MediaFire update introduces music and video streaming
There are not that many long-standing file hosting providers around anymore. It would be too easy to blame this solely on the fallout after the Megaupload takedown even though it certainly played a major role in the demise of many hosting services. The rise of synchronization services like Dropbox, Google Drive or even SkyDrive has without doubt played a role as well.
MediaFire is one of the remaining big players that seems to have not been hit that hard in the last year than other providers such as Rapidshare. While it still lost users according to Alexa, which may have been partially caused by the removal of the guest user upload option, business seems to have stabilized recently.
The company announced today that the service's registered user count crossed the 30 million mark, and while that includes free and paying account owners, it is certainly an important milestone.
As part of the celebration, it pushed out an update that brings native music and video streaming support to MediaFire's web and mobile apps.
How it works? A file action prompt is displayed when you click on a video or audio file on MediaFire. You get options to share or download the file just like before, and the new watch option.
If you click on watch you are taken to a new page where the music or video is streamed on.
I was able to play songs and videos while I was logged in and as an anonymous guest of the service. You can check out a sample files that are publicly accessible here. The very same streaming options are available for users of the MediaFire iOS and Android apps.
Free MediaFire users can store up to 50 Gigabytes of data on the company servers. That's a lot of storage space but the 200 Megabyte per file limit makes it less than practicable for many video files. While it is certainly possible to split larger videos into parts, it is not really that comfortable when it comes to watch those multi-part videos then.
The company is currently running a 50% off promotion for its Pro and Business accounts that do not have this limitation. The pro account, available for $2.49 per month during the promotion and the business account, available for $24.99 per month during the promotion have a maximum file size limit of 10 Gigabytes.
The introduction of a streaming feature is certainly a smart move by MediaFire considering that it not only has to compete with other file hosting services but also with file synchronization services. Especially the latter add new viewing and watching features to their services on a regular basis.
Supported media files
- HTML5 video formats: m4v, ogv, webmv.
- Flash video formats: m4v and flv.
- HTML5 audio formats: mp3, ogg, oga, m4a, wav.
- Flash audio formats: mp3 and m4A.
Update:
Both free and subscription holders can upload, play and store copyrighted content that is uploaded to their drive. MediaFire limits the sharing as it only allows users to share non-copyrighted video and music files. The only exception to that rule is a one-time download link to individual files.
MediaFire is using Audible Magic as a partner for determining copyrighted content.
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Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to