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This
week MP3tunes is announcing our
next generation music
locker - Oboe 2.0 which you can try out with a free music
locker.
Ten months ago we announced our first Oboe music locker. Since then,
we have stored tens of millions of songs and more than 100 terabytes
of music. I have been surprised that music locker competitors have
not come along, but I guess they are all focused on the crowded video
opportunity. [Note to entrepreneurs: If everyone is doing it, you're
either wrong or too late.] As the CEO of MP3tunes, my
job is to predict where the music locker business will trend and be
the first to build an uncatchable lead on the eventual competition.
Here's
a list of new features in Oboe 2.0 that take the music locker to a
whole new level.
Music
Goes Visual - Album artwork is now auto-added to all your
music.
Listening to your music with a visual track enlivens the playback
experience enormously, but it's been difficult to get artwork for all
of your
music. The new Oboe Sync automatically searches for cover art and
adds it to your entire existing library (not just the newly added
songs).
There's also a new locker interface
which displays album art while playing your music. See sample below.
We've added graphic output it to
the API
so expect other
interfaces to take advantage of this graphic
playback option.
I have to
admit that I was bummed when Apple announced a couple weeks ago that
iTunes 7 would add artwork since we have been working on this for
quite a while. The good news is that we do a much more thorough job
of adding the artwork. iTunes only locates exact matches of albums
that are available in their store. Our system uses fuzzy logic to
locate artwork from much larger sources so you may not even have an
album name, but we'll likely find the correct album cover. This means
that whether
you're downloading from the net, ripping your own CDs or buying your
tracks from online vendors, you should always have a high rate of
success.
Album
Cover
Matching
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|
|
Oboe 2.0
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iTunes
7
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Matches
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90%
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50%
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Incorrect
Matches
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5%
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0%
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No
Matches
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5%
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50% |
These are
just an average of a few music lockers we examined. My
personal test
produced a 38% match with iTunes versus 92% with Oboe, but I don't buy
digitally
restricted songs from iTunes. iTunes customers will likely
see
higher success than 38%.
More Syncing
Features - The number one requested feature was more control
over
syncing to and from lockers and Oboe 2.0 adds loads of new features
around syncing. This week I flew to NYC from my home in San Diego on
business. The night before my trip I scheduled a sync to happen in
the middle of the night. When I woke up I had a fresh snapshot of my
music including the recent playlists I had compiled for the long
flight to the east coast. All of this was done without swamping my
home network during the day.
Those
with big lockers or small hard disks will appreciate selective
syncing which lets you easily sync up or down a portion of your music
collection. You can also select specific artists or albums to move.
One handy feature is that as you select music the system indicates
how much space the move will take.
Virtual MP3 Player With Every
Locker - Every MP3tunes locker now comes with your choice of
a
virtual MP3 player so you can listen anywhere with an interface that
suits you. With a few clicks at
AnywhereMP3,
your music locker will pop-up in seconds on any computer with your
choice of a classic mp3 player interface, a PDA, a mobile phone or
even a futuristic Bune interface. Unlike in the real world, these
virtual
devices can't get dropped and the battery will never die.
AnywhereMP3
was built by a non-MP3tunes employee using our public APIs which lets
any software, web site or device access a personal music locker.
Check out the Developer
tab on our main page for more info on how to build your own software or
hardware device.
Beyond virtual MP3 players, we're also hard at work with
several manufacturers to make music appliances work seamlessly with
your Oboe 2.0 locker. Imagine being able to turn on a sub-$200 device
and have it wirelessly connect to your locker and play your albums,
artists and playlists.
Hardware takes more time to roll out because of manufacturing
constraints than software, but we expect several models to be released
in the next few months. Oboe locker owners will be notified in advance,
so sign
up for
your free locker today to be the first to see and hear the
next
generation music locker.
-- MRThe Michael's Minute Meter
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