MeCanto, Psonar offer free online music lockers
I wasn't able to test MeCanto because I don't have a supported phone, but I gave another service, Psonar, a look. Psonar has a slightly different spin on music lockers. Like the other services I've covered, it requires you to download a free app,the Psonar SongShifter (Windows-only), which scans your computer and uploads your music collection to Psonar's cloud-based locker service. But unlike the other services, it doesn't let you stream music from the locker to your mobile device. Instead, you have to add phones to your Psonar network by connecting them to your PC. Once you've done that, you can log into Psonar's Web site from any browser--including your phone's browser--and upload and download music between your devices and your Psonar cloud at will. Psonar claims that streaming isn't a great scenario on most phones anyway because it drains battery life, and notes that this Web-based approach lets it support any phone with a Web browser--even feature phones. At the same time, this doesn't really solve the problem of storage limits on mobile phones.The Web site worked quite well for playing back uploaded music, but the SongShifter upload app was pretty buggy in my testing--I couldn't get it to display properly (the window didn't allow resizing), and it didn't recognize my iPhone, even after I connected it to my Windows XP laptop several times in several different ways (with iTunes running and closed, and with SongShifter running and closed). Nonetheless, you might want to give it a test yourself--the current version of the service is free and lets you connect three devices, so you don't have much to risk. Later this summer, Psonar intends to release a Premium version of the service that will let you connect unlimited devices, at a price of $6 a month.
