Music Streaming applications are beginning to garner the attention they deserve. What makes them such great options is the not only the price and portability, but the functionality these applications provide. Most music service iPhone applications are affordable and many are free. In just a few days, I’ll be canceling my XM Sirius Satellite Radio, which just charged another $300+ for the year. Of course, this doesn’t include cost for the hardware, which I bought for around $80 or so.
The replacement for my XM Sirius Radio will come via a combination of iPod Touch Streaming Radio Applications and Streaming Radio Android Applications. I have both the iPod Touch and Motorola Droid, which have plenty of great apps to ensure I don’t miss my XM Sirius Radio or the fat bill. I can’t bash the content XM Radio provides, but it’s the first unnecessary cost I plan to cut out.
Pandora is amazing, but how about applications that stream your very own music collection? The applications below will give you the ability to stream music directly from your home music library located on your Mac or PC, then play these music files on your iPhone or iPod Touch without having to download them to your phone. Here are three of the best applications I found to accomplish this task.
StreamToMe ($2.99)
Use your iPhone or iPod Touch to play video and music files, in many different formats, streamed directly over Wifi from your Mac. “StreamToMe requires an Intel Mac running ServeToMe to provide it with movie files in MP4, AVI, MOV, FLV, MPG, MKV or WMV formats. ServeToMe is a Mac OS X 10.5 program that StreamToMe users can download for free from http://projectswithlove.com/streamtome.”
“Files do not need to be pre-converted to an iPhone/iPod size or format — the ServeToMe application converts the files to an iPhone-friendly format on-the-fly, so a single touch will start playback in as little as 5 seconds. You can pause and seek through the file as though it were actually on your phone.”
“The Apple iPhone/iPodTouch TV out cables are supported so you can connect your iPhone or iPod Touch to your TV to use your Mac as a wireless streaming media center for your TV.”
- image via itunes.apple.com
Airfoil Speakers Touch (FREE)
“With Airfoil Speakers Touch, you can send any audio from your Mac or PC, straight to your iPhone or iPod Touch! Just connect your device to your local Wifi network, then open up Airfoil on your Mac or Windows machine, and start transmitting. You’ll be able to send audio from iTunes, RealPlayer, and even web-based sources like Pandora and Last.fm. Now, if your Mac or Windows machine can play it, you can hear it on your iPhone or iPod Touch!”
Get Airfoil for Mac or Airfoil for Windows at http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/.
- image via itunes.apple.com
MusicServer ($0.99)
“Transform your iPod touch or iPhone into a music server that you can control from your computer. Just start the application on your iPod touch or iPhone, type the address indicated at the top of the application into your web browser. You can now browse and control all your iPod touch or iPhone music.
In your web browser you can:
> Search songs in your library (by song title, album name, artist name and genre).
> Sort results with multiple criterias.
> Remotely manage the playback.”
- image via itunes.apple.com
Did I miss any iPhone or iPod Touch App that deserves a mention? How do you listen to your music collection while on the go? If you’ve tried any of these Apps or can recommend others, share the love. I’d love to get another point of view for these apps, which I love.
