David Emery Online

MyTunes

21 March 2007

Ok, here’s a simple idea for you.

Firstly, on one hand we have social networks, the most popular being MySpace, but other ones like Last.fm and Bebo get good traffic as well.

On the other hand we have the iPod, and more importantly the iTunes Store which is the most popular online music download store.

There are already moves to integrate the later with the former, in the form of things like SnoCap which allow you to add paid for music downloads to your MySpace page.

But what if we did it the other way around?

Turn the iTunes Store into a social network.

They already have a lot of the basics, like user accounts, commenting on pages (releases) and tracking systems that track your music habits (as seen in the “Just For You” feature). Imagine if Apple flipped a switch allowing you to have your own page on the iTunes store, where you can automatically display your favourite songs, based on your listening habits. Don’t forget video as well – Last.fm are only just getting into video, and Apple could nicely pull the rug out from under their feet.

What’s most interesting is how this could potentially hook up with all of Apple’s other offerings. You could easily add photo sharing, using iPhoto and the Photocasting feature to add photos to your page. Both Mail and Address Book could couple in, automatically populating your friends list and routing site-mail through Mail.app. Not to mention iChat, which you could fully integrate in – don’t forget, as iTunes is a desktop app there’s much more scope for interesting possibilities.

I’m really not sure if Apple could do this – they’ve been really quite slow when it comes to online/web possibilities (just look at the mess that is .Mac). It sure would be an amazing step to take, though.