Until today, how to share music and large collections of digital media has not been easy, however now with FileFlex you can share massive media collections right from where you stored them – no uploads, no downloads, and no cloud required. 

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Can’t Use The Cloud

I have a massive collection of music.  The collection is over 100 GBs and consists of more than 21,000 songs from 2600 albums and 700 artists.  Sharing this much music is going to be a problem.  Traditionally if you wanted to share files,  your either sent them by email, copied them to a USB stick or uploaded them to a public cloud.  However, in this case, there are no traditional methods that will work.  I have pretty good high-speed internet at home.  My upload speed is 5 Mbps, download is 30 Mbps and I have 50 GBs of bandwidth per month.  This is more than enough for our family web surfing, email, and movie streaming.

The first issue is that according to this file transfer calculator, it would take about 50 hours 24/7 just to upload the entire collection. And the cost to store this in the cloud would be about $100 per year.  The big issue however is the bandwidth.  I really only have enough unused bandwidth in my current high-speed plan to upload 25 GBs per month.  That means in reality it would take 4 months to upload this entire collection.  So the cloud is out.

How to Share Music The Better Way – Use File Access Virtualization

This leads us to how to share music the better way.  I can use the brand new technology of file access virtualization found in FileFlex to share this huge music collection.

FileFlex allows you to share files right from where you saved them – from their original source locations.  Unlike sharing via the cloud, that means that you never have to upload anything and your share recipients never have to download.  And because you share from your own storage, there are no storage limits or limits to file size.  That means you can share entire media collections of any size.  It does not matter.  The collections can be massive.  And your sharing is secure and private. All your files stay on your storage, under your control and behind your firewall.  Nothing is uploaded to any third party or any middleman.  The file transfer is bank-level encrypted and FileFlex does not share via links that can be forwarded or shared on social media.  You limit your shares to approved contacts only and can control your shares to be view only and not downloadable.  Your contacts do not have to download your shares if they don’t want to or if you don’t let them, they access and stream just the portions that they want. And once the software is installed and running, the actual sharing process takes only a couple of seconds.

In my case, with FileFlex, I simply navigate and click the radio button for the folder ‘Music’, then click the ‘Share’ icon.  I then start typing the name of my friend or friends and pick their name when it appears in the contact list.  Here, I am not going to allow my recipients to download any of my music, but they can listen to anything in this 100 Gb music folder whenever they want to.  Then I just click ‘Share’.

My recipients will get both an in-app and an email notification that I shared my music collection with them. They click the notification and it opens the share tab.  The share tab allows them to view everything that has been shared with them and everything that they have shared with someone else.  My recipients navigate to the music folder I shared and then navigate to the music that they want to listen to.  Clicking the music opens it as a stream  from my massive collection, but downloading nothing.  A playlist is also available to play the songs in the folder in order or to allow them to jump to a different soundtrack.  My entire collection of 2600 albums is now available to any recipient to stream whatever they are in the mood for, to their phone, tablet or computer whenever they want.  They do not need to be set up with device credentials or any complicated process. My collection simply acts as an extension of the share recipient’s own storage.  My recipients can return to this share at any time and listen to anything in this music collection from any device whenever they want. Problem solved.

In the following video, we demonstrate how we shared over 1 TB of digital media including the 100 GB collection of music.

Share With FileFlex – It’s Free To Try

How to share music, movie. photo and video collections simply not possible through the cloud is now economical, practical, painless, and easy enough for anyone with FileFlex.  Sharing is private and secure.  You can share anything from any storage you own.  Unlike the cloud, all your storage is 100% accessible. You avoid uploading and downloading because nothing is moved – you share right from where it is stored – from its source location – turning that storage into an extension of your recipient’s smartphone, tablet, or computer.

If you haven’t already downloaded FileFlex – it is free to try.  Simply click ‘Get It Now’ and take it for a test drive.