Music is a great use-case for keeping data in the cloud. You can have a consistent music library and can use any player client-side. Personally I prefer the spotify "all-you-can-listen" model, but I have a bunch of MP3s that aren't on spotify that I seamlessly stream from dropbox (either to winamp or the spotify client, which allows you to sync local files).

Off the top of my head: You tie your data to one provider instead of simply physical media, you lose discoverability (will your kids browse your album choices 30 years from now?), exporting/importing quality is at the mercy of the provider (for example Amazon dropped several dozen mp3s when I migrated a few gigs to Google), and of course you place your data at the mercy of a business, (is any tech company eternal and/or always interested in providing cloud services?)

The cloud is way overdone, after giving a variety of services a go over the last few years, I'm actually pulling back.

http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

I'm also an Rdio and Netflix subscriber, but running Plex on my server allows me to 'roll my own Netflix' and stream movies and music to my iPad or other computers, or even from my server to any computer in the web browser. I'm happy.

Edit: Rebooted phone and it works now. Holy shit this is cool, and I can even share my media library with friends!

i just have an apache serving all my videos and a bookmark on any device browser. click and play. for android i use mx player.

Before you ask - yes I used to be running xbmc, minidlna, etc. previously. No, they are nowhere as good (actually, to rephrase, the client-server model is not xbmc's focus, which is completely wrong IMHO).

https://github.com/ampache/ampache

https://web.archive.org/web/20130302160313/http://ampache.or...

https://web.archive.org/web/20130306044144/http://ampache.or...

Within the last year the project ditched their website in favor of just using github. However, strangely they didn't migrate any the content from their website to it.

Plug shit into PC, two way sync. WinPhone and iOS do this fine.

I'm sure, at amazon prices which is a fair approximation including CDs, you didn't spend $100,000 on them either.

This is really not a problem. Well it is but only greed created it.

Putting this down to greed? What an incredibly short sighted, ignorant thing to say. Perhaps we should have stopped at black & white feature phones because only greed could mean we wanted to access the whole internet on the move?

It isn't a "solved problem" because there are still issues with the solution.

[0]: http://www.madsonic.org/

That used to be the case, but the newer versions actually phone home and verify the license.

Ugh.. lost me. I don't run Java anything anymore.

As a JavaEE architect/developer, I whole-heartedly agree that you shouldn't run Applets in your browser anymore. In fact, unsigned applets will no longer run after January of 2014, which will break a lot of the banking infrastructure and a couple important client applications at my day job.

Java may not be amazing, but it's hardly "so bad I literally won't ever use it."

I fully realize many web sites and services are implemented in Java, that's not what I was talking about. I will not install or run anything that needs Java. Period.

Who cares if he still uses some website that is build on servlets server side, or if his tv/car/fridge has a Java running CPU? That's totally besides the point.

Java is not "everywhere". In fact it's getting nowhere fast (including it's use on microcontrollers and devices). The only exception is server side, where it's also not what it used to be these days...

"Because I have a resource limited platform in which I cannot handle many dependencies."

Subsonic on a Cubieboard is a dreary task.

Limited resource platforms can run java just fine - but large software with many dependencies, sure, that's a valid concern.

There's no reason that The Cloud and Owning Your Files has to be a binary choice. The Cloud can be a great compliment to your local file storage, rather than a replacement for it.

Another example: store your music in Dropbox, which clones it to all your devices (where applicable), and then use Tunebox (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tunebox-dropbox-music-player...) as your frontend. Now you have a 'cloud' music service where you control the content, someone else handles the distribution, and everything is cloned locally on all your machines (for your other players to use). Then you can trivially back up your music files from Dropbox to a local backup (or a third-party backup service if all you want is some form of company-independent redundancy.

[1]: http://owncloud.org

[1]: http://www.mopidy.com/

Also with music, I point blank refuse to let music turn into a subscription based service. I still buy CDs when something agrees with my ears and listen to them.

I also quite happily transcribe things to sheet music and play it breaking many a royalty and public performance law. Fuck 'em.

There are plenty of us CD buyers left :). We're just not as noisy.

physical media has enormous problems for anything besides long term archival use.

I'm also glad my music is on physical media every time I don't have to pay insane rates for a couple hours of wifi on a flight just to listen to my music, or when I'm killing time somewhere where cell service is spotty at best.

I don't yet live in the future where access to the cloud is a given, and I prefer my devices don't become completely useless without a data connection.

Edit: My primary physical media isn't a pile of CDs—I have plenty of those too, but stopped carrying them the moment I got an MP3 player. Now I carry almost my entire collection on my phone and a whole lot more than that on my laptop. I see nothing wrong with having copies of things in the cloud (remote backup FTW), but I'm not about to take a shotgun to my local disks.

for those of us that consider music as art that is precisely the point, especially re: children browsing their parents collections

Instead, diversify and maintain. I use iTunes Match, Google Music and keep everything locally as well as a backup on my server. It all happens automatically when music is added to the local library. Nothing is lost, and redundant access is gained.

Yes, but ideally, when it's your cloud. Just because all these major cloud players can just stop their service on their whim.

[1] http://owncloud.org

If you are concerned with minimizing monetary loss rather than preserving working copies of your media [1] you can treat that as an argument for choosing a media provider that allows you to pay a monthly fee. If (when) their service gets discontinued you switch to another one; the only problem you would face is migrating your favorites, bookmark, playlists and the like [2].

[1] Which makes sense when the specific things you want to access (watch, listen to, read, play, etc.) are not rare and can be found elsewhere.

[2] Incidentally, this is something you could offer as SaaS. Edit: See http://resp.in/, http://www.getunify.com/, the FOSS project https://github.com/mauimauer/portify, etc.

I don't think this is a good strategy, you are putting yourself at the mercy of content license negotiations that are done by a bunch of idiots with their heads up their asses that you have absolutely no control over. There is no guarantee that the music you "rent" from one service will be available for you to "rent" on another service.

Since when? For start it drains battery much faster. Oh and you know, it does not work offline!

Until network will be more reliable and faster than my hdd, there is not much to discus.

http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

It is hard to "surpass" something that meets my needs perfectly and has given me no issues for over 10 years.

Rock over London! Rock on Chicago!

I have Ctrl-Pause bound to Play/Pause, Ctrl-PgUp to Previous and Ctrl-PgDn to Next.

http://www.autoitscript.com/

Now I prefer smplayer for videos and foobar for music. Although I've been a heavy Rdio user for some time.

Thank you for the tip. The facet plugin is great - exactly what I wanted.

the other component i use is the ipod manager i forget what its called but you can find it easily. it lets you add/delete songs pretty easily & if you use flac/wav/whatever it can even convert to mp3 on the fly if you set up the encoder right. that way you can keep lossless on comp but have mp3 on ipod without making an mp3 directory

Software is a teeny little bit of the whole thing.

Software, while a "teeny little bit", is often the bit I find lacking and needing change.

There's also a plugin called Chipamp which ensures you have all the latest plugins required to play video game music files (nsf, rsn, usf, psf, etc.). This is the best PC tool for listening to video game music.

http://subsonic.org/

I like the isub app for iphone, but there are android apps too: http://www.subsonic.org/pages/apps.jsp

I find subsonic works best with a friend or two participating. A miniature music club if you will.

If you already have a large library, you can use beets to organize it in a separate database (this is our current project) http://beets.radbox.org/

If you're a linux user then 'audacious' is a good/similar replacement to winamp IMHO.

I switched to using quodlibet some time ago. Can't remember why (simplicity, the right views, stuff) but now everything else seems sucky.