Simplify Media

Rating:
MMMMM - Matters!

I love a variety of music and of course, my 4000 song collection can’t fit on my iPhone. Neither can my friend’s library, however, Simplify Media takes you and your friend’s song collections wherever you go without taking up more than 1MB of space.

Simplify Media is an application that lets you listen to your music collection anywhere you want. In addition to being able to listen to your own music, you can also invite up to 30 friends to be on your buddy list and stream their music as well.

I am not quite sure why I hadn’t heard of Simplify Media before because apparently they are pretty popular and have been doing this for a while. It wasn’t until they made the app for the iPhone that I found out about their services, and I couldn’t be more happy.

Simplify Media is a very straight-forward and simple application, hence its name - SIMPLify. The first step is to run the Simplify Media application on your desktop. This acts as the gateway to your library. The second step is to install the Simplify Media application on your iPhone. Once you’ve logged in at both locations, your home library becomes available to your iPhone through the application. You can also view and stream music from anyone you’ve invited to be your friend on the Simplify Media network. There’s absolutely no configuration outside of logging into the application.

On a side note, you will also see your friend’s music within iTunes as well which is pretty cool.

The interface is laid out in a very similar way to the iPod application. You can pick from any playlist, or choose artists to choose your favorite band. After choosing an artist, you can go to all songs or pick an album to listen to. When one track is finished playing, it advances to the next just like the iPod.

Simplify Media is a very simple application. There is not much to it. Download the small desktop app, then the iPhone app, log in, and there is your music. To add your friends, you can send them a request and if they accept, you’ll see their music as well. If you have a large library, like I do, then the first time you use it, it may take a while. Unfortunately, not all your music is going to be playable. Only music that is not protected will be playable so if you are a honest person who purchases your music, you’ll find that some good deeds are, in fact, punished. :(

Price: Free
Available in the App Store

Pros:
Works over WiFi, Edge, and 3G
Interface is very easy to navigate
Artist info and Song lyrics are showed

Cons:
Does not stream DRM files
Takes quite a while to load songs on first use
Cannot jump to a specific spot in a song