meTracks is a web service with a simple mission: to allow you to listen to your mp3 music collection wherever you have access to a computer. Many people have already invested in the “home media centre” type product that hosts your audio on a central hard disk so that you can WiFi it around the house. meTracks goes further by hosting files on the Internet, currently on a 1Gb personal area, and allowing you to play them via an embedded flash player through a browser.
CEO Tee Banwait is running meTracks as an open beta, and he welcomes people to sign up and help him test the service. Banwait:
the latest version of the player with the Spectrum Analyser visualisation went live yesterday. Our Roadmap contains other features such as a ‘pop out’ to allow the audio player to float around, kind of like you’re MySpace player or the Web Messenger amongst numerous other functions aimed at increasing functionality and aiding usability.
The player allows you to create playlists and control the play order, much like Winamp or any other local player. Banwait says that playing to mobile may also be in the product’s future, although of course the tariffing of data may make that a challenge:
The initial release worked on mobile phones through Flash Lite. Shortly after this release the decision was made not to focus heavily on mobile streaming however, once again, it is in the development roadmap so expect to see this function as a component of a multitude of changes over the next few months.
Beta testers should sign up at www.metracks.com.
August 31st, 2007 at 11:33 am
1Gb is really far too small to accommodate most people’s music collections. Also, it should have some sort of auto-sync to music on your hard drive and not require a more manual process.
There are currently far better services of this nature out there. They’re not perfect yet though, so good luck to Tee Banwait in getting it right before they do!