MP3tunes, which was launched by tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson in 2005, allows its users to store their own music in the cloud. Until today, however, the amount of free storage on MP3tunes was limited to a relatively meager 2GB. Now, however, the company has decided to up the ante and plans to give its users 10GB of free storage which can be accessed from virtually anywhere (browser, iPhone, Android, Wii, Playstation, Chumby etc.). MP3tunes already has a backlog of invites, but the company graciously agreed to give 150 of our readers priority access to its expanded music lockers. Read on for more details about how to claim yours.
As Robertson told us earlier this week, the average MP3tunes locker currently hosts about 1,452 songs. 10GB should be enough to host about 2,000 songs. MP3tunes currently has just under 500,000 users and offers a free API to developers who want to integrate their services with MP3tunes.
Getting Started
To get started with MP3tunes (even if you don’t have the 10GB upgrade yet), simply sign up for an account and download the company’s desktop software, which is available for Mac and Windows. The desktop software will upload your music to the cloud (and watch for new music on your desktop as well). MP3tunes also offers a nifty browser plugin that allows you to send MP3 files from music blogs directly to your locker.
Once you have uploaded some music, MP3tunes biggest advantage quickly becomes clear: you can now listen to your music on virtually any device. We tested the Airband app for the iPhone, which actually feels a lot like the native iPod app. Unless you are offline, it’s easy to forget that all your music is actually streaming over the network. We tested Airband on a slow Edge connection, as well as over 3G and WiFi connections and didn’t run into any issues.
MP3tunes also offers a nifty web interface that is somewhat reminiscent of iTunes and MP3tune’s competitor Lala. Just like iTunes Genius mixes, MP3tunes also organizes automatic playlists for you.
Competition
MP3tunes closest competitor is currently Lala, which was bought by Apple in December 2009 (we actually called Lala the reincarnation of Robertson’s early my.mp3.com music locker when we first reviewed it). Currently, it is not clear what Apple’s plans for Lala are, but the service remains online and doesn’t have an upload limit for its music locker, which makes it a nice alternative if you just want to stream your music over the Web. Unlike MP3tunes, however, Lala doesn’t offer any mobile clients.
Invites
MP3tunes will give the first 150 ReadWriteWeb readers who use the invite code ‘RWW’ access to the expanded lockers today. You can sign up here. The next 150 people who use the code will be in the first batch of additional invites that MP3tunes will send out soon.
