Wifi music player?

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I'd love a Wifi-enabled music player (Dave Winer talked about that). Jeff Sandquist and I were talking about this yesterday. We both find that the night before a trip we're trying to download stuff to our music players (yeah, I have an iPod). Often we forget cause the night before is usually busy packing and doing other things.

But I told him something else.

Let's say you have a 60GB iPod. Well, I only have a gig of music. I'm not a music freak. I only have 125 CDs and I rarely buy music off of services.

But I love listening to podcasts. So, here's what I want.

I want a little service that sits on my music device that just fills it up with a bunch of random podcasts. Things that, when I'm stuck in a plane for 10 hours (I was supposed to be on one today coming from Reboot in Copenhagen, but cancelled that because of my mom) I'll have tons of things to listen to. Most will be crap. I know that. But my device would let me listen to a minute or two of hundreds of podcasts and move on.

If I kept a program, it'd download more like it next time. So, let's say I kept TWiT (This Week in Tech, one of the more popular technology podcasts) well, it'd know I probably am a geek and would download more technology podcasts.

Or, if I kept a Harry Potter podcast (my son likes those) it'd think I was into movies and would download podcasts about other movies. Maybe that wouldn't be accurate, but who cares?

Oh, and if I manually download stuff, it'd automatically delete its stuff to make room.

Doesn't that sound interesting?

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Published by Robert Scoble

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43 thoughts on “Wifi music player?”

  1. Yeah. It sounds like a Tivo style content management system for iTunes.

    But given even your restricted use of the iPod hard drive, arent you afraid if you delegate control to that, you start getting content that you dont find interesting ?

    Its all very well not having the time to investigate and subscribe – and having a Tivo-like service to do it for you. But delegating such content-choice to computer systems, whilst time-efficient, does actually reduce your “browsing” of different categories just on the offchance.

    Even with iTunes, I’ll still go into Record Stores, just to see what else is kicking around. A computer screen still hasnt the capability to give me the same metaphor as Tower Records in London – not without a *huge* display…

    —* Bill

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  2. Yeah. It sounds like a Tivo style content management system for iTunes.

    But given even your restricted use of the iPod hard drive, arent you afraid if you delegate control to that, you start getting content that you dont find interesting ?

    Its all very well not having the time to investigate and subscribe – and having a Tivo-like service to do it for you. But delegating such content-choice to computer systems, whilst time-efficient, does actually reduce your “browsing” of different categories just on the offchance.

    Even with iTunes, I’ll still go into Record Stores, just to see what else is kicking around. A computer screen still hasnt the capability to give me the same metaphor as Tower Records in London – not without a *huge* display…

    —* Bill

    Like

  3. Playstation Portable has at least the beginnings of what you’re looking for. With the latest firmware update, they actually download podcasts properly, and they’ve got built-in wifi. Perhaps an app that sits on top of the PSP and does some of the suggestion and preference work you’re talking about would be the shortest route.

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  4. Playstation Portable has at least the beginnings of what you’re looking for. With the latest firmware update, they actually download podcasts properly, and they’ve got built-in wifi. Perhaps an app that sits on top of the PSP and does some of the suggestion and preference work you’re talking about would be the shortest route.

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  5. No, I’m not scared about that at all. I want content that I don’t find interesting. Why? Cause I don’t know that I won’t find it interesting until I listen to it and at least 1 out of 100 things WILL be interesting to me.

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  6. No, I’m not scared about that at all. I want content that I don’t find interesting. Why? Cause I don’t know that I won’t find it interesting until I listen to it and at least 1 out of 100 things WILL be interesting to me.

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  7. Sounds interesting. What would be more interesting is a device that would enable people to easily create software like that.

    So if you have a weekend, you could easily hack together something that did just what you described.

    A windows mobile device may work, but I have no experience developing on that platform so I can’t really say. I once loaded an SDK a few years ago, and it seemed really hard to use.

    Or I guess if they made OQO’s smaller and better then you could just make something in windows.

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  8. Sounds interesting. What would be more interesting is a device that would enable people to easily create software like that.

    So if you have a weekend, you could easily hack together something that did just what you described.

    A windows mobile device may work, but I have no experience developing on that platform so I can’t really say. I once loaded an SDK a few years ago, and it seemed really hard to use.

    Or I guess if they made OQO’s smaller and better then you could just make something in windows.

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  9. Adam: Windows Mobile definitely could do it, although the average device that Windows Mobile is in only has 64mb of RAM (my phone has been upgraded to 1GB, though, and I’d DEFINITELY love such a service on it!)

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  10. Adam: Windows Mobile definitely could do it, although the average device that Windows Mobile is in only has 64mb of RAM (my phone has been upgraded to 1GB, though, and I’d DEFINITELY love such a service on it!)

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  11. It doesn’t have all the whizz bang automatic stuff you’d like, but a Sony PSP with the latest firmware has a built in podcatcher that runs over WiFi, and you can either stream the podcast or save it to a Memory Stick (1gb around $30, sizes up to 4gb as I type). Plus Windows Media Player picks it up as a music device (but not PlaysForSure) when you hook it up via USB-MiniUSB to your PC. Battery life for music is around 9-10 hours, so in the iPod range.

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  12. It doesn’t have all the whizz bang automatic stuff you’d like, but a Sony PSP with the latest firmware has a built in podcatcher that runs over WiFi, and you can either stream the podcast or save it to a Memory Stick (1gb around $30, sizes up to 4gb as I type). Plus Windows Media Player picks it up as a music device (but not PlaysForSure) when you hook it up via USB-MiniUSB to your PC. Battery life for music is around 9-10 hours, so in the iPod range.

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  15. Well a 1% return on investment of your most precious currency – time – stinks.

    I don’t believe that there is randomness – if you’re not choosing the content, somebody will be choosing for you. And their motivation (earballs) may be different from yours (discovery).

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  16. Well a 1% return on investment of your most precious currency – time – stinks.

    I don’t believe that there is randomness – if you’re not choosing the content, somebody will be choosing for you. And their motivation (earballs) may be different from yours (discovery).

    Like

  23. This could be developed much further, I think. A device, with the ability to download podcasts as you describe, as well as automatically pull RSS feeds down (possibly even those not on your reading list, using a service similar to Share Your OPML to find similar feeds) as well as maybe a Pandora-type load of music suggestions which are free to listen to a couple of times but then DRM self destruct, would be very popular and useful. Microsoft could help push OEMs along with this by including it in their Mobile Media Center software.

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  24. This could be developed much further, I think. A device, with the ability to download podcasts as you describe, as well as automatically pull RSS feeds down (possibly even those not on your reading list, using a service similar to Share Your OPML to find similar feeds) as well as maybe a Pandora-type load of music suggestions which are free to listen to a couple of times but then DRM self destruct, would be very popular and useful. Microsoft could help push OEMs along with this by including it in their Mobile Media Center software.

    Like

  25. If you have a smartphone/PDA with WiFi you’re almost done! Just add software 😉

    It would be quite easy to make an app that wakes up when WiFi is available and starts downloading. It could then update a playlist in Media Player with new podcasts.

    The only limiting factor is memory. Soon though smartphones will come with hard drives… I can’t wait!

    Like

  26. If you have a smartphone/PDA with WiFi you’re almost done! Just add software 😉

    It would be quite easy to make an app that wakes up when WiFi is available and starts downloading. It could then update a playlist in Media Player with new podcasts.

    The only limiting factor is memory. Soon though smartphones will come with hard drives… I can’t wait!

    Like

  27. The problem here isn’t so much content or how you manage to filter the good stuff from the pile – but battery life.

    If you think your color-screened video iPod already hasn’t much battery life, add the power consumption of WiFi, and you’ll be running around with a mini-UPS to feed more life into the thing every hour.

    There is a Bluetooth service for streaming high (well, highish) quality stereo audio between devices, called A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile), and there are already a good number of Bluetooth stereo headphones out there. But the devices aren’t coming. Why? battery life – and Bluetooth takes a fraction of the power WiFi does.

    We don’t need bigger color screens, or larger storage space on portable music players – we need efficient management and larger battery capacity. Then we can add the wizzbang features – such as what you describe in your post.

    Like

  28. The problem here isn’t so much content or how you manage to filter the good stuff from the pile – but battery life.

    If you think your color-screened video iPod already hasn’t much battery life, add the power consumption of WiFi, and you’ll be running around with a mini-UPS to feed more life into the thing every hour.

    There is a Bluetooth service for streaming high (well, highish) quality stereo audio between devices, called A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile), and there are already a good number of Bluetooth stereo headphones out there. But the devices aren’t coming. Why? battery life – and Bluetooth takes a fraction of the power WiFi does.

    We don’t need bigger color screens, or larger storage space on portable music players – we need efficient management and larger battery capacity. Then we can add the wizzbang features – such as what you describe in your post.

    Like

  33. I recently attended the Mesh 2006 conference in Toronto and one of the statements made about ubiquitous WiFi is that it could be the end of Satellite radio. Imagine if you had the device you describe, but not just in a handheld device, but also in your car stereo. You pull into your garage, and using WiFi, it downloads the content to your car. The “filter” is the software functionality you describe. It could be a ‘bot’ running on your PC searching for the content you like. Then distributes it to your handheld, and your car.

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  34. …that sounded really judgmental and wasn’t meant to be; I’m more in (shock and) awe of such a finely honed music collection, they must be a pretty good 125.

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  35. I recently attended the Mesh 2006 conference in Toronto and one of the statements made about ubiquitous WiFi is that it could be the end of Satellite radio. Imagine if you had the device you describe, but not just in a handheld device, but also in your car stereo. You pull into your garage, and using WiFi, it downloads the content to your car. The “filter” is the software functionality you describe. It could be a ‘bot’ running on your PC searching for the content you like. Then distributes it to your handheld, and your car.

    Like

  36. …that sounded really judgmental and wasn’t meant to be; I’m more in (shock and) awe of such a finely honed music collection, they must be a pretty good 125.

    Like

  37. There are devices shipping in Europe with all that, Wifi, UPnP, bluetooth, 3G. Nokia is putting that to their Nseries devices and they also showed in past event podcasting client with subscriptions. They also promised battery life to be well beyond most MP3 players. At least I was impressed :O

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  38. There are devices shipping in Europe with all that, Wifi, UPnP, bluetooth, 3G. Nokia is putting that to their Nseries devices and they also showed in past event podcasting client with subscriptions. They also promised battery life to be well beyond most MP3 players. At least I was impressed :O

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  39. Ned: I’m not big into music, I’ve been buying CDs since the early 1980s (I remember when Tower Records only had about 300 CDs for sale). I far prefer podcasts and various indie music. My son, however, buys a lot more music than I do.

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  40. Ned: I’m not big into music, I’ve been buying CDs since the early 1980s (I remember when Tower Records only had about 300 CDs for sale). I far prefer podcasts and various indie music. My son, however, buys a lot more music than I do.

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