Audiobox.fm is an end-to-end solution for making sure you have access to your digital music collection wherever you are. Upload your music to the cloud and play it from just about any computer via the browser. There is nothing to download or install. This comes in handy for a variety of situations.
Once you’ve created your account, your first step will probably be to upload some music. A free account will give you access to 1GB of storage. This is probably more than enough for most people, but it depends on what you’re using AudioBox.fm for. One of the primary applications for the service is probably to give you a simple way to play your music on systems you don’t own and can’t install stuff on. This applies for many cubicle workers and people who just don’t have their own computer.
Upload music to your library from wherever you are. Play that music wherever you are. Everything happens inside the browser, which is the beauty of the entire system. There are no streaming limits, so you can listen to your tracks all day and all night with no interruptions. Another important point about the streaming setup is that your music is streamed at the rate you uploaded it. Many other services convert the stream to a lower bit rate at the expense of sound quality in order to save bandwidth.
AudioBox.fm attempts to take advantage of the latest browser technologies. Primarily, this means HTML5 and AudioBox.fm says they’ve built the best player around. In the event that your browser is old or just doesn’t support HTML5, Audiobox.fm will fall back on its Flash origins. Your plays can easily be scrobbled via Last.fm and you can share whatever you’re playing on Twitter.
Once you’ve got your feet wet with the free plan, you can always upgrade to get additional storage and features. Plans start at $3.99/month, which gets you 11GB of storage and access to your AudioBox.fm via a mobile device. You also gain access to the Library Manager so that you can actually edit the metadata on your songs. The other two plans are 7.99 and 9.99. These get you more storage, but you may be interested in other features like Downloading your music and the ability to upload formats other than mp3.
While we are seeing the cloud explode, it seems that playing your music there is not an easy application. One service, Lala, that did do this is gone and it was still not really your music that was playing, but a possibly lower quality copy. AudioBox.fm is offering the real deal at pretty affordable prices. I doubt even a true iTunes in the cloud will provide this much flexibility.
What do you think about AudioBox.fm?