With the iPhone app Didiom, syncing music files to your phone may become a thing of the past. Thata4ぎa4г why wea4ぎa4вe choosing Didiom as the first innovative app for VentureBeat&'s Mobile App Spotlight.
Didiom lets you stream music to your iPhone or iPod Touch (or BlackBerry, or Windows Mobile 6 phone) from your Windows PC over Wi-Fi and 3G. Ita4ぎa4г available in two flavors: A free, or Lite, version that lets you stream up to five songs, and a Pro version that offers higher-quality audio and unlimited streams for $9.99 a year.
Setting up Didiom is simple: First download the desktop client, then create a Didiom account, and finally choose the music folders youa4ぎa4d like to sync with the service. Didiom gives you access to songs, podcasts, audiobooks and playlists &8212' though it wona4ぎa4д support files encrypted with DRM from iTunes and audiobook company Audible. (Apple now sells unencrypted MP3 files on iTunes, but older files may have DRM.)
The Pro version lets you stream audio at up to 128 Kbps quality &8212' which is noticeably worse than CD quality. Still, the quality drop is a decent trade-off for the convenience of accessing your music from practically anywhere.
In my testing over AT&'T&'s 3G network in New York, Didiom managed to quickly find my music library, and it was able to play back files within a few seconds of accessing them. The app itself is well-designed and stable. Didiom takes advantage of the iPhone 4a4ぎa4г multitasking capabilities, allowing you to listen to songs without staying in the app, although it doesna4ぎa4д integrate with the iPhonea4ぎa4г native playback controls.
Didiom, short for a4ぎAdigital distribution of musica4ぎ, started out as a graduate project for founder Ran Assaf. In an email interview, Assaf mentioned that his original plan in 2004 was to let users stream music from a large licensed catalog. Eventually, the company pivoted its focus to placeshifting, or the ability to access your files from anywhere.
Driving the service is a peer-to-peer (P2P) placeshifting technology that Didiom has been developing since 2004, which makes streaming files from computers to phones easier. With Didiom, your music never hits any intermediary servers &8212' instead, ita4ぎa4г encrypted and piped directly from your PC to your phone. That&'s a far less problematic approach than other pioneers of streaming, like MP3.com, an online-music pioneer which copied files from users&' libraries and stored them on its own servers. That last step &8212' copying them to servers &8212' raises potential copyright issues. And that&'s what Didiom smartly avoids.
When asked if music labels took issue with the service, Assaf said, a4ぎAWe demonstrated the technology to the labels. They did not raise any concerns. It was important for them to know that Didiom is not a music locker service, and that we do not duplicate or upload music from the computers of our users to our servers.a4ぎ
Assaf counts other services like Orb, ZumoCast, and Simplify Media (which Google acquired earlier this year) as Didiom competitors. He says that Didiom stands out a4ぎAin terms of speed, navigation, streaming quality, user experience, DRM support, compatible devices and availability on app stores.a4ぎ He added that Didioma4ぎa4г streaming technology is more stable, and less prone to error due to Internet outages, as well.
Didiom certainly performed better in my testing than ZumoCast and Orb. When it comes to music, I also prefer Didiom to Libox, an innovative streaming service wea4ぎa4ёe covered in the past.
Didiom, founded in 2005, is based in New York City. The company has received some funding from angel investors but is primarily bootstrapped.
Developers: Want to get your app featured like Didiom Then submit your app for consideration!
The Intel AppUp developer program is sponsoring VentureBeata4ぎa4г Mobile App Spotlight. However, VentureBeata4ぎa4г editorial staff selects apps for the program according to its customary editorial standards, without input from Intel.
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Companies: Apple, Didiom, Google, Libox, orb, Simplify Media, Zecter
People: Ran Assaf
Companies: Apple, Didiom, Google, Libox, orb, Simplify Media, Zecter
People: Ran Assaf
Devindra Hardawar is VentureBeat's lead mobile writer and East Coast correspondent. He studied philosophy at Amherst College, worked in IT support for several years, and has been writing about technology since 2004. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can reach him at devindra@venturebeat.com (all story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com), and on Twitter at @Devindra.
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