I have an iPod and a cellphone, though most of the time just carry the latter. nuTsie (beta) is a new application that allows you to access your iTunes playlists through your cell phone. After you register for your free account, nuTsie sends a text message to your cell phone with a link to download their mobile application. On the web site,  you are taken to a page to upload your ITunes library XML file. nuTsie then tries to match songs in your library with songs in their catalog on their server. This process may take a while depending on the size of your library but they will send you a text message to your cell phone when the process is complete.

The nuTsie web site provides you with a dashboard/profile page that contains links to all of your playlists. nuTsie only provides songs in your library that match items in their catalog and unfortunately, the catalog seems to be pretty slim - only a tiny fraction of my songs actually matched.



Don’t think of your playlists in the traditional way - think of them as stations with pre-determined content. The service seems to follow DMCA rules for playback - such as random order, no knowledge of the next track and no skipping back tracks. You have the ability to hear your playlists directly in the browser if you don’t want to use your cellphone.

I personally have a Motorola Krazr, which is not currently supported by nuTsie so I did not get a chance to test out the service on a mobile device. However, their site provides a pretty good overview of the UI. After you launch the application on your phone you will see a collection of all your playlists. When listening to a playlist, you will see the album art, metadata, track progress, and graphic that explains how to control playback. While nuTsie is free, it will eat up your data minutes, so be careful unless you have an unlimited data plan.

At this time  there is no way to make your profile or specific playlists private. You can also listen to other users’ playlists, though nuTsie lacks the ability to browse or search members or playlists in any easy way. Its also uncertain whether you can access member playlists via your phone. The UI is very plain, crowded and can use some reorganization to make primary actions more prominent.

nuTsie is only in beta, but if they address the issues around their catalog size, community development and user experience, they may have a very compelling service. nuTsie’s comes at the same time Pandora announced products to deliver streaming radio to certain cell phones. Couple that with the introduction of the iPhone later this month the mobile music market is looking at a promising 2007.