

[New YC startup] Listen To Your Music anywhere on the web with Anywhere.FM - immad
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/02/listen-to-your-itunes-library-on-the-web-with-anywherefm/

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luxiou
Thanks for the comments and feedback everyone! We've had a few rough patches
over the past 12 hours, but we're up and running again (special thanks to the
Dropbox team for their help). As a random aside, it turns out we're getting
far more traffic from del.icio.us than TC right now.

~~~
aston
Yay, dropbox. They're good guys.

PS: <http://getdropbox.com>

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anson
Thanks for all your valuable feedback and comments, it is really motivating
:). Now some advice I wish I followed... sleep a LONG time the day before you
launch ;).

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ivankirigin
Things to do: -Support other media formats -Open a long-tail store, i.e.
letting people upload and give out their work -Make a better uploader (mine
seems to be blocked at work)

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mark-t
Looks great. My one complaint so far is that I can't just choose a directory
to upload. (yes, I know why this is impossible with browser features, but it's
what I expect from a music player) Oh, and it only seems to accept .mp3 files
-- I've got a fair number of .ogg, .wma, .aac, etc. That's probably my
computer's doing, though, since it wouldn't be a very good iTunes clone
without insisting on .aac.

~~~
mark-t
Actually, upon further investigation, it doesn't seem to let me upload
anything at all. The response seems to vary between remaining at 0 progress
indefinitely and crashing firefox. I'm guessing this is another no-linux site
for now, probably because of flash.

Oh well. My laptop goes everywhere, anyway.

~~~
staunch
Same problems using The Linux, which is my desktop and laptop. Although I'm
happy to have it finally Flash 9 for The Linux has all sorts of issues.
Adobe's to blame.

~~~
mark-t
Yup, file upload works in IE6 under wine, though. I used IEs4Linux, which you
can get at <http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page> . I also use
this for web development work, and it's great, besides the obvious.

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zach
I wonder whose credit card is on the Amazon S3 account. They must be very
brave.

~~~
staunch
"Fortune favors the brave" and all that. They're setting themselves up to be
wildly popular and in a deep financial crisis at the same time. I guess it
beats obscurity.

Let the VC gods lift up their countenance upon them!

~~~
rms
Seems like a good strategy for raising money quickly. The Techcrunching
certainly doesn't hurt. Of course, the site is down as a write this.

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ashu
oh i absolutely love this app. fantastically well executed.

i had implemented a version of this - nowhere close to as pretty - for our
internal use at CMU (our group still actively uses it), but i am going to
switch now. please, please allow bookmarking of songs soon (just noting the
metadata of course.) cause there's lots of quality stuff to be discovered
soon!

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zach
Wow, this is really sharp-looking stuff. I like Flash for this kind of one-
window interface - very responsive. Certain other sites have a UI that's like
slogging through mashed potatoes. Good work.

Say, I'd like to experiment with Flash stuff but I have to admit I am totally
Macromedia-illiterate. Does anyone know what tools are used to build apps like
this?

~~~
russ
Adobe Flex.

~~~
zach
See, I didn't even know that -- you can tell how ancient I am for even
referring to Macromedia. Thanks.

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yubrew
One of the techcrunch comments said that the itunes UI is patented.[0] Any
thoughts on this?

Anyways, it's very cool and useful. grats.

[0]
[http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?IDX=WO02061563&CY=gb&...](http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?IDX=WO02061563&CY=gb&LG=en&DB=EPODOC)

~~~
ivankirigin
probably just the music store -- and probably just some small part of it.

there are plenty of good interfaces

~~~
danw
The three pane browsing interface is patented too if I remember correctly

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whacked_new
Songs are being uploaded by the second already. Looks like a winner!

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aquateen
Damn. I had an idea for this a year ago and never went through with it :( Even
bought a .dj domain and made a javascript player. Good luck to AFM.

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ivankirigin
When this was posted, ~50,000 songs were uploaded. Now it is at 75,800. Nice

I've has some trouble uploading though.

~~~
anson
85k and not stopping :). In fact we had to start capping people's upload
speeds because we're afraid of affecting our other users.

~~~
anson
broke 150k one day later... this will be interesting... :).

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tcwc
Looks amazing. And not a single negative comment on Techcrunch?!

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luxiou
We've re-enabled using the client uploaders to bulk-upload music.

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rms
Cool. Is legal precedent such that this is definitely legal?

~~~
trajan
Yeah, this seems to be the only question. The interface is wonderful and it's
instantly useful to me, but I can't imagine this will be allowed to stand as
is.

Though I would have said the same thing about YouTube...

~~~
sachin
Hey guys - This is Sachin chiming in from the Anywhere.FM team. So we are a
legit service. There are several digital music locker services that allow you
to upload your music and play it anywhere. This model has been followed by all
these companies and is allowed because you are playing your own music online.
In terms of the sharing and Friend Radio features, we are actually paying
radio station licensing fees to the music industry.

~~~
ctkrohn
Well, how is your model different from my.mp3.com? As you might recall, they
did a website where you could upload your own music and play it from any
Internet computer, but were sued and eventually settled for $200m.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3.com#My.MP3.com>

~~~
rms
MP3.com stored all the music online. You gained access to a CD MP3.com had
ripped by proving you owned the CD. There was no uploading involved.

The question is whether Anywhere.fm has a responsibility to police their
network for illegal MP3s. It's logistically impossible to do so, but that
doesn't mean the courts won't come down hard on them if they are successful.

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augy
I am in love. this is making my life better. thank you.

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mdolon
Amazing site, beautiful interface. Great work guys!

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drusenko
great work guys. my comment on TC got blocked (they must have our IP on some
spam list or something), but it basically said: awesome.

