I stumbled on this app the other day, and its a fine example of someone taking Google’s infrastructure (in this instance its Play Music app and the Android platform) and making something pretty awesome.
So what’s the app? Titled (rather un-sexily) Cast To UPnP/DLNA for GMusic, the app turns your Android device – and specifically the Play Music app – into a UPnP/DLNA host. In plain english, this means you can play your music from your phone (and this includes the All Access streaming part of Play Music) to any UPnP/DLNA receiver – like your Xbox360, a Sonos, XBMC etc etc.
On the face of it, that’s a pretty simple thing – but in practice it opens up a world of opportunity. Take Sonos, for example: ordinarily services need a degree of compatibility to run on their platform. Using this app however, you can pipe the music straight from your pocket to the device itself – and retain all the artist/album/song info through to the system as well.
Personally what I love about this is that – unlike bluetooth for example – proximity isn’t an issue as this happens over wifi. So, in theory I can be upstairs and start music playing on my XBox360 downstairs, for example.
The app itself is free but has a 20 minute lock on streaming time. For less than £2 you can unlock the full version – silly money given what this potentially opens up for you. Go and check it out.
