US startup Phorus is the latest company looking to make it easier for people to stream their music collections around the home. The company has raised $2 million in its first funding round, in advance of launching its PlayCast service at the CES show in January. The technology will be embedded in speakers, allowing people to stream songs from their computers or mobile devices over Wi-Fi to multiple speakers at once. Key competitors include Apple’s AirPlay – now part of all iOS devices – and multi-room systems like Sonos. “AirPlay can only stream to one speaker at a time,” CEO Dannie Lau tells VentureBeat. “Sonos was a technology created 10 years ago for when Wi-Fi wasn’t working very well. Sonos uses a proprietary wireless system; it’s not based on Wi-Fi. You have to buy, in addition to a Sonos speaker, a Sonos bridge… which makes the overall system quite expensive.” Phorus will announced its speaker partners in January, with the first examples due on sale in 2012 too.
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