Simplify Media connects your iPhone to your friends' music libraries.

One of the features of iTunes that comes in handy on large networks is the ability to share music libraries with other iTunes users. Simplify Media extended this functionality in iTunes back in 2007 by allowing sharing with up to 30 other people outside of the local network. Its new mobile app enables streaming over Wi-Fi or over the cellular network, to allow even more portable access to friends’ music libraries.

The app won’t work without an account on Simplify Media’s network. Account creation requires downloading the desktop app for Mac, Windows or Linux and agreement to their terms of service. Once the account is created, you’ll have access to your own iTunes library over the network, which should please people with music libraries so large, they don’t fit on the iPhone. When sharing with other users, Simplify Media lets you see their libraries, though the mobile app won’t let you see files protected by FairPlay digital rights management technology used by the iTunes store. Sharing can’t be set up, or achieved, in the mobile app; rather, it requires the desktop app.

With access to a few friends’ libraries, Simplify Media becomes an on-demand streaming jukebox. It also allows shuffling of playlists (but not of libraries), effectively turning a friend’s computer into a one listener radio station. Playback is possible over Wi-Fi, 3G, or, EDGE, and Simplify Media is smart enough to try to compress the sound for congested or slow networks.

Simplify Media suggests that most users’ machines will be able to serve two streams at a time without difficulty; we didn’t have any friends whose computers were busy, but there are no status indicators on the mobile app;  we had to look at the desktop app to come to this conclusion. There’s also no way to delete friends without using the desktop app. Because it’s not one of the core apps, it needs to stay active to keep playing, unlike the iPod app, which can run in the background.

When playing a song, buttons at the top allow three views. Song view shows the artist name, song title, album title, and year of release, and a space that would be ideal for album art, though right now that space is blank. Artist view  pulls a band photo and bio from Last.fm, and lyrics view grabs lyrics from lyricwiki.org. In all three views, a volume slider is visible, but it does not respond to swipes; fortunately, the hardware volume control worked without problems.

The company says that the streaming it enables is legal because it is private and limited. But just because the streaming isn’t criminal, doesn’t mean that the recording industry won’t try to file civil suits against users, alleging that their digital audio transmission public performance rights guaranteed in 17 USC 106(6) have been violated; indeed, the Simplify Media license requires users to make sure their sharing doesn’t result in copyright infringement. Because only friends can "perform" the work digitally for others, most reasonable people would consider Simplify Media's use of streaming to be private performance. If the record companies wanted to challenge that in court, it would be difficult to litigate because of how limited friend networks are.

 When adding a new friend’s library, it may take the mobile app a few minutes to download the list of songs before the library becomes accessible. We also had one crash in a few hours of listening, but that was less frequent than the crashes we get from Apple’s Hold' Em app, so we weren’t upset by it.