MusicGremlin Player Offers Wi-Fi Music
By Geoff Duncan
June 14, 2006
In the works for over three years, MusicGremlin's MG-1000 music player lets users share and purchase music via Wi-Fi without using a computer.
MusicGremlin today announced the availability of its Gremlin MG-1000 music player though Amazon.com and the company's own Web site. What does the world need with another portable digital music player? Well, for one thing, this one has built-in WiFi. For another, it enables users to both purchase music or subscribe to music from a library of over 2 million tracks and share music with other users—all without having to use a computer.
"We're thrilled to offer consumers a new, more powerful way to enjoythe music they love," said Jonathan Axelrod, Co-CEO of MusicGremlin. "Bytransforming the MP3 player into a wireless device, we've freed consumersfrom being tied to their PCs."
The Gremlin MG-1000 sports what, by today's standards, might seem like a paltry 8 GB hard disk for music storage, and it's not exactly slim. But it contains a surprise: a pre-installed library of over 2 million songs from major and independent labels. Users can browse the library locally, and choose to download songs to own for $0.99 cents apiece when the player can access the Internet via a Wi-Fi connection. (If no connection is available, the player will download it when it's next online.) Users can also receive free commercial-free programming via Gremlin's own playlists, which are pushed to the Gremlin player and refreshed weekly: offerings include genre- and theme-based channels (classic rock, country, "TranceContinental," "Hot Brown's Love Lounge," and more), and for $14.99 a month users can get an "all you can hear" service offering complete access to the Gremlin song library.
Perhaps most significantly, the Gremlin can connect to other Gremlin users and share music with them. Gremlin units can connect to each other over the air and enable friends to browse each other's music libraries, and even send their music to each other's players—all wirelessly, and (according to Gremlin) all legally.
The Gremlin unit can connect to public Wi-Fi hotspots and home networks; when the device is powered up, it automatically seeks out and connects to the strongs nearby network, and offers an interface to connect to WEP-protected networks. However, the Gremlin MG-1000 cannot connect to networks using WPA Personal, which is a significant omission—it's not a good thing if you have to reduce the security level of a Wi-Fi network just to use a music player.
As a music player, the MG-1000 is somewhat standard: USB connectivity, a 2-inch color 220 by 176 display, a built-in radio receiver, line-in audio input and a built-in microphone. Gremlin says the unit gets about 10 hours of battery life, but that's without using Wi-Fi: expect less if you're connecting to a network. The Gremlin MG-1000 relies on Windows Media Player 10 and Microsoft's DRM—which means it doesn't support Macs and isn't compatible with tracks purchased via Apple's iTunes Music Store—and there's no PlaysForSure seal of approval on the device, either. Also, the Gremlin doesn't offer service bundling with Boingo or other hotspot aggregators, which means even if you're already a customer of a hotspot network, you probably can't use the Gremlin with Wi-Fi service for which you're already paying.
Intrigued? The Gremlin MG-1000 is priced at $299.99.