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TunA and Socializing via MP3 Player

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the do-you-hear-what-i-hear dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Wired is carrying a story about a new program in development called TunA. It will allow you to view other users playlists on their MP3 Player and also stream the music to your Player. Works through WiFi so it limits to mostly laptops for now. "

3 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. proximity sharing by tobes · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think it's a great idea to be able to see what other people in your proximity are listening too. It really does bring a super-social aspect (as in you wouldn't be able to do it without technology) into the music experience. I definitely think that there is room for a non-proximity based playlist sharing mechanisim though. Of course, I'm extremely biased because that's exactly what my site does, but it seems to me that if you wanted to find out about new music that you would need a much larger sample set than "the people in my general vicinity".

    That being said, being able to sample the music in another persons collection is totally sweet. It's nice that they don't have to deal with the RIAA since the program would presumably work withougt a central server.

  2. The difference.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
    The difference is that iTunes lets you pick what music you want to listen to from the other guy's collection, while tunA lets you listen to what the other guy is listening to *right now*. You get a copy of his stream, instead of your very own stream.

    At least that's my understanding.

  3. Rendezvous for dummies: by mindstrm · · Score: 2, Informative

    Rendezvous doesn't enable streaming, just service discovery. It's used so itunes instances can find each other, but that's all.

    Rendezvous is basically an adaptation of DNS.. (but please, realize that doens't mean it replaces "the" DNS system we use.)

    They took DNS, adapted it to work over multicast, and that's about it.. and use it as a heirarchial, distirubted method of publishing services, and other information. IF you want to know what's out there, you send a query not to a DNS server, but to a multicast address (a link-local address in this case, so it's confined to your local network by convention). All those listening mDNS servers (like every Mac in the room, or any linux machine runinng mDNS) will respond to the query via unicast (I think... haven't read it in that much detail yet.)

    Works for hostnames too, if your resolver supports it. (macs again).

    Of note is that it's a very open standard, and it's a cakewalk for linux or anyone else to support it as well.