MP3tunes Uses Wii Browser to Stream Music

Dec. 28 8:22 PM by Lynxara

MP3tunes.com offers kind of a goofy service: "music lockers" that you fill up by uploading your own music files. Then you can stream the music through most gadgets that let you access the internet. I'm sure getting my 10,000+ song collection into one wouldn't be a pain in the butt at all.

Still, the MP3tunes.com people have unveiled a neat idea: streaming music through your Wii's internet browser. The instructions are outlined here and pretty simple. Just direct your Wii's browser to http://www.mp3tunes.com/wiitunes/, give it a login and password, and away you go. In theory, anyway...

If you don't feel like fooling around with the creation of a full music locker, you can just use the log/pass demo@mp3tunes.com/demo to access a giant demo playlist loaded with a wide variety of interesting, mostly indie music. That's what I'm using it for right now, and it's filling the house up with pleasant sounds. If you want to use your Wii to stream your collection, just create your own music locker and get to work uploading tracks from your computer. Lockers come in free (ad-choked) and $39.95 per year varieties.

Wiitunes itself is a very basic program. You scroll through playlists using the same controls for scrolling webpages. There's no visualizer going while a song plays, just a static blue screen. You don't get anything really useful in the way of pause, skip track, or other controls onscreen. They're mapped to the Wii remote in fairly unintuitive ways, but there is a guide to what button does what built into the program.

My big problem with WiiTunes right now is that it seems prone to making the Wii lock up, which forces a hard reboot of the system. By "prone", I mean "out of six attempts to use WiiTunes, my Wii locked up six times." Three times while trying to load the login screen, twice while trying to browse playlists, once after streaming one song. So, yeah, kinda stillborn, but there's room for some badly-needed improvement.