Someone recently asked a question at Amazon about the MPW. So, here is the question and my answer to him:
Q: Is it possible to play music directly from the hdd from an iOS device? Either using the native music app or a third party music app like subsonic?
A: Interesting question, and although the My Cloud app is best for video in my opinion, (because it has a robust video player) the music player of the app has some issues that bother me (which I won’t get into here) so I frequently use other apps on my iOS and Kindle devices to play music from the MPW. To do this you need to know the MPW is both a DLNA media server and can also be a network share when on a home network.
I will discuss using the MPW media server function, which it is in when you are directly connected to the “MyPassport” wi-fi signal.
What you need is an app on your phone or tablet that can detect DLNA servers and access the media folders and files on it, be they music, videos or photos. There is a free and wonderful app for iOS devices called MediaPlay that does this, and you can listen and watch on your iOS device OR “beam” the content to your smart TV or Roku (if all devices are on the same network). MediaPlay is a custom version of Twonky Beam app made for the Belkin Company a couple of years ago – although Twonky Beam is not distributed anymore, it is fortunate that MediaPlay lives on at the Apple app store.
If you have a good home network and connect MPW and your mobile devices to it, it can expand the use of MediaPlay as well as open up the opportunity to use other apps that see network shares, incl. MPW. (A good one for this that I use is an iOS app called File Browser.)
There was plenty more I could have added, but it was at Amazon, so I kept it brief. So, go ahead and make comments here if you want to.
