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Hi. My name is Kevin Rose. Here I share my thoughts, ideas, and random things I find online.  For work, I'm the founder and site architect of Digg, and a co-founder at Revision3 and Pownce (acquired by SixApart).  When the internet is off, I climb rocks, drink tea/wine, read books, and explore San Francisco. Thanks for visiting.

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Saturday
20Sep

iTunes 9 Ideas

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iTunes 9 Ideas

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Reader Comments (43)

The "live jukebox" feature sounds like what I worked on at Blip.fm (my job b4 I came to Digg).
The difference being its a whole new site

-arin

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered CommenterArin Sarkissian

Great ideas! So how much is Apple paying you to do these? ; )

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered CommenterBurns Thornton

Kevin, these ideas are spot...on. The "tastemakers" in particular, because whenever I get recommendations from you or Poshy (Lynn) via twitter/pownce, I add some metadata to the file so I remember where I got it from...and you two are among my most consistently good tastemakers, inspiring the acquiring of additional albums from recommended artist. I really hope Apple will take these to heart. Thanks so much.

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered CommenterVictor Vasquez

So what you are saying is Apple should have bought Last.fm before CBS did!

To make it more social, like at parties or bars, Apple need to allow developers access to peoples' iTunes library on their iPhones. So instead of having just one library at a party, the computer can have access to all the music on everyones' iPhones and it will be streamed from them. Or people can select a few of their favourite songs off their iPhone to be added to the party library!

Hope that made sense!

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered CommenterThomas

Apple should:
1. talk to CBS and implement Last.fm into iTunes
2. buy Simplify Media (http://www.simplifymedia.com)

Minor feature request:
iTunes 9 should offer an option to separate the location of music, movie and TV show files. They are currently all crammed into a single iTunes Music folder, which with the sizes of current media (especially HD movies) doesn't make much sense if like me you keep your media on separate external hard drives. There are workarounds to this but nothing very elegant.

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered Commenter(rez)

Would like to see some of these things in the iPod I think it would make a great addition. I think the kind of things your after are already available with the Zune, but not totally sure because am not able to get full access to Zune Social (Social is currently only available in the USA).

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered CommenterAran W

These are some good ideas, but how about we focus on some of the glaring shortcomings of iTunes.

1. On the fly transcoding for mobile devices.
I'm very into music and I prefer to rip my music in lossless formats to preserve the quality. Unfortunately this makes using my library with my iPhone harder than it should be. I don't want lossless files eating up the very limited space on my iPhone, so I have to transcode the files to AAC/MP3, then copy them over. It makes managing my library and what's on the iPhone an absolute nightmare. This is a common feature in most media management applications such as MediaMonkey or JRiver Media Center.

2. Its time for a rewrite.
iTunes is one of those programs that has been cobbled together over the years. I'm sure the codebase at this point is nothing less than scary. Its really time for a rewrite in Cocoa, Apple! (and try to follow your own HIG this time?)

As far as social things go. Nothing Apple can do with iTunes will come close to the community that Last.FM is. I know you have mentioned using Last.FM in the past Kevin. Make sure you start scrobbling all your iTunes plays with either the last.fm client or iScrobbler.

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered CommenterMatt Kelch

Something I just noticed after watching your video. You cannot view the playcount of shared libraries in iTunes. Why wouldn't Apple allow this? Stupid.

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered CommenterJulian Powers

Some good ideas - especially with the "jukebox" feature. I'm currently working on tunesBag.com (upload + share your music) and there we've something called "follow stream" - you can simply follow the listening stream of your friends. Users really enjoy this feature because of the reason you mentioned - hardly anyone is interested in scrolling through other libraries for hours ...

Additionally to new features I think iTunes should simply become faster (maybe it's really time for a rewrite as Matt suggested)

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered Commenterhansjoerg posch

I don't really need iTunes to be more social. LastFM does a great job and it's enough for me. I do have some other suggestions for iTunes 9 though.

We need better album integration. I like to listen to albums, and so do most of my friends.

For instance, I have a smart playlist that copies the "X most recently added tracks" to my iPod every time I sync. It would be nice if I could copy the "X most recently added albums" instead of tracks.

Adding some kind of indicator that an album is "complete" would be useful too, so I could say "copy the "X most recently added complete albums" to my iPod". This would integrate well with the iTunes "Complete My Album" feature, and I bet the labels and artists would like this feature too. ;)

I also think the Genre field should be made up of tags instead of one long string. Since not everything falls under the default genres, I currently have 300+ different custom Genres listed in my 125 GB library. Many of them are simple combination genres like "Pop, Spanish" and "Trance, Ambient". They work well with smart playlists, but too many smart playlists slows down iTunes to a crawl. If the genre field were made up of tags I could click on "Pop" and "Country" and only get pop-country crossovers, etc, and lose the smart playlists. The controls could look like the buttons for selecting loops in GarageBand.

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered CommenterLouis Bustamante

First off how about putting the latest things you've Dugg on the sidebar of your blog, I think often times I come here and I feel like I'm missing part of the Kevin Rose experience, then also add a twitter box to your sidebar as well. Other than that you're good.

Also how about Seesmic video for suggestions for the next version of Digg.com or Pownce or a new Kevin Rose product idea. How about adding live webcams to the revision3 site so you can watch diggnaton with other fans if you login and enable live cams, that version of diggnation would also start at a set time. Like every hour it would start.

WATCH LIVE WITH OTHERS would be the title and it would on other shows like Tekzilla and Totally Rad Show. With the live cams you'd also have a chat room with tab to switch between that and the forum without losing your chat room (so its like flash with 2 tabs and you can tab back and forth between the live chat and someones forum post, so you can read quickly what someone in chat was referring to).

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered CommenterNick A

whats with these google ads btw.. i mean kevinrose.com/blogg just doesn't seem that personal u know... with all these ads blinding me, it just feels like any other site... anyway.... love yr shows though... and impressive idea.

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered Commentergeeky doc

Great work on throwing together an ideas post Kevin!
I agree that Apple needs to embrace the social space more.

Here's some ideas:
# Implementing a lot of the Last.fm stuff (recommendations, what friends are listening to, etc).

# Genius across shared libraries (I don't think it does it currently, haven't tried to be sure).. so that you can build short little playlists for the office / home.

# I like Thomas' suggestion of streaming directly off an iPhone / iPod Touch (if there's wifi) into the party playlist. This would probably be done through an updated remote.app on the iPhone, or built into the OS. I imagine you'd also be able to select songs from the master machine itself, as well as any nearby mac/pcs.

# Omnipresent media
Say I'm at home & I find this awesome album in iTunes store and buy & download it, along with a couple of movies. Then say I get to work, and I've forgotten to back the songs up to anything to bring them in.. I could then call up my remote library and bring the songs across to play (this is probably already possible with back-to-my-mac)..
Then after work, I go round to a friend's house and we decide to fire up their AppleTV, and maybe watch some movies.. rather than my friend having to hire / buy movies from the iTunes Store, I should be able to pull the movie across from home to their AppleTV.
I also want to show them that cool album I downloaded, so I fire up my iPhone and pull the album across to it, and play for them.

# Local Tunes - using iPhone's location stuff to show you what people around you are listening to. Ie. saying I'm sitting on a train, and the girl across the carriage is bopping away in true iTunes ad style, and I'm like "what the hell is she listening to?", I press a button on my iPhone and it lists people in the area who are listening to stuff.
Eg. "BoyOnATrain", "homelessBum45", "iTunesAdGirl", etc. I click on iTunesAdGirl and find out she's listening to the latest album by The Cat Empire (which explains all the dancing around ;p).. so I go to the iTunes store, buy the album and then I'm dancing around the carriage like her too, and I can send her a thumbs up or a little message letting her know she has good music taste.

Sep 20, 2008 | Registered CommenterMark Bate

hey - i have an idea too - add friends, share songs and then ban them cause they are sharing songs with too many friends too fast?

Sep 21, 2008 | Registered CommenterEvil Live

I think the difference between music and typical activities around social networking is that in facebook follows a transparency model - they share what's going on so you know what's on with your friends, base ideas - keep them in touch. I think in case of music the automated updates would be a bit chaotic. I think Kevin's idea is about smart friends is good, but that too requires the receiving friend to do the work.

I think iTunes should use more of instant messenger model, where I have friends listed in iTunes (source - yahoo, gtalk, faceboook etc..), Just like IM it gives me visibility of who is logged into iTunes or not. I should be able to share a song/album with a friend. This will give the friend an alert and that person could listen to the song - streaming from my library. This will help filter the music upfront instead of someone needing to go through a friends library to find it.

The second idea is more like Twitter, where I post links to songs and people can follow me and listen to those songs. Based on # of people actively following my reputation goes up or down. It also has an element of broadcasting a great new song has come.

- Alok jain

Sep 21, 2008 | Registered CommenterAlok Jain

This sounds alot like what the Zune social is becoming, according to my brother who works at Microsoft's Zune team, the social radio idea you have is something Microsoft is beta testing now. Kinda wish that the two devices had some sort of open social protocols so an iPod user and a Zune user could interact, but that will never happen :(

Sep 21, 2008 | Registered CommenterMike Moore

So Kevin, how much is Seesmic paying you to use their player and service, which by the way isn't working?

Sep 21, 2008 | Registered CommenterMatt

this is all part of zune social..it being on before 2.5, i bet if kevin used the social feature he would love it.

Sep 21, 2008 | Registered Commenteralberto deleon

I like the office radio idea. That's kind of a neat idea. However, I'm definitely not a fan of the facebook/social networking integration.

If you enjoy your friend Lynn's taste in music so much, take her out and participate in some real social activities. Or if for some reason, say distance, makes this impossible, call her on the phone. Seriously, why facebook integration? So you can go on to her page, read about what she's been up to, and see the newest music she's listening to? Perfect, you'll never have to see your friends off the internet again. You'll certainly have nothing to talk about on the off chance that you do end up meeting them in person.

Sep 21, 2008 | Registered CommenterTrevor Saliba

I would love to see more additions to Party Shuffle. I typically use party shuffle with it's source set to the genius playlist or a smart playlist that removes audiobook, videos, music other people in the office don't care for, etc.

It works well because you can choose to add songs or albums next in the party shuffle (via a contextual menu) without any disruption in the music.

Currently I have an AppleScript which, when selected from the scripts menu, checks what song is currently playing and adds the rest of that album to play next in party shuffle. I use this constantly as it allows me to have random music playing continuously if I'm too busy to pick new things, but if something comes on that I find I'm really in the mood for I can easily add the rest of the album and then it will go back to random on it's own when the album is over. The script is a little kludgy though, and doing it through the network at the office (using iChat's ability to run applescripts) is even more so.

I would love to see that functionality added natively to iTunes.

Sep 21, 2008 | Registered CommenterJustin V
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