Simplify Media lets you do iTunes "Shared Music" over the Internet

Ahh… Simplify Media is one app in the “simple and brilliant” category. I very rarely fall in love at first sight, but this is one of those instances. An instant must-have.

I always liked iTunes’ “Shared Music” feature — it lets you legally and safely listen to music of people in your local network. Alas, it works only on a local network. This is not very useful to us mobile people. So what Simplify Media does is simply make this feature in iTunes work over the Internet.

You have to download a little program and add friends to your list, and it then works between you as if you were in a local network. Being a geek, I thought how this works — the sharing itself in iTunes works over Bonjour, and so Simplify Media probably makes some smart bridging between all the people who are connected with one another, to make them part of the virtual local network. Whatever. Bottom line — it works beautifully

They say it’s also coming from Windows Media Player and Winamp, but I don’t care too much for those, I’m only using iTunes these days.

Only one UI gripe — the icon should be on the menu bar instead of the dock. Permanently-running smaller apps should be in the menu bar. Other than that, it works great for me.