Bandwagon Reincarnated: Return of the Wildly Popular iTunes Backup Application, Now DIY
This post was published 2 years 5 months 8 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.For the last two months UNEASYsilence has been conducting an exclusive beta test of the newly reincarnated “Bandwagon” iTunes backup utility. When Bandwagon launched it took the web by storm because of its simplicity and unlimited storage for a LOW fixed monthly fee. The service, however, was quickly shut down after the folks over at Xackup quickly found out that Mac users store a TON of music.
We are proud to report that Xackup has now produced new application is significantly better then the previous one. In the new Bandwagon users are now backing up to Amazon S3 accounts or personal FTP space (support coming in the next few months). Although Amazon S3 is more of a “geek” technology, Bandwagons setup automatically handles everything for you after you provide your secret S3 keys.
On first launch Bandwagon scans your iTunes XML file and provides the option to backup Music (Including Booklets), Audiobooks, Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, iPod Games, Visualizers, and Podcasts preserving play counts and all other metadata. Xackup maintains a backup history of your data to not only to be sure duplicate data is not uploaded, but to make restores simple. In a test after deleting 12 random songs, Bandwagon identified the missing songs instantly and offered to restore them.
Bandwagon is optimized to handle large iTunes libraries, and in my tests backed up an iTunes library with over 40,000 items with over 300GB of data. All you need is patience to upload all the data.
Why Bandwagon instead of other online backup utilities? Bandwagon creator Jofell Gallardo says Xackup, with Bandwagon, is pioneering the vertical backup market which deals more with niche backup, from Media, Documents, Office and Enterprise Data. “We can’t really compare Mozy to our product. We’re not a generic backup, but we’re trying to achieve seamless restoration of data from the applications we use., says Gallardo.
If you value your music collection, and want to disaster proof it, Bandwagon is an essential tool for your arsenal. Available for $24 a year plus Amazon S3 transfer and storage costs.
Thank to the team over at Xackup, for letting us provide this exclusive look into the relaunched version of Bandwagon.
A download will be made available later today from the newly relaunched Bandwagon site
Or…. you could just signup for a Mozy account and get unlimited storage for $5/month and you get the added benefit of having it backup all your pictures, videos and documments too..
Not sure why anyone would go for Bandwagon + S3 Costs in this light.
I was waiting for that counter point, Mozy is really optimized for data. Bandwagon (when a restore is necessary) restores a song directly in the iTunes library with all the metadata in tact.
Mozy just restores the file and makes no modifications to your iTunes library.
Also, there are some REALLY interesting things you can do with AmazonS3. All I can say is that there are many ways you can access your data, and this application is only one small step in Bandwagons grand vision.
That’s actually a good point Dan. But I’m thinking that if I were to suffer some damange to my iTunes Library, it would probaby be because my hard drive failed, computer was stolen etc.. so at which point I would probably need a full restore.
Yet I see the convenience in Bandwagon’s software/service, but why not team-up with Mozy so that they could offer there iTunes backup managemetn software with the flat rate Mozy has for data stroage and bandwidth?
Backing up with Bandwagon your 300GB library will run you for at least a $100//month + uploading bandwidth costs (that is beyond your ISP calling to tell you off for uploading 300 GB worth of data).
Bandwagon started off as a software + storage service, they quickly scared away from flat storage fees and kept only the software. As much as they were a competitor to Mozy at first, they now offer a complimentary service, so why not team up?
“If you can’t beet them join’em” as the saying goes…
Olivier,
Thanks for your comments.
I look at the market this way: there are people with no storage and there are people that do.
Bandwagon addresses the latter market. These type of user generally uses rsync, cd dvds and/or external drives to backup iTunes. Bandwagon is a safer and in many cases, cheaper alternatives (e.g. a user has a Dreamhost account but only uses1GB out of 150GB). We currently support S3 but will be supporting other online storage like ftp, Omnidrive, Streamload, etc. So Bandwagon is platform agnostic. Mozy addresses the former market.
Furthermore, our initial target are music aficionados and they care about track metadata. We go to great lengths to preserve this. We are also unique in that if you change say the song title “Track 01″ and the user changed that to “My Way”, we preserve this, without re-uploading the SAME song but DIFFERENT file (iTunes writes this under a new file or directory if you change title, artist album).
Last point, iTunes is just the beginning. We will move to iPhoto, Aperture & Lightroom, which all contain important metadata. That is what Jofell was quoted as saying…we are not a generic backup in the sense that we not only focus on files (and their changes) but on the metadata associated with that file. Eventually, we will move and cover all data types.
Think of Bandwagon as the “Whole Foods of Backup”, specialized and not for everyone.
Terence
Co-founder, Xackup
Just seems a bit ridiculous to me that someone would pay a monthly fee to listen to their own music they all ready bought. But, hey…that’s just my opinion…I didn’t think people would buy a video game…then turn around to pay a monthly fee in order to play the game. It’s like paying for tap water…wait…we do that too
Makes me wonder, those who already have a storage place online, they are experts, intermediate users, not your average users. They know how to store and retrieve, they know how to write scripts and do lil’ things that they ‘emselves feel secure and trusted. In fact, it’s all free for them, except for the file storage payment. So why Bandwagon? Just to back up metadata? That’s quite a far fetch IMHO. You may have a market, but it’s probably a very very small one.
Backup is over the top these days. If you can’t reach out to the average users, you won’t be able to make any money of it. No average users care about metadata, let me assure you that. ;)
You should have done more research on user behaviour and their wants. That said, you are doing a great job in creating a platform that’s very easy to use. :)
All the best!
Kwangern,
Even experts/intermediate users would prefer a simpler solution to a mundane and boring task as backup. Yes, all those scripts are free but it takes time to set those things up, run them daily or weekly, etc. What we provide is a “time-saver” service (in addition to all the other goodies like one-click restores). If a potential customer thinks that “saving” $2 per month is more important to them than “saving” the time it takes them to setup/run their free scripts, then you have a good point.
But their time value is probably worth at least $50 per hour. That’s roughly $1 / minute. So if they save more than 2 minutes using Bandwagon, it has already paid for itself.
Market maybe small but we don’t want to be the biggest, we want to be the best :)
Btw, here’s a more technical discussion about metadata and how we save it.
My personal favorite for Bandwagon DIY is automatic detection of missing items. It’s almost real-time, only a few seconds of delays before you get what’s missing. Not to mention the selective-with-search restores.
Terence, great point about even experts liking things simple, and I just commented on the Apple TV article with that point.
I am an engineer by training, and an IT Architect by trade. I can code in several languages, and if I wanted to, I could probably do a decent job of hacking up a solution to do this for me. However, sometimes I just want an off the shelf app/hardware/solution that just works, period.
Of course, being a complete geek (with a touch of dork thrown in), I have a gb network at home, and NAS to store stuff I want safe. What I like about this is the specific attention to metadata.
Right, and the metadata market is…what? N% of iTunes users? Including or excluding Apple users? Check out the report on media player market share on Digital Music News, you’d be surprise what sort of market you are looking at. ;)
Sometimes simplicity isn’t the answer for all.
It won’t bring you millions, and I can agree that you will have some satisfied customers. Question is, can you sustain your business with a minute market share? ;)