CrunchGear

right!

(tho’ i guess it’s unsurprising that i should agree with you here ;)

and that also means that if i can invite you and a couple friends into my living room to listen to my tunes through my TV’s killer soundsystem, i should be able to do so in cyberspace as well (nod to the retro with that “cyberspace” there)

for example: we just today launched an updated version of that Wii interface (and a PS3 version too!) and lots new sharing features so i’m blaring my traditional launch tune around the office. and now i can blare it from my PC to a few of YOU at a time as well:

http://myspace.orb.com/orb/html/permalink.html?l=mycastmusiclive&playlistId=OYIIxQ8D

and now i’m going to put it on my myspace

there’s already an outstanding solution out there for BROADCASTING my home PC’s music to a few thousand folks at a time: SHOUTcast, with the broadcast capability juiced by AOL servers

but that’s broadcast. Orb is personal radio. Orb sharing is my own PC mycasting my home tunes to the handful of friends that can jam into my cyber living room at a time.

So is this secure? Is Orb getting access to everyone’s Itunes account?

????

um, yes, very, and no, not at all, in that order.

what i guess i didn’t make clear enough is that you aren’t uploading stuff to some Orb server: your PC is doing the streaming.

your stuff stays where it belongs: on your PC. but you can PLAY it wherever you have a Web browser.

and actually, music bought through the iTunes Music Store is pretty much the one type of content that you CAN’T mycast to yourself or your friends, anyway, since “FairPlay” DRM doesn’t have a licensing program. let’s hear it for the Apple Walled Garden!

I’ve been using the new Avvenu iTunes service for the past couple of weeks. It’s really integrated into iTunes and much less complicated than Orb. It doesn’t get around the Apple “Fairplay” DRM, but most of my songs I’ve ripped from CDs, and the rest I just burned to CD then ripped it back onto iTunes in MP3 format, so it doesn’t really matter.