Suppose, you are at office and get tired after a long work. If you are a music lover, you would like to enjoy your favorite music with a cup of tea at your office desk. But unfortunately, your office computer’s music collection is not as of your choice. -Frustrating! But you merely like to copy your music files recursively into a removable device or download the same songs in different computer.
Instead, you can setup your computer as a media server to stream music at any time anywhere on the go. There are quite numbers of applications by which you can turn your home computer as a standalone media server.
But if you are familiar with Dropbox, you can easily take the advantage of it to stream music online from PC, laptops, iPhone, iPad, Android etc. connected with internet. The best thing with Dropbox is that you can stream music from any computer without caring about that if it is on or off.
1. Install the Dropbox in each device from where you want to stream your music. Add your music files to the local Dropbox folder called as My Dropbox (or you can create a different folder in that folder to separate the music files). It should sync all the MP3 files from the different computers to your Dropbox account if they are connected with internet. Please note that if you want to share the music with your friends then you must keep the MP3s in the Public folder at your Dropbox.
2. Install the Google Chrome extension called as Dropbox Audio Player at each computer. Note: you might able to run the MP3’s from your Dropbox account in any computer. But you would have to download them first and use a media player like VLC, Windows Media Player etc. The Google Chrome extension works your job and play the audio without downloading it.
3. Now open the Google Chrome browser and sign-in to your Dropbox account. In case of mobile, iPhone use dropbox.com/m.
4. Open the folder where you’ve stored your music files and click on it – the song will be played instead of being downloaded.
Normally, clicking on any file of your Dropbox account will start to download it. But the Google Chrome extension prevent the download for the MP3 files and play it directly in Google Chrome browser. Isn’t it nice?
I found this extension very useful as it allows to play songs from any computer without any hazard. But there is still some improvements needed from the Developer of this extension -
1. The option is not available for the video files.
2. Allowing users to create a custom playlist would be great.
You could also try SongBox Player iPhone app @ the app store. Just look up “SongBox Player” in the search field.