Kyle Bylin, Associate Editor
From what we have already seen over the last two years, the future of The Personalized Music Experience immediately extends itself into the possibility of an ongoing transformation. Going from a single purpose medium into a universal access point that facilitates simple access to whatever we want whenever we want. It perfectly integrates all forms of passively consumed media into a single device that in turn empowers participatory culture and lowers its barrier of entry.
This places the ability to engage and interact during consumption into the palm of your hand. As well as the increasing possibility to instantly document and broadcast certain aspects of your consumption habits directly to those within your immediate vicinity and to those following you on the Internet. Where the early advancements of social networking and media bridged, revealed, and organized your social ties, the next generation of applications will continue to deepen, strengthen, and heighten the opportunity for connecting with those who may share similar aspects of taste and consumption habits within your view and outside of your network...
The GPS Revolution brings forth the ability to take the music experience of an MP3 player, one in which some critics consider to be ‘socially isolating,’ and enable it to promote ‘networked individualism.’ A term developed by Barry Wellman to describe, “Moving from place-to-place to person-to-person connectivity.” The technology that would support this ideology already exists in separate domains and in the coming years, we could very well see its combination.
Location based technology—GPS enables person-to-person connectivity and distribution of information based on location, which when integrated with geo-tagging creates the opportunity for social networks such as Last.FM to enable real-time social networking based on the music criteria of those within your immediate vicinity. An application on your device turns on which knows where you are, shows you other users nearby, and lets you chat with them. Further amplifying the likelihood of people using a Twitter like application to broadcast what they are listening into a network that is available for anyone around them see and ‘tap into.’ Social and geo-tagging also enable other organization methods beyond typical artist and title, similar to Mufin’s "sound-sort" that organizes your music collection by sound. This could also include various activities and mood based sorting methods that would create different dimensions of playlist creation applications.
Sound based technology—Pandora for your music collection would turn your music collection into a personalized radio station and enable the progression from user-generated song mapping to automated song sequencing. Instead of single song playlist building like iTunes Genius, this would bridge multiple songs together and regenerate itself if the user skips a song in the sequence. Instead of having to press the skip button, SYNC for a digital music player would enable operation with simple voice commands and allow for hands free navigation. If you’re not sure what to listen to, Gracenote has the ability to give real-time suggestions from recording artists based on song taste and location. Making for many interesting possibilities, such as, “Hey, this is [Insert Local Artist], I see you’re running by a beach. Would you like to hear my favorite beach music?” Last, but not least, Song Identification comes in various forms, but should soon become a standard feature on digital music players.
This location-aware and real-time social network enabled future positions the medium as universal access point and pushes us towards ‘networked individualism’ as the basis of community. Barry Wellman and his associates further concluded in The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism that, “In effect, the Internet and other new communication technology are helping each individual to personalize his or her own community. This is neither a prima facie loss nor gain in community, but rather a complex, fundamental transformation in the nature of community.” For the most part, twentieth century music culture consisted of being somewhere such as a record store or concert and purchasing physical media such as a new album or The Rolling Stone. With the live show remaining as the only likely survivor of these pastimes in the coming years, what does music culture look like in the twenty-first century?
