What if iPods could broadcast?
Posted on April 20th, 2005
I had an idea for a new feature for the iPod. Actually for any portable music player, but iPod in particular if only because of iTunes.
When you're running iTunes, you have the option of making all or some of your music library available to other people/computers on your local network. That's a social activity. If you transfer your songs to your iPod, though, you sacrifice that sociability and exchange it for portability.
When it's just you, your iPod, and those signature white headphones, you're anything but social. This is how it has always been since the Walkman-- portable music, but also private music. Compare that to the radios that people listened to before the Walkman's debut-- they weren't private at all. Multiple people could listen to the same thing at the same time. Portable music was, or at least had the option of being, a shared experience.
When I'm walking down the street I pass tons of people listening to iPods. They're strangers to me, but just by virtue of walking down the same street at the same time, we're subconsciously trying very hard not to step on or crash into each other. James Surowiecki mentioned this in his book Wisdom of the Crowds. Collectively, a group of people is able to navigate a busy sidewalk because each person is looking out for his or herself, and miraculously that allows everyone to get to where they're going in a more-or-less efficient fashion.
This got me thinking about synchronization. If everyone with an iPod was listening to the same song, I bet they'd be more likely to walk at the same pace. Naturally that would never happen because it rules out all the personalization you get from free choice. What if it's just one or two people in that group, then? Maybe they're strangers, maybe not. They have the option to listen to one another's music and get all the benefits of sharing that they'd get if they were back at their computers running iTunes on a common network. I bet they'd synchronize. It would be like making anonymous friends on a very temporary basis-- maybe even only a few steps worth. At the very least it would be a new facet of sociability.
To get from here to there, technology wise, I think you'd need the equivalent of a Bluetooth-enabled iPod. Or an iPod that could broadcast on some FM frequency. The signal strength would be weak, because this would be based around the idea of a personal area network-- I might need to be within 50 feet of you to pick up your broadcast, for example.
How cool would it be to know what all those iPod people are listening to?