I bought an AirPort Express a while ago to stream music from my computer to my stereo. Besides a very painful setup process, it’s been working really well, and it’s really nice to be able to stream music from iTunes to the stereo.
While I was at Costco a few weeks ago, I picked up a Seagate FreeAgent 1.5 TB drive on the cheap to backup my photos. However, even after backing up every photo I’ve ever taken, I still had something like 1.3 TB left, so I decided to put all of my music and all of Amanda’s music on it, and turn my MacBook into a dedicated iTunes machine. (Uh, that is, unless I ever get back to working on my iPhone app…)
After all that, I had a nice iTunes streaming solution, but the one thing I always found myself saying was that I wished I could stream Pandora to the stereo. I thought that the Airport Express only worked with iTunes, but yesterday I decided to just search for “airport express pandora” on Google, and lo and behold, I discovered Airfoil, which is a piece of software for Mac and Windows that allows you to stream audio from any program to your Airport Express. The result? Streaming Pandora to my stereo! Airfoil also allows you to stream music from one computer to another, or even stream music from your computer to an iPhone or iPod touch. (Sidenote: there’s also a piece of software called PandoraJam that can stream from Pandora to Airport Express, but I decided against it because it also allows you to record from a Pandora stream, and I don’t want to buy any software that could get Pandora into legal trouble.)
So I am, as I type, listening to my CocoRosie Pandora station streaming to my living room stereo and browsing through a pretty sizeable iTunes collection, and I gotta say that it’s pretty sweet. I’m half-thinking of buying another (hopefully used) Airport Express unit and a Tivoli table radio to put either in the kitchen or my bedroom and have apartment-wide synchronized wireless music. Whee!
You’re making an iPhone app? Do tell.
P.S – you also need a Twitter account k thx bai
I love the AirPort Express! Be sure to grab the “Remote” app for your iPhone, if you haven’t already.
So when are you going to teach your fridge to tell you when you’re low on milk?
@Chris: In theory, yes. It’s climbing-related. But I’m very lazy and haven’t worked on it in a couple months. As for Twitter, I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to make that leap. But we’ll see…
@Cort: I do have the Remote app. It makes the whole system 100% lazier. It’s awesome. Now if Airfoil would add Remote support to Pandora streaming…
@Addison: I’ve been trying, but it doesn’t respond to treats. Any suggestions? I don’t want to go the route of a rolled-up newspaper…