Audiogalaxy
December 29th, 2011
Despite the awful name, AudioGalaxy is just about exactly what I’ve been looking for. It’s a free and simple way to access your entire music library when away from home. You do this by downloading a small helper application that connects your iTunes library XML file (or any other shared folders you choose) to the AudioGalaxy.com web site. The initial scan can take a while depending on the size of your library (I think mine took about 16 hours, but I’m not sure about that) but once it’s completed, your tunes are accessible on the go.
The Browser Interface
When at work, I primarily use the web browser interface to browse music, add songs/albums to a playlist and listen to my music. The user interface is pretty bare-bones, but it does what it needs to do. There are a few quirks, like I have artists such as “01″, which I don’t actually have in my library. But it allows me to listen to Tom Waits when I didn’t think to put any on my iPhone, so I have no complaints.
The iPhone App
In addition to the service being free, their companion iPhone app is free as well. The app is reasonably similar to the native iPod app on the iPhone, but same as the web interface — you have to add your music to a playlist before you can listen to it. It sounds like it might be downsampling the music a bit to keep things streaming smoothly over 3G — but that’s acceptable to me, since a day of 320k streaming would likely kill my data plan.