Went to get a pizza on my way home, and sat in the booby chair in pizza restaurants where you wait alone for your take-out pizza, while all around you laugh with their loved ones.

I surrended to the in-restaurant sound system, took out my earphones, ritually-wrapped them around my iPod and put it down on the table in front of me.

The secret sign had been deployed.

Several waiters rushed up to me and the lead guy clapped his arms on my shoulder and said “I got mine yesterday!”. With this, they drag me from the booby chair to the side of the kitchen, where his smart new 20g iPod sits in it’s cradle [see above], pumping out “I will survive” to the restaurant.

The lead guy was very proud of how he had consigned the CD player to the dustbin of history; 20gigs of background muzak meant that his reurning guests might never hear the same track twice, or they could make birthday or romantic requests…

Which, got me thinking. Minor hub-bub this week amongst some pals about Tuna: a prototype by MediaLab Europe of a local, wireless music sharing network. Elevator pitch – find out what people on the bus are listening to and share their music.

So – rather than the difficulties of doing this in an ad-hoc manner on the bus, or in your loosely-joined buzzwordmob of choice; why not make spatial connection? So on leaving the pizza joint, having felt empowered and sassed-up from listening to “I will survive” I snaffle it down to my iPod, sponsored by the pizza joint, for an extra couple of quid on their PRS licence bill a year, and my ensured return custom.

Prototyping “locational” rather than “personal” Tuna might be not only easier and cheaper, but also a more satisfying experience, in that your choices of environment might well give you more luck in discovering music you actually want than walking past total strangers.

Fashion stores, record shops and watering holes are perhaps the most obvious: “People who have been in this bar also liked…”

You’d perhaps get interesting feedback loops – the most liberal or cutting edge libraries amassing in certain shops or bars, giving them a fleeting reputation or cachet amongst musiclovers or information sharers. Perhaps becoming places where new artists flock, or creativity and delamaking flourish like the Coffeehouses of Pepys’ London.

Perhaps this is all obvious and old-news, but the connection between place and music has been becoming more apparent to me as my Shazam habit increases. I’m sure that not too far in the future, Shazam will capture more of the atmosphere and detail of your location along with what you’ve been humming along to.