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You simply have to ensure that nobody exept you can access these files to stay completely legal.
@miTgiB hit it right on the nose. It's a matter of upfront cost vs ammoritzed cost for most people when it comes to online vs local storage. Even with drive prices as high as they are now, here's a breakdown. This is only about online vs local storage, which I know is a little offtopic from the OP's legal vs not question. Still pertinent to some of the comments in this thread.
$120 per 2TB WD Green Drive, you need two for RAID1, so $240 total
$135 Foxconn R20-A1 low power, barebones, quiet fileserver case.
$15 for 2GB RAM.
$25 / yr for 35W power draw, 24 hrs per day, at 8 cents/kWh.
Linux OS, SW RAID1, Boot from memory stick (everyone has one lying around) = Free
That's a grand total of $320. Divide that by 24 months (2 years), that comes to $13.33 per month. You're assumingly already paying for internet connectivity at your location, so you would have paid for that anyway and can't factor that into your upfront costs. Also, this is only divided by 2 years. I am running drives for about 10 years now, so that has certainly paid itself off many times over.
Where are you going to get 2TB fileserver online for $13.33/mo for 2 years, or $8.89 for 3 years, or $6.67 for 4 years .. etc
Now, if you have a real need for a high bandwidth upload capability, or you have poor power availability in your area, then I can see the use for online storage. However, in most cases local storage is cheaper.
Relevant links;
Barebones PC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119058&Tpk=foxconn r20-a1
RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148149
Drives
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Desktop-WD20EARX/dp/B004VFJ9MK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335707757&sr=8-1
Electricity Usage
http://www.electricity-usage.com/Electricity-Usage-Calculator.aspx?Device=&Watts=35&CostPerKWH=0.08&HoursPerDay=24
Oh yeah. I love that CPUs. When AMD was the king and so
+1 for SubSonic. I use it myself, works like a charm.
Elliotj, you had a great idea! I have a Squeezebox, bought in 2004 (first model, when they still were a startup called SlimDevices). I also found unconvenient to have a PC/server turned on all times. With my music collection on a VPS, I now have the server always available; and I also can use the Squeezebox to alternate locations with internet access and still browse the media library. This is the strong point of your VPS-based solution.
You can use the (free) Microsoft Skydrive service (25 Gb for early adopters). I installed the Logitech media server on a Windows 7 LEB VPS (Xen HVM, 512 Mb Ram, 10 Gb hd). On this VPS, I installed the Microsoft SkyDrive client. The Logitech server point to a folder in the Skydrive, and I can easily update the music library from my PC. The only drawback of this "music cloud" arrangement is a short pause when I select a new song to play. As side note, this setup does not work with Itunes and Apple Airplay devices. Apparently, Itunes want the clients in the same IP subnet of the server; silly restriction.
SubSonic and other suggested solutions are great for generic streaming, but Squeezebox devices are integrated in a "high-end" multiroom streaming music system that requires a specific server. These devices are expensive but have many nice features and Hi-Fi audio outputs.
The SkyDrive is a easy way to sync the VPS library with the local PC library, but you still need a local storage on the VPS. If you need lots of space, Kimsufi may be the cheapest solution.
This. Subsonic is awesome!
Only if you're encoding to MP3 at a constant bit rate (CBR). It fails miserably at VBR, and 4.6/4.7 beta 1 has had intermittent failures for me when encoding to HE-AAC.
True enough. My primary usage is streaming to my phone (so that I could retire my Zune).. everything I put on the Subsonic box is encoded to 128kbit mp3. I'm no audiophile, so long as I have the music I'm generally happy
I just encode beforehand and leave it on the laptop in HE-AACv2.
I made an amd fusion htpc setup for this which uses 18-30watt and is always on.
Also, i live in the netherlands and when signing up with an usa ip, google music works epic
That's my use too -- but I'm mostly on 3G so prefer HE-AAC(/v2) so it won't skip on a low signal and not use up lots of data too. For now Ogg works decently.
Yes, Subsonic works beautifully with the "cat" codec
I'm unfamiliar with formats and codecs to be honest... the last time I did any serious research, OGG was still practically unheard of, and the common philosophy was that the higher the kbit of your mp3s, the better the quality :P (This was around the time that winamp was taking its first shaky steps)
HE-AACv2 is king right now, moreso than ogg vorbis, even AoTuV vorbis can achieve. HE-AAC adds band replication (A 44.1khz HE-AAC track is really 22050hz with a few bits left over for replicating the higher freqs), v2 adds parametric stereo (mono, but a few bits used for panning info). It's done really well.
Of the AAC encoders out there, Nero's is top dog. Then Apple's (shudder), then FAAC. Check this out if you're interested in how it sounds.
You should add the caveat in the low-bit-rate market
I thought so too until recently, since I last switched lossy codecs back in 2007 or so...but checkout hydrogen audio, Apple is the new king -- Nero hasn't updated theirs in YEARS.
Hah, I remember in the mid-90s running Winamp on a Pentium 75 MHz/16 MB and setting it to downsample to 22/11 KHz so I could do other things with it in the background!!! I use it only for local shoutcast now, but still prefer the "classic" skin...
+100000000000
also, winamp 2.7 was like 700kb, nowadays, like 10mb
Winamp 2.95
you are right! ... girl? or boy?
Back on original topic: I have done further testing on the Squeezecenter. It is already heavily optimized to run on VPS. This turned out to be a popular setup: see wiki.slimdevices.com for details. Multiple istances can be started on the same server (each instance need a separate IP). It has an internal transcoding engine to stream with lower bitrate, if required. Works nicely on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with 128Mb Ram (OpenVZ), on the VPS control panel I see 70 Mb Ram still free. There is a paid application for iPad that works as Squeezecenter controller and client: you can use the Squeezebox at home, and the iPad will retain access to the music library when you are outside.