But every time I wanted to change songs, I had to go to another room and make a few mouse clicks on my computer. Ever since then, I’ve been waiting for someone to come up with a good, affordable remote control that lets me change tunes no matter where I am in the house.

Apple’s Remote program

It turns out, I already owned that device. It’s an iPod touch. A new program released by Apple (AAPL) in July was all it took to convert my MP3 player into a sophisticated remote control for my digital-music collection. That program, called simply Remote, runs on the iPhone as well as on the iPod touch, a version of the Apple MP3 player that has an iPhone-like touch-sensing screen and Internet-access capabilities using Wi-Fi wireless technology. Remote is available free of charge on the online App Store that Apple has used since July to distribute software for those devices.

In essence, Remote is a remote control for all music stored on a Mac or Windows PC that’s loaded into iTunes, Apple’s music jukebox software. It allows you to jump between playlists, browse artists and pump up the volume. For the program to work, you need to buy into using other Apple entertainment products.

In the simplest setup, Remote lets you control the music from stereo speakers connected directly to a PC. But it’s most useful when you use a PC to deliver audio to additional speakers around a home — say, a pair on the patio and in the living room.

Apple sells a couple of products that receive audio signals from a PC running iTunes. Both work wirelessly over a Wi-Fi home network so you don’t need to put holes into your walls to run computer and speaker wires. I tested Remote using both. One is an Apple TV, a $229 set-top box in my living room that plays digital audio and video through a standard home-theater system. The other is an AirPort Express, a $99 Apple wireless networking device on my patio connected to a pair of powered A5 speakers made by Audioengine, of San Jose, Calif. A third set of speakers was connected to an iMac in the kitchen, where I store all of my digital music. (The least expensive iPod touch costs $299.)

It was a breeze to configure the Apple TV and AirPort Express to show up as remote speakers in iTunes on my computer. Setting up Remote to give me mobile control over this array of speakers was trickier. After installing the program on my iPod touch, I couldn’t get it to work with iTunes on my PC. After 20 minutes of fiddling with the security settings for my Wi-Fi base station, iTunes finally recognized Remote. I was in business.

We all know how confusing the remote controls for TV sets and stereo systems can be. Remote, by contrast, cleanly displays all the music on my PC on the color screen of my iPod touch.

The program let me flip through artists, albums and playlists with simple finger swipes. But I was sorry that Remote doesn’t have a feature in the iPod touch called cover flow that lets users browse their music libraries by flipping through album-cover art. Apple says it may offer the feature in the future.

The software also let me easily turn on and off the music from my speakers in my kitchen, living room and patio. I could have all the speakers on at once — good for a party. The sound was terrific. The crisp-sounding $349 Audioengine speakers don’t require a stereo receiver.

Because Remote uses Wi-Fi to communicate with iTunes, I could control music anywhere around my house and backyard, which are small enough to be fully covered with a signal from my Wi-Fi base station. That’s a big plus over conventional remote controls that use infrared, a technology that doesn’t work through walls.

One drawback: The battery in my iPod touch drained overnight when I configured the device to stay connected to iTunes, a feature that increases software responsiveness. Changing the setting let me go days without recharging my iPod touch, but it meant I had to wait a couple of seconds for Remote to connect to iTunes when I started up the software — an acceptable trade-off.

Another multiroom audio product with a good remote control is the ZonePlayer from Sonos, an equipment maker based in Santa Barbara, Calif. That system has some advantages over Apple’s offerings, including the ability to access tunes from online music services, such as Pandora and Rhapsody, and separate volume controls for each set of speakers.

The Sonos system starts at $999 for a remote control and wireless receivers, without speakers, that can deliver music to two rooms.

For people who already own an iPod touch or iPhone, Remote is a good reason to buy an AirPort Express, and fill your home with music.

Walter S. Mossberg is on vacation.

• Email Nick.Wingfield@wsj.com.

But there’s a substantial minority of folks who have neither the time, knowledge, nor inclination to do all this downloading and ripping. They don’t want to fool around with any PC software just to hear music. They could just sign up for a subscription service like Rhapsody, which will stream songs to you without requiring any downloading or ripping. But that also has meant using a PC.

The Sonos controller, accessing the Rhapsody music service

Until now. Starting today, there’s a way to get access to Rhapsody’s 2.5 million digital tunes, in any room in your house, straight from the Internet — without even turning on your computer.

This new system is a time/money tradeoff. It saves you time (and what some folks consider a big hassle) in exchange for money: $999 for the basic hardware, plus $10 a month for the music service.

If you’re still reading after digesting those prices, let me add that I’ve been testing this system, which pairs up Rhapsody with the elegant Sonos whole-house music system, and it works very well. It is simple, fast and rewarding.

Both Sonos and Rhapsody were originally designed to work with PCs. Sonos is the most polished consumer hardware system on the market for taking the music that resides on a computer and streaming it to multiple other rooms of your home. It consists of a series of small music-playback boxes that connect to each other over their own wireless network. It normally relies on software you install on the computer. The system is controlled by a gorgeous hand-held remote with an iPod-like wheel and a large, bright color screen that show menus and song information.

Rhapsody, too, is typically dependent on a PC. Users pay a monthly fee to either “stream” music from its collection, or to download it for use on the computer or on a portable device. This is all done using Rhapsody’s software, or a Web browser.

But, with the new Sonos/Rhapsody system, no PC is necessary. You just connect the Sonos hardware to your Internet service, and to either powered speakers or an audio system. Then, simply click on the Rhapsody choice in the menu on the Sonos controller and you can listen to any of Rhapsody’s 2.5 million tracks.

Out of the box, the new Sonos system gives you a 30-day free trial to Rhapsody, without even requiring that you enter a credit card. After that, you must pay $10 a month.

There are other media-streaming devices that can bring Rhapsody to parts of a home far from the computer, and most cost less than Sonos. But all of them, even an earlier implementation using Sonos, require a PC.

Setup of Sonos with Rhapsody was simple. For your $999, you get two small Sonos ZP80 players and one controller. You plug one of the players into your home Internet router so it can fetch the music over the Internet from Rhapsody. The second unit can then be placed in a distant room, with speakers or an audio system, where you wish to hear the music. The two units are linked by their own wireless network, which sets itself up in a few minutes with the press of a couple of buttons.

You can even do this with a single Sonos box connected to the router or to an Ethernet cable running through your walls, if you have one. That would save you some money; a single ZP80 is $349 and the controller is $399, for a total of around $750.

Once you are set up, you just click on “Rhapsody Trial” on the Sonos controller, and you can then select songs via genre, artist and other criteria. Again, there are no files to download. Nothing gets stored on your computer or on the Sonos hardware. The music is just streamed into your home over the Internet.

There are two basic Rhapsody modes. One, called Rhapsody Guide, lets you find and play music, and allows you to “save” the songs or albums to your Rhapsody library. This is a list of songs that the system will fetch from the Rhapsody servers when you want to hear them again. The other, called Rhapsody Radio, consists of over 100 “radio stations” — preprogrammed playlists — based on genres, eras and other criteria. You can also create your own stations.

Although my wife and I aren’t great candidates for this product, because we use iPods and iTunes and have a computer hooked up to our entertainment system, we both got a kick out of the Sonos/Rhapsody package. I found myself scrolling through old rock ‘n’ roll on the treadmill, and she enjoyed a radio station of Broadway show tunes.

There are some drawbacks. Because of complex music-industry policies, a small percentage of songs can’t be streamed, yet they still show up in Rhapsody’s menus, which leads to frustration. And Sonos hasn’t been able to implement a search feature yet, which leaves you doing a lot of scrolling through menus.

But, overall, this is a very good digital-music alternative for people with a roomy budget and a yen for simplicity.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com