Forget Zune: MusicGremlin's Wi-Fi Features Rock!

With all the hype surrounding Zune, it's easy to forget that a perfectly excellent Wi-Fi-enabled music subscription and sales service called MusicGremlin has been out for nearly a year. I have been trying out MusicGremlin for the past few months and am nothing but impressed (with a few exceptions—namely its butt-ugly music player). I've written about the service in brief for Rolling Stone but otherwise haven't seen too much coverage, so here we go.

It works like this: You buy said butt-ugly (and bulky) player for $299 and sign up for the service, which costs $14.99 per month for unlimited subscription song access. Purchasing songs costs 99 cents per track. Then just turn on the Wi-Fi receiver on the player, get yourself into a Wi-Fi hotspot, scroll through the music library, click on songs you want, and start downloading.

Open Wi-Fi hotspots can be accessed seamlessly, but getting on security-enabled hotspots requires the entry of a password, a tedious task considering the MusicGremlin device has no keyboard, so you have to scroll through each letter and number of the alphabet using just one button.

For music nuts like myself, the service is great because I can download dozens of tracks at once. (I had about 95 songs in my queue at one point). Selection (about 2 million songs) is on par with that of any of the other big online music services. I have downloaded everything from Gilberto Gil and Hot Chip to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Gnarls Barkley. Songs take a minute or so to download right to the device—surprisingly fast. You can also buy tracks online and transfer the old-fashioned way.

I have complained many times about the lack of ubiquitous Wi-Fi—there just aren't any Wi-Fi hotspots when you need 'em—so why would I be crazy about MusicGremlin? The main benefit here is the direct-to-device download. For fans of instant gratification, there is nothing better and faster than getting your music right on the device. I find hooking my player up to my computer via USB a hassle; for one thing, I can never seem to find that dang USB cord when I need it, and booting up my computer takes forever. It's the same satisfaction I get from downloading songs directly to my Verizon Moto KRZR from the Verizon Music Store, only I don't have to pay $1.99 per track with MusicGremlin.

MusicGremlin also has a social-networking community feature, where you can access the music collections of other MusicGremlin members, no matter where they are, and download the songs you like right from MusicGremlin. Or just send songs over to your friends, provided you are both signed up for the subscription service. A just-announced service lets you add or delete "Gremlist" music channels to your player from any web-connected PC.

Microsoft is making a big deal about Zune's Wi-Fi capability and features, but these pale in comparison to what MusicGremlin already offers in the wireless department. No doubt Microsoft will eventually add direct-to-device downloads with Zune, but right now the Wi-Fi-enabled music service that really rocks is MusicGremlin. Let's hope MusicGremlin makes a deal soon with a hardware manufacturer so that we see the service on a media player (or cell phone) we might actually want.

Do you like direct-to-device downloads, or are you okay with just transferring via USB?

Related links:

Preliminary Hands-on with the Zune

Should You Drop iTunes and Get the Zune?