All Your Music on Your Treo All the Time

Like my colleague Andrew Eisner, I've been enjoying listening to Shoutcast audio on my Treo, courtesy of NormSoft's excellent Pocket Tunes music software. But what I really wanted to do was listen to my own music collection on the Treo--and more of it than I could cram onto the 1GB SD card I've got.

So I rummaged around a bit on the Web and found GlooNet, a free service which works with Pocket Tunes Pro (which costs $28) to let you wirelessly stream music and photos from any Windows PC with a Net connection onto your Treo. GlooNet uses a server application that sits on the PC, redirecting music to any device with a browser and MP3 player software that can handle M3U playlists and MP3s stored at URLs rather than locally. (It's a bit like Orb, an intriguing service which also handles video and which works with Pocket PCs and a variety of phones, but not Palm devices.) It took me about five minutes to sign up for GlooNet and install and configure the software, and I was up, running, and listening to my songs on my handheld.

GlooNet throttles down the bit rate of music on the fly to match the bandwidth of the device you're listening on. With the Treo, it initially played music at 32-kbps, which sounded a little like AM played on a vintage 1970s RadioShack FlavoRadio. I told GlooNet to convert music to a more listenable 96-kbps, and that worked just fine.

The service did indeed give me access to every tune on my home network, allowing for iPod-like variety. But not, unfortunately, iPod-like ease-of-use. You select songs in the Treo's browser, but it hands off a playlist to Pocket Tunes for the actual playing of music. The browser's a tad sluggish as usual--bogging you down quite a bit if your music collection is as big as mine--and hopping between two programs to manipulate your music is bearable but not exactly intuitive.

With a little experimentation, I figured out how to save and rename these playlists on my SD card, which let me jump back later to an artist or an album from within Pocket Tunes, without having to first use GlooNet in the browser. That still doesn't provide a wholly satisfactory user experience--you can't see a song's title without playing it, for instance.

All in all, GlooNet makes the most sense if you just load up an album or other long list of songs and sit back to listen, rather spending a lot of time picking and choosing specific tracks. Of course, it only works when you have a data connection, so it doesn't go some of the places I most like to listen to music, such as on a plane. But hey, it's free and fun, and I bet I'll be using it quite a bit. If you have a Treo and like digital music, you need Pocket Tunes; if you have Pocket Tunes, you should check out GlooNet.

(Side note: Don't even think about trying GlooNet unless you have an all-you-can-eat data plan; I hate to think about the data charges you'd rack up if you were paying by the kilobyte.)

Some of the current quirks of the GlooNet/Pocket Tunes combo may be addressed by Tunesonthefly, an upcoming service from NormSoft based on the GlooNet technology. Here's a press release about it.

Oh, and a Shoutcast tip: If you've got a Treo and Pocket Tunes, and want to listen to Shoutcast streams, don't go to Shoutcast's own site to find stations. Instead, head to TreoBits.com, a site optimized for viewing on Treos--it's got a handy-dandy directiory of Shoutcast programming that's much easier to navigate on a handheld.