MP3Tunes Locker Ain't Ready Yet
I live under a curse, like the serpent. For years, my hard drives have died. Some die slowly and some die quickly, but they all die at the worst possible moments. I have learned to live with this curse by keeping multiple copies of important data on both local and remote machines, as well as duplicating important things, like my music collection onto multiple drives.
Recently, while I was going through my ~100GB music collection, I noticed that I was missing files. A song here, a song there. Occasionally a whole folder. Somehow my drive had been slowing eating the data. That made me sad, like a panda. I pulled that Maxtor drive out and replaced it with a Seagate, but I'm sure the curse will strike it soon enough.
So when I read this evening on Boing Boing that MP3Tunes was offering a music 'locker' for $40 a year, I hopped on quick, like a bunny. As far as I can tell, the Locker would allow me to upload all my files—gigs and gigs—, then both stream them down at a listenable bitrate (128kbps) as well as allow me to sync them to multiple devices, including PCs.
After the positive experience I've had with Flickr, I'm totally not averse to paying someone else to manage my data. In fact, it's the great irony of the cheap storage age: now that I can afford a terabyte or more of RAIDed storage in a file server, I'd rather just pay someone a yearly fee to handle it for me. Someone wise, like the owl.
Problem is, the Oboe software that comes from MP3Tunes doesn't seem to work at all. Not only does the remote Bonjour-based streaming endlessly spool in iTunes, the Oboe Sync program pukes and tells me that I need to install iTunes 6 for it to work. I have iTunes 6. It is strong, like bull.
I sent MP3Tunes an email and despite their assurances that I would get a response in the "next three to five business days," I quickly (~10 minutes) got back a message that said they knew it was a problem and were working on a fix. They didn't answer my second question about using the service to upload all my MP3s into the Locker, then downloading them to another PC in original, full-quality form. I hope that they get their act together soon, but for now I would suggest giving them a few days to get it together, so you don't get screwed, like me.
I am having the same problem with the iTunes plugin, it just spools endlessly. I have been able to upload about 1 GB of data, though, so the regular application seems to be working. Seeing that it took all night for the measly 1GB to upload, I can't wait to see how long it takes for the other 99 GB.
Based on what it says on their website, you can synchronize all of your files, in full quality and original size, to a second computer. I don't know if this works only through iTunes or the regular interface, but it is supposed to be possible. I guess we'll see...
Thank you for your feedback on MP3tunes Locker service. To answer your question about using the service to upload all your mp3s into the locker, then downloading them to another PC its original form.
The answer, yes, as long as you have the paid service. The first problem you mention in your blog is an issue a small amount of users are experiencing and has the full attention of our team.
We are working on ironing out all the kinks as soon as possible. Thank you for checking out Oboe and the MPtunes Locker.
I've had serious problems as well. Here's a copy of the email I sent to their tech support:
I realize you just launched, but I am having some serious problems that prevent me from doing just about anything with the service that I have paid for. My biggest complaint is that the Oboe software for Windows is absolutely worthless. It pegs my processor at 100% and doesn't do anything other than sit there at "Analyzing...". Admittedly, I have a large music collection currently over 9000 files and almost 78 gigs worth of MP3s that I have ripped from my personal CD collection), but the software has this problem even when I select only one album. For a while, it was "Analyzing..." and the progress bar was making progress. It was around 50% last night when I went to sleep and when I woke up this morning, it was at 0% and still had my processor running at capacity. Add to that the fact that the few files that I was able to get loaded from an Apple at work yesterday do not play. I mention that I was only able to get a few files to load because Oboe tried to load a lot more that I guess just vanished on their way to the server. I also have not been able to connect to my Oboe locker in iTunes at all. I just get the loading message and nothing happens. As far as I can tell, I can't do anything for the $40 that I just paid. I'm seriously wondering if I should attempt to get my money back. Please fix your service. I want this to work and would gladly pay the $40 a year for this service if it worked properly.
i have my itunes and other more important stuff on a simple raid mirror built into the motherboard. next step, a hot Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe with built in raid 5. But then, while redundant, its not in multiple physical locations.
Just a quick update on things from my end. After numerous email exchanges with tech support, MP3tunes is finally usable. There are still a few quirks here and there, but for the most part all of the critical functionality is pretty well nailed down. To their credit, the support issues I have brought up with them have been resolved very very quickly (within a day or two). There are still a lot of things I would like (the ability to upload files larger than 20 megs, edit tracks that aren't in tune up, etc) but now it is pretty solid.
Well, I got it a little more fixed. I uninstalled iTunes and then reinstalled iTunes, which made the Oboe Sync start to work. According to its calculations, it should upload my 100GB+ MP3 library in about four-and-a-half months.
The Oboe Locker share in iTunes still doesn't seem to work, however, which is a bummer. I will continue to work on it, since they've already got my $40.
They did have a person call me and work with me directly, though, which was nice. Unfortunately, they didn't really know what the problem was, either, so I just had to start following the standard troubleshooting procedure.