Since I’ve started running iChatStatus a week ago, 3 people 4 people (Hi Euan!) so far have IM’d me in response to the “now playing in iTunes” status I’ve asked it to display. They reponses have been ones of
- identification: “Hey! I’ve got that song! / I love that! / I was just listening to that”
- mood-divining: “aaah… Queens of the Stone Age, eh? Working? / Beach Boys! Happy about something are we?”
Expression by proxy of the media I consume, ambient, trickling, clouding around me. To my friends, to my buddylist, while I’m busy doing other kinds of nothing.
Should it up-sticks with me and follow me round, this cloud? Just as iTunes never leaves me, pouring itself regularly into it’s iPod EVA suit. If I had a bluetooth cloud of ID3 tags around me would I like strangers to be able to sniff them?
What social advantage would there be to activating this SongGetty?
We often wear the t-shirts of the bands we want people to think we like while we secretly listen to deeply loved but unhip esoteria. Guilty pleasures contradicting our projected persona.
Also, I would ordinarily never play music to myself while in the physical proximity of my buddylist friends – I’d be talking with them I’d hope.
Some edge-cases and markets present themselves – long journeys in the company of friends maybe, opting to broadcast your playlists to others and seize upon coincidences as socially-acceptable interruptions of the natural (and hopefully comfortable) together-alone silences. Or the t-shirt metaphor transfigured: younger folk looking to find common ground in public settings around their media choices.
Betteridj likens it to active-badge tech/concepts pursued by the world and his wife for donkey’s years.
It’s here after a fashion in the form of iChatStatus: scriptable, personal and extensible.
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[n.b. must finish reading Byron and Nass]
Petafloptimism 
Steely Dan aren’t hip? Which century are you living in Matt?
Um, don’t know if this is over-pedantic, but surely in order to be able to divine your mood from your music, someone would have had to identify with it first? I know that if my friends heard me listening to Queens of the Stone Age they’d be more likely to assume I was depressed. I can see why you’d make the distinction between the two types of response, just not sure it’s that particular one.
Anyway, minor point, rest of the post interesting, cheers
Your “Guilty Pleasures” comment is interesting… That is why anonymity will play a factor. Your RL (real-life) friends may not listen to Beach Boys, but as long as you can find another person that does, it is fine. Basically, you need to just adjust the peer group to the music. Picture a moving train, and you never have to confront the people you left behind about the “unpopular” music you listen to.
you worry too much….be proud of what you listen to, regardless of what it is and who knows what it is….if they can’t handle your music, who’s to say they can handle you?
Guilty pleasures
I’ve just been iChatting to Matt Jones about iChat Status, a neat tool which allows other users of iChat to