Stream music from the net to your mobile device or Mac

mSpot is a music cloud service that offers easy access to your entire music collection synced across smartphones and PCs/Macs. Unlike music streaming services such as Spotify, mSpot allows you to upload and stream only your own music that’s already stored on your hard drive.

It works via a simple upload client that automatically uploads your iTunes library or folders of your choice. Up to 2GB of music is stored for free and then there is a progressive storage scale fee after that. Your music is automatically synced to your mobile device such as Android mobile (but not iPhones). The actual mSpot player however is only available in your browser – once you’ve signed up for an mSpot account, use the login details to sign into the mSpot website and you can manage your music collection.

From there you can control which songs sync to mSpot, create new playlists, or explore other album info such as song lyrics. mSpot requires you to download the mobile client to allow syncing and progressively downloads music to your phone so that interruptions in your network connection don’t affect listening. You can also set the buffer limit so that mSpot doesn’t end up hogging all the hard drive space on your phone.

The main problem I found with mSpot however was that uploading of my iTunes library was very slow. Once I’d logged into mSpot and opened iTunes, I expected mSpot to upload the library automatically and instantly but it wasn’t the case. An upload icon animates in your Menu Bar when your iTunes library is uploading but the process seems to take forever.

If you have some patience and an Android phone, then mSpot could be a valuable streaming tool but with other streaming options such as Spotify on the market and a lack of iPhone support, it has a long way to go yet.