Autonomic MMS Adds Rhapsody: Why it’s a Big Deal

The Mirage Media Server from Autonomic Controls is one of the most full-featured music (and now movie) servers for the custom electronics channel. And now, on top of Pandora, iTunes, Last.fm, TuneIn, SiriusXM and Spotify, Autonomic delivers the Rhapsody music service.

What’s the big deal? Doesn’t everyone support Rhapsody? Sorta kinda but not really, says Autonomic CEO Michael de Nigris.

While many servers stream Rhapsody pretty well, most of them aren’t certified by Rhapsody itself. That means that if Rhapsody decided to change its streaming ways, the non-certified products could go dark – or quiet, as the case may be.

“We like to have an official relationship with the service providers,” de Nigris tells CE Pro.

He explains how such a relationship kept Autonomic servers online when Sirius changed its back-end architecture last year.

“We got a call from Sirius that they were moving to new servers,” de Nigris recalls. “We worked with them to make some firmware tweaks so there was no interruption of service” when the switch was flipped. Surprised by the move, non-partners had to race to get their products back online.

Remember when Hulu decided to shut out non-partners? What a mess.

RELATED: Movies Come to Autonomic Media Servers

“Being an official partner means that our dealers can feel secure that the service will continue to function on the device through any technical service changes made on the Rhapsody back end,” de Nigris says. They also don't have to worry about us being turned off – which has happened to other manufactures who didn't go through the official channels.”

De Nigris says that these days Rhapsody is spending its energies on the big boys to implement the music service on mass-market products that generate a large volume of subscribers that “we can't match in our specialized channel.”

He explains, “Forging a business relationship with Rhapsody took convincing them that we had the technical chops to implement the service without too much of a drag on their internal resources. They have multiple levels of certification that we had to go through including functional, security, and user interface testing.”

So add Rhapsody to Autonomic’s secret software sauce called TuneBridge and here’s what you can do: Upon hearing a great new song while listening to Pandora or SiriusXM, an MMS user can press one or two buttons to quickly discover more music from that artist on Rhapsody, Spotify or Last.fm.

The company says TuneBridge “breaks down the barriers among local content and popular online streaming services, allowing users to engage in a seamless exploration of music.” Such exploration can be done via Crestron, AMX, RTI, Control4 or URC touchpanels. Autonomic also has its own on-screen display for TVs, a Web interface, and apps for the iPhone and iPad.

Rhapsodyʼs standard subscription fee of $10 per month gets you unlimited access to more than 13 million songs.







RELATED:
Autonomic Media Server to Support Amazon Cloud Drive
Movies Come to Autonomic Media Servers
Uber Music Server from Autonomic, S1Digital: 1TB, Cloud Storage, Sync, Home Control
-----------------------------------------------

Follow us on Twitter!
@juliejacobson
@ce_pro