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May 25, 2005

podSwapping

Richard and I went running yesterday at Greenlake.

One thing that pops out when going around and around the loop is that everyone seems to have a music player. Lots of iPods, of course, but also CD players, AM/FM radios, tape decks, you name it.

I've noticed iPod Shuffle is becoming more popular, and Richard's noticed it, too. While cooling down, we got in to an interesting discussion about the Shuffle as a new-music discovery device. The idea is simple: when you see someone else with an iPod Shuffle, stop and trade. Just pop the Shuffle out of its armband, exchange with the other person, pop their Shuffle into your armband, and keep going. Bingo! An entirely new set of music. Life is, indeed, random.

We're calling it "podSwapping."

It makes a certain amount of sense, right? The Shuffle is a simple little solid-state device that holds a few hundred songs. Since the player is loaded randomly by iTunes, the owner of the Shuffle often doesn't even know what music is on it. By podSwapping, you can literally get an entirely new music collection to try out and listen to. If you discover new music you like, then you're home free. And if the other person has a Britney fetish, well, you can flash-format the player when you get home.

There's precedent - Disney geeks do this sort of thing time with their pin trading activities. And the Shuffle, given that it doesn't support iSync, has no personal information in it. It's just a stick 'o music.

There are some challenges, of course. First, you have to make sure you're swapping with someone who has an iPod Shuffle of the same capacity. Second, there's some (low) risk that you'll get a bum Shuffle from someone else (e.g., the internal battery is freaky or something). Third, given that each Shuffle has a unique serial number, all this trading will give Apple's product-registration scheme fits. And finally, the way that iTunes handles a "foreign" Shuffle is to (unfortunately) offer to format it. This means that you can't look at the list of artists and songs to find out the name of something on the Shuffle that you really like.

But, still -- it seems like there's something to this.

Thoughts?

Posted by Gavin Shearer at May 25, 2005 11:46 AM. Posted to Apple | Fitness.

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