Oosah turns your iPhone into a 1 terabyte music player

August 25, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

Oosah, a photosharing site that launched back in April, has unveiled a cool new site for iPhone users. But the most interesting part of the site doesn’t have anything to do photos — Oosah will allow users to access up to 1 terabyte of any media for free, including music. That means Oosah site turns your iPhone into a 1 terabyte music player.

There are other applications that allow your iPhone to stream your music library remotely — Remote Buddy, for example. There are rumors that Apple is developing its own technology on this front. But unless you’ve got a 1-terabyte hard drive, Oosah’s player probably offers the most storage. (And it dwarfs the iPod proper, whose biggest model stores only 120 gigabytes.)

Of course, there are some drawbacks to streaming the music, rather than playing it directly off your iPhone. For one thing, Oosah chief technology officer Dan Khasis says that the player won’t work with music that’s restricted by Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, i.e. many of the tracks available on iTunes. (Personally, I see this as another reason why DRM sucks, not as a knock against Oosah, but someone who owns a lot of DRM music probably feels differently.) For another, Oosah users must rely on the quality of their phone connections, which has been erratic on the iPhone 3G.

The music player seems like a promising avenue for Oosah, which also works as a meta-photosharing site: Its biggest selling point is its interface for managing photos stored on other sites. The iPhone site looks like a solid offering, with most of the regular Oosah site’s functionality.

The latest news makes me even more curious about how the Palo Alto startup plans to make money, which it has been secretive about. After all, storing 1 terabyte of data for each user can’t be cheap.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Postmaster
    Don't forget Simplify Media (streaming your iTunes library from your always on home computer). I look forward to the day the private streaming on demand protocols are standardized and I can stream my home library to any of my remote devices (iPhone, Blackberry, Laptop, or car-puter). Remember - this really leverages the collection without violating whatever rights are associated - you could easily be sure that only one listener is enjoying one song at a given time.
  • Hmm, hadn't heard of them before, thanks. Though again, the point of Oosah is that it can store more music than your home computer.
  • AH
    "buyer beware" !! Yes this applies even for free things.

    With all things "too good to be true", there is a catch, or TANSTAFL. Read 9c under terms and conditions:
    "c. Ownership of Content: You retain all ownership rights in your Content. However, by posting Content to Oosah, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Oosah (and its successors) an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, assignable, royalty free, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, distribute and to prepare derivative works of such Content in connection with the Site and any current and future services offered by Oosah, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing."