- Related Stories
-
Apple debuts new U2 iPod
June 6, 2006 -
iPod rivals ready for prime time at last?
January 6, 2006 -
Digital music's move back to the Web
November 4, 2005 -
'Plays for sure' means Microsoft's inside
August 25, 2004
(continued from previous page)
Sadly, the Gremlin doesn't offer enough to justify the $299 price. Considering that you'll need the $14.99-per-month (that's $179.88 per year) subscription to get the most out of it, we think the player should cost a lot less. Perhaps there should be a steep discount if you sign up for a year of service--similar to promotions offered by cell phone service providers--or maybe even a discount on tracks that you want to purchase as a subscriber.
Making friends
The MusicGremlin uses its wireless abilities in another interesting way: By letting you go online to see what other connected users have on their players. You can see the most recently added 100 songs from each connected Gremlin's library. If you have a subscription, you can then click to download any songs you want for your own, provided that they came from the subscription service.
Without a Wi-Fi connection, two Gremlin owners can form ad-hoc networks to trade songs locally. You can send a song to a specified user, who can then accept or reject it.
Privacy buffs should know that you can turn the community features off or share information with only trusted users.
Obviously, the more users out there, the better. We consistently viewed up to 20 people online at all times during the beta testing period. There is potential to flesh out a more interactive social networking experience.
Another useful way to discover new music is by subscribing to Gremlists, which are free to subscribers. These are preprogrammed lists of 10 songs in various genres, such as hits, rap and classic rock. The lists change every week, so if you subscribe to some, you'll always have fresh content on your player.
The MusicGremlin doesn't come with any software, so Windows XP users can manage their songs with Windows Explorer, or an all-in-one player such as Windows Media Player 10 (it doesn't work with Macs). If you're transferring purchased songs to your PC, you'll need WMP 10, which also passes along the license information. WMP 11 is in beta and isn't yet officially supported, though we had success syncing the MusicGremlin with the Urge music subscription service.
The Gremlin also includes an FM radio, which doesn't yet have the ability to remember presets. But the developers can push software upgrades to the player directly, and we expect this feature to be added soon.
Performance
There's no doubt that having instant access to just about any song is a blast. No sooner do you think, "Gee, I haven't heard Roxy Music's 'Avalon' in ages," than you can download it, if you have access to a Wi-Fi connection.
That's a big "if," as open connections can be hard to find (though we'll all see more Wi-Fi soon enough), and the benefit of this player is that you can download while you're away from home. The MusicGremlin also works with WEP-secured 802.11 connections and was easy to set up in our tests, although it didn't always find the network right away. Sometimes it took two or three tries.
We didn't find anything wrong with the sound quality. It has nice output levels and 100 volume increments, as well as good, clean punchy sound. But be warned that there is no equalizer, nor is there a repeat function or an indication of whether you're in shuffle mode. We imagine the MusicGremlin team will add these in time.
The FM radio works only when the headphones are connected and gets unusually poor reception. Every swing of the cord seems to cause static. When we tried it indoors, we could tune in only a few stations.
The player downloads songs at a decent, but hardly fast, rate. We timed a 10-song album at 22 minutes, 44 seconds. We like that you can begin playing a song before it's fully downloaded, though.
One small annoyance is that subscribers need to select one song at a time, though you can buy an entire album at once. This looks like a roadblock to prevent people from downloading a lot of songs at once, and it's irritatingly unnecessary.
The sharing features are fun but don't go far enough in providing value. You can share only subscription songs and only with other subscribers, so nonsubscribers and purchased tracks are off-limits. Users would be better served if they could transfer any song, whether purchased or subscription, and if subscription songs could be transferred a set number of times to nonsubscribers.
We wish the player supported messaging, so users could include notes with their songs. We also wish it could handle photos and video. Grabbing photos from Wi-Fi-enabled cameras would be a perfect fit. But these features could be added if the Gremlin ever takes off--mixing social networking with a portable music device seems like a no-brainer.
Battery life is also a problem, as the Gremlin got only a bit more than 10 hours of standard MP3 playback in our testing, and considerably less when Wi-Fi is on. Downloading online takes a real toll on the battery. The device will drain in about 2 hours of constant downloading. With average use, you'll get about three days between charges.
The Gremlin has all the markings of a first-generation product, meaning lots of small annoyances that could easily be corrected. The Wi-Fi connection shuts down automatically to save power, but the device itself doesn't power down. Forget to shut it off, and you'll drain your battery. You're limited to viewing 100 songs from other users' libraries, and you don't get a follow-up message when sharing a song to say if the track was accepted or rejected.
Troy Dreier checked out this device for CNET Reviews.
See more CNET content tagged:
music subscription service, Wi-Fi, song, music player, menu
I also buy music from Indy labels like Discipline Global Mobile and Megatunes, and they don't have DRM.
Heck, I bought an album from Megatunes last night in Lossless format, and then told a friend of mine to use my password and go download a copy for herself. Not only is it legal, Megatunes -encourages- you to share music with your friends.
Perhaps you need to support different record labels if you believe being locked into DRM is all there is.
Wait! what about cell phone coverage! That's it! I can download and listen to tunes through my phone, practically anywhere. Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that? At lest I can listen to Arctic Monkeys while I slowly dehydrate.
But this company could be on to something here. This is what
you call true innovation. This is a company thats taking an
existing idea like IPOD and making it better. Or atleast testing
the limits..
Unlike other companies like Sony, Creative & Samsung etc..
which just copies the IPOD poorly and sticking it with features
from the past like an FM Radio, Microphone,.. which really are
quite useless at the end of the day cause it is a music player not
a swiss army knife. This is what an actual competitor should be
doing.. thinking beyond IPOD..
But I'm already certain the next IPOD update will go beyond
this.. but its nice to see a company compete by innovating then
seeing a company compete by duplicating.. Thats why this
product has truly garnered respect..
- only USB connection to PC
- by sjacobsjpn June 15, 2006 1:59 AM PDT
- According to the the MusicGremlin site, "Software lets users back-up individually purchased songs and albums onto their PC via USB"
- Reply to this comment
-
(7 Comments)What? It has built in Wi-Fi, but can't use it to connect to my PC? I know that this device is intended to be used with the subscription service, but what if the service doesn't have an album that you have on your PC? Also, I expect that it could be faster to download songs from the PC than from their online service. Just imagine relaxing in your backyard with with instant access to songs from both your complete 200GB PC collection and the music service.