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Oboe Offers Portable Playlist
Chiggers writes to tell us that Mad Penguin has an interesting look at Oboe, the new music service from MP3Tunes. For a monthly fee Oboe allows you unlimited space to create a cross-platform music playlist available anywhere you have an internet connection via their AJAX-enabled GUI. The audio player still needs a little work but overall it is an interesting idea.
However, I see mucho problemos in this sites future. In short, I'll summarize them all into 4 letters:
RIAA.
Isn't this similar to the service that mp3.com provided and got into trouble over? If I recall correctly, because mp3.com provided the same service, Vivendi-Universal got to buy them out at a discount price.
Create a small portable device with either a hard drive or flash storage, a battery, and maybe a screen that displays the song title, album name, artist name, and album art. That way people could bring their playlists anywhere, even if they are behind facist firewalls or even (gasp) away from a computer.
Oh wait, I seem to have one right here. It's called "Photo iPod 60Gb". Come to think of it, I think my wife has one too - hers is called "iPod Mini 4Gb".
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I have a great service for my music collection. It works on multiple hardware and software platforms. I can even use it in my car, without being tied to a network connection -- or monthly fee. That's right, I have a CD-RW drive. It's great! With RW discs I can burn new playlists anytime I would like. Mind you, I can't use the service anywhere, but I certainly couldn't use the online service at work either. I think these CDs are really going to take off soon. Yep, they are super fantastic. [/sarcasm]
The idea is all fine and dandy, but I have serious issues with not being able to use my music or change playlist "offline". Even though we are in an always on society, sometimes its nice to be disconnected.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
How is this substantially better than Launchcast or Pandora?
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
1.) 60 Gigs of Music would take a good while to upload at 32k/sec.
2.) This assumes you always have internet connectivity.
3.) Just seems like a huge pain really, and for what gain?
4.) I can do the same thing right now if I wanted to with my broadband connection.
5.) This is more convienent than my iPod how? Cheaper in the short run maybe, but not more convienent.
Someone needs to explain the need for this. Maybe for a small segment of the population that has internet access and a computer attached to their hip 24/7 this would work. The review says he has problems carrying around an iPod, even an iPod nano, because he would forget it.
Come on people. I don't see how this can possible last, or take off and the capital investment involved on the company's side as far as storage and bandwith costs doesn't seem at all to be covered by $40/year?? How does the company make a profit off that? That seems a bit ridiculous to me. I'd be leery of uploading my entire collection of music to a third party. Especially one of questionable staying power. So I spend hours and hours uploading my entire collection and then what happens when it all goes down?
Just don't think this was well thought out.
ampache can do this
kplaylist is a bit more lightweight
jinzora is a bloat beast, but a nice one at that
Not that "Oboe" is all that great a product name, but compared to the likes of these... yeesh.