If you’re around your thirties, you probably heard about Audiogalaxy – or even used it in the early days of P2P. Audiogalaxy was a peer-to-peer music sharing app that became very popular between 1998 and 2001. In 2002, however, their developers had to face a lawsuit from the RIAA for allowing exchange of copyrighted material. It was the beginning of the end: later that year Audiogalaxy blocked its P2P functions altogether and rebranded a paid streaming service called Rhapsody.
The big news is that Audiogalaxy is back, though in a different shape. The program has reinvented itself and is now a music streaming – or more accurately, placeshifting – application with which you can listen to the music stored in your computer at any time, no matter where you are.
The new Audiogalaxy has nothing to do with its ancestor. Instead of sharing music with people over the Internet, you just listen to your own music, stored in your own hard drive, thanks to Audiogalaxy’s mobile apps for iPhone, iPod, iPad and Android-based devices.
All you need to do is create a user account on the Audiogalaxy website and download the desktop client, available for Windows and Mac. As soon as the client is installed and running on your computer, your music collection is available from any other computer (with Audiogalaxy’s online music player) and on your portable device as well.
Both the desktop client and mobile application in Audiogalaxy are nicely designed and are easy to use. The iPhone mobile app – the one I tried – works like a breeze, both under WiFi and 3G. the only requirement is that you need to leave your computer on with the Audiogalaxy desktop client running in the background, but as long as you can do that, your music will be pretty much available anywhere.
