Simplify Media 2

Some things that simplify things and make new things possible can be a bit hard to figure out. The first time you use them, they're not always so simple. One such thing is the Simplify Music 2 application for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

I got it because I wanted a way to stream my entire music library from my iMac to my iPod Touch. By that I mean that I wanted to play any of my over 6,600 music tracks any time ... without having synced them to the iPod in advance. My iPod holds just 8 gigabytes, while my music library is close to 30 GB in size.

I have a WiFi network in my home that uses an Apple AirPort Extreme base station to (among other things) connect my iMac wirelessly to the Internet as well as to a pair of Apple TVs, and I figured it could be used to stream music from iTunes to the iPod or Iphoe, too, right? But how?

Enter Simplify Music 2. Here's a video review of it. And here's how I started using it:

Basically, working in iTunes on my iMac, I first had to purchase the Simplify Music 2 app from the iTunes Store for $5.99, download it, and sync it to my iPod. That was straightforward ... but syncing of the app to the iPod didn't happen until I realized that I had not set up iTunes to sync applications to my iPod! Once I set app-syncing up properly, the app synced to the iPod as it ought.

You can also buy the Simplify Music 2 app via the App Store on the iPhone/iPod itself. If you do, you can sync it to iTunes, where it will then reside, waiting to be synced back to the mobile device if the need ever arises.

(BTW, later on in this article I talk about how, owing to a problem I ran into, I had to rebuild my iTunes Library database file, a process that unfortunately loses track of the iPhone/iPod apps in iTunes. I tried syncing my apps again from my mobile and wound up with no apps whatsoever in iTunes or on the mobile; apparently, you can sync an app "upstream" from an iPhone or iPod Touch to iTunes only once. But never fear; when I went to the iTunes Store and pulled up each of the apps I had lost, it was aware that I had already paid for them and it let me download them again, one by one, for free.)

I also had to download the Mac-based version of Simplify Media 2 desktop server software (there are other versions for other computer platforms) and install it on my iMac. This is free software. After starting it for the first time (I had already dragged it to my Applications folder and then put its icon in my Dock), I had to go through an initial setup process before it would pick up on my iTunes music library and make it available for streaming to my iPod.

This was confusing to me, so I'll say it again: you need both the iPod client app, synced from iTunes to the iPod, and the Mac server app, installed and duly initialized on the Mac. Once the server app is installed and initialized, it must be up and running for the iPhone/iPod client app to stream music. (On the other hand, iTunes does not have to be running for Simplify Media to stream music to Simplify Music on a mobile device.)

The Simplify nomenclature is potentially confusing, as well. Simplify Media is the desktop server app, while Simplify Music is the music-streaming app that runs on the mobile device. (On the Simplify Media website, the music-streaming app is called "iPhone Music.") I'll call the pair of them the "Simplify Media suite," the "SM suite," or just "SM."

There is also a separate Simplify Photo client app for the iPhone/iPod that streams photos from your (or your friends') photo libraries, using Simplify Media on the computer acting as a server. It sells for a paltry $0.99. On the website, it's called "iPhone Photo."


This is nominally version 2.n of the original Simplify Music iPhone/iPod Touch app. It contains features not in the original app — on-the-fly playlist creation and modification, for one — and you probably want to avoid getting the original by mistake, which is still available for $3.99.

The desktop server app, Simplify Media 2, has other interesting capabilities as well, such as the ability to stream from up to 30 of your friends' music collections (assuming they give you permission) and to stream your collection to those same friends' Simplify Music apps.

There are, alas, some drawbacks to Simplify Media/Simplify Music:

1. The iPhone/iPod app can't run in the background on the mobile device. Apple will let only Apple-developed apps run in the background; background apps are those that stay active when you fire up other apps in the foreground on the iPhone. This limitation means you can't listen to music in Simplify Music 2 and (say) use Safari for web browsing at the same time. When you go to the Home screen and open Safari on the mobile device, the music stops playing. You can resume playing the in-progress music when you reopen Simplify Music 2 on the mobile, but it won't keep playing while you use other apps.
2. When you re-open the iPhone/iPod app and choose to Resume the previous session, two less-than-wonderful things result. One, although the song that had been playing before picks up where it left off quite nicely, the app doesn't re-fetch the album art that goes with it. Where the album art is normally displayed on the screen, there is nothing. Two, if the previous session was using Shuffle mode (say, to randomize the order of the songs being played from a playlist) the restored session forgets about that fact. Instead, it will finish playing the interrupted song, and then it will start playing the songs in the current playlist unshuffled, from the first one in the list on. Both these drawbacks are ones I would expect to be addressed in a later version of the software.
   
3. The iPhone/iPod app can't play the old-style encrypted (a.k.a. DRM-encoded/copy-protected) tracks from the iTunes Store ... the ones that were ubiquitous before unencrypted "iTunes +" tracks took over. Encrypted tracks show up in iTunes as being of kind "Protected AAC audio file," the latter as "Purchased AAC audio files." A "Protected AAC audio file" won't stream in Simplify Music 2.
4. The iPhone/iPod app is able to connect with the Simplify Media server app by means of a 3G or EDGE cellphone network if no WiFi connection is available — but only if you have an iPhone. If you have just an iPod Touch, as I do — or did; that's changed; see below — 3G and EDGE cellphone networks are inaccessible.
   
5. Whereas the Simplify Music 2 client app on the mobile device was at one point able to display song lyrics obtained from LyricWiki, for some reason that nice feature has gone away. The Simplify Media folks give as the reason here, "LyricWiki announced that their licensing agreements with the major recording labels have changed, and they will no longer be able to provide lyrics to other applications. We are investigating alternatives to see if we can find a replacement to include in future versions." Pity.
6. I have discovered that SM doesn't handle compilations in the iTunes library properly. An album can optionally be set up to be a "compilation" by using the iTunes' Get Info window. It's a good idea to do so when each track on a given album has a different artist; otherwise, iTunes will tend to present each track that is by a different artist, but is on one single album, as if it were on a separate album. But if you (as is usual) have iTunes manage the files and folders that contain its tracks — as opposed to just referencing the files — it will put each album's files in a folder inside a "Compilations" folder, and SM will fail to utilize them right. Solution: stop calling the tracks a "compilation" in iTunes and instead give them all the same "Album Artist" in iTunes' Get Info window to hold all the tracks together in a single album. Make up an artist name if there is no one artist whose name can be used.
7. All in all, I have found the Simplify Media website, the support section thereof, and the Simplify Media e-mail support at support@simplifymedia.com to be variable in terms of my ability to get needed information. A little rooting around on the web makes it clear that the Simplify Media team are up to their ears and sometimes can't get everything done that they would like to, including answering e-mail speedily.
   

Update:

Since I filed the above, I have done some things. One is that I bought an iPhone 3GS 16GB. Now I can use the Simplify Media suite to stream music from my computer to my new mobile wherever I am, as long as I'm getting a signal from the AT&T 3G cellphone network. (Or, I believe, from the EDGE network; I'm not clear on what the difference is, but the SM suite supports both networks.)

What this means is that I don't have to be in range of my home WiFi network (or some other WiFi net that I am allowed access to, such as the free one at Panera or the public library) in order to stream music. My iPod Touch doesn't have this flexibility; for it, it's WiFi or nothing.

My tests have shown that 3G streaming works like a charm. On an extended 90-min. car jaunt to a remote location and back, I ran into just one dropout, lasting less than a minute, that resolved itself satisfactorily as I drove on. I also found (I was listening to the Beatles' Abbey Road) that the gapless playback of the connected songs that make up a large part of the album sometimes glitched very briefly between songs. But I was happy to find that connecting the iPhone to my car's stereo system through the connector provided by the Mini Cooper people let me listen to the streaming music that way, rather than having to use the earbuds.

Another thing I have done since I filed the original report is to try to add a second music library into the 6,600+ tracks I already had in iTunes. The second one is roughly as big. It comes from a friend who donated her own iTunes library to me.

The tracks in her library are all MP3s that were imported into iTunes on her Windows machine. Up to now, I've kept them in a separate library on my iMac that I can switch to using PowerTunes. With the SM suite, library switching isn't supported, as far as I can tell. So I thought I'd add the second library's tracks into my main iTunes library, thus to make them available to SM.

That caused problems. Mystifying ones.

Remember, both libraries are pretty huge — well over 6,000 tracks each. That might or might not have something to do with the problems I encountered. Basically, after I added Library #2 into Library #1, the songs in Library #2 refused to show up in the iPhone app.

The old songs were still there. It was just that the new ones weren't there. None of them.

There was also a problem getting SM on the iMac to admit that it could see all the tracks. But, after I left things alone overnight, the SM Media List window on the iMac finally did say that the full 13,266 music tracks were "available." And they were all finally present in iTunes, under a "Shared" entry in the list on the left side of the main iTunes window. (This is the so-called "reflection" of what's supposedly available on the mobile device; SM's Media List won't actually list the media files it sees, for some reason.)

However, although the just-added music was supposedly in the Media List on the iPhone itself, it wasn't. None of it. I got an indication that the status of epstewart - iMac, which is what the iPhone app calls my computer, was "updating - 99% ... ". It never got to 100%.

As an experiment, I set up an empty iTunes library and put just one album from Library #2 in it. There were a grand total of eight tracks in the test library. With some difficulty, I got SM to switch its Media List to that library on the iMac. (That was, as I say, difficult. Whoever writes the SM suite really ought to give some consideration to giving the user an easier way to send SM back to square one and reinitialize its Media List and re-update the mobile client. This just in: in an email response I got from the folks at Simplify Media, I learned that all you have to do to force a "full library rescan" is to go into the Preferences panel and, under Computer, change the name you have given your computer.)

Notice that "initializing" is what the SM server application does when it sets up its Media List on the iMac or whatever computer you are using. Another name for it seems to be "full library rescan." "Updating" is what happens when the SM server sends the Media List to the mobile client. Updating happens only after initializing is complete. (Initializing SM on the server computer and then updating the mobile device do not require you to connect the mobile to the computer physically, as would be the case if you were syncing songs to it from iTunes, by the way. iTunes doesn't even have to be running. as far as I can see, to use SM successfully. But the Simplify Media server software does have to be running.)

Also, once SM figured out that I wanted it to reinitialize/re-update, which involved changing one of its Preferences options and changing it back again, that process took surprisingly long to complete — and there is precious little indication given by SM as to why it takes so long, or exactly what it thinks it is doing at any particular moment in time. Hint: when the server has finished reinitializing its Media List and is updating the mobile client, the server's Media List window puts up a spinning "in progress" indicator; if you position your mouse pointer over it, a note pops onto the screen saying how much of the updating, percentage-wise, has been done.

My results: the good news is that, once all that finally was over and done, the eight tracks duly showed up and played back in the iPhone app! Problems? What problems?

The bad news is that I still have no idea why SM can't find these same tracks and all the others from Library #2 when I am using my real iTunes library.

More later, if I figure anything out ...


Update #2:

After some experimentation, I was able to determine that building a new iTunes Library file and adding any number of files from the problematic Library #2 to it resulted in ... SM working just fine.

So I tried making a new iTunes Library with all my tracks, from Library #1 and Library #2, added into it. And that cured all my major SM problems!

I now have a Media List with fully 13,276 music tracks in it (no, I haven't investigated why it's a greater number than the 13,266 I reported earlier). So far, they seem to work fine in the SM server on my iMac and in the SM app on my iPhone. Plus, SM's initialization and iPhone updating processes seemed to go fairly swiftly this time.

Unfortunately, I did lose my playlists from the original library ... but I can recreate those that I feel I really need. I think of it as a needed housecleaning ...

So, what was wrong?

The short answer: Who knows?

It seems that my original "iTunes Library" database file must have been infected by some sort of subtle form of corruption. Rebuilding it from scratch fixed that.

Meanwhile, all my original music files are untouched. They remain right where they were ... which is where iTunes originally put them when they were added to the original iTunes library.

Given that a library rebuild cured the major problems, I can now say I give Simplify Media 2 a big thumbs up ... but before you buy, note the minor problems I mentioned earlier, in my original report.