Streaming your favourite music with your mobile phone

Streaming music has been possible to your home computer for a quite some time, e.g. using internet radios or different music services. Smartphones are getting closer and closer to computers, and it has been possible to stream music to your S60 smartphone using Nokia's Internet radio. You can find installing instructions in above mentioned link if your S60 doesn't have it pre-installed, my Nokia N96 had it.

One of the services that offers streaming music through a browser is Last.fm. One of its benefits is that it offers you the music that you like or at least similar artists when traditional radio stations play random music. You can also share your favourite music/genre/artist with your friends. It was nice to notice that it is possible to use Last.fm -service with S60, the only thing you need is Mobbler. Mobbler is a Last.fm music player and it also enables you to scrobble tracks that are played with S60 Music player.

1. Mobbler in S60 plays the artists you've added to Last.fm.

2. Mobbler looks nice also in landscape.

3. If you are using S60's Music player, Mobbler scrobbles music that you've listened.

When you choose the left icon, Mobbler enables you to buy music from Amazon's aStore, but the store is not mobile optimized. This weakens the user experience. You can also "Love a track", choose next track or "Ban a track".

4. There is also a possibility to buy tracks from Amazon's aStore.

5. Unfortunatey Amazon's store isn't optimized for mobile.

6. Amazon's aStore and S60's browser.

Mobbler enables you to easily expand the music that you are listening and you don't need to carry all your favorite music with you. You can also easily offer better musical experiences in different parties, because you can always choose the desired music based on the people and / or the feeling just by opening Mobbler. If you have your music in your S60 and there is right equipment available, you can use your smartphone as a media center.

When you are using Mobbler for streaming, you should use WiFi or have unlimited dataplan, otherwise your phone bill will be enormous. I've experienced that 3G is enough for music streaming.

One other thing that you need to keep in mind when using these "always-on" services is battery life. At the moment batteries don't last too long, but luckily this is improving all the time. For the time being, you should make sure your charger is near.