I’ve written about the library/music sharing feature in iTunes before. It continues to be something that I find voyeuristic pleasure out of during my travels. Be it while I’m in a hotel that lacks a locked down network (and thus you can see all the other guests’ shared music) or when you’re on a network coffee shop network, it is always an interesting diversion to poke around and see what people have in their music listening repertoire.
However, there have been rare times when I’d like to drop a note to someone based upon their listening tastes. Perhaps something akin to, “wow, where did you find that rare track?”
Unfortunately, this is not that easy. Music sharers on the same network are completely anonymous. The closest a person can come to indicating who they are based on their shared music is to name the share something identifying (ala “Steve’s Music – the guy with heavy black glasses”). Of course, that too is useless if you aren’t in the same visual range of each other.
What I’d like to see is either a 3rd party application, or a feature added into iTunes itself. This would effectively be a peer to peer IM client, that would work on the same subnet, preferably on the same Bonjour self-configuration iTunes sharing uses. It would show everyone on the network that is sharing music. In this program, one’s identity would be coupled to the shared music library they own.
In this way, you can find all the folks that are sharing music in your subnet, and you can communicate with them. Of course, those that want to share, but don’t want to socialize need not run this option but for those of us who wouldn’t mind saying “hello”, it could be fun.
