The GPS Revolution and the Digital Music Fan
Kyle Bylin, Associate Editor
Skimming through the latest edition of Wired Magazine, it took me Inside The GPS Revolution, and things became apparent to me quite quickly about how this could be applied to the live music sector.
The key article is called I Am Here: One Man's Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle,
where writer Mathew Honan decides to become a 'geo-guinea pig' for
three weeks by loading every cool and interesting location-aware
program he could find into his iPhone and use them as often as
possible. His explorations instantly triggered a few ideas of what
this could mean to music fans alike and how it could shape the average
concert goers experience.
- This first application that Honan
encountered, WhosHere, he found baffling. It’s an iPhone app that
knows where you are, shows you other users nearby, and lets you chat
with them. The first instance that played out in my head is when you
show up to a show early, there's a long line, nothing to do, and
depending on how diehard of a fan you are—its likely to be a long
wait. What better way to pass the time than to get to know some fellow
concert goers? Of course, this isn't limited to fans; artists could
chime into this social circle and pump up the fans after sound check or
arrange secret contests….
- Another technological advancement that
I found intriguing was his ability to add an Eye-Fi Wi-Fi card to his
PowerShot digital camera so that all his photos could be geotagged and
uploaded to the Web. Therefore, if you saw someone at a concert taking
a photo with a 3G Phone, because the phone embeds geodata into photos,
when that user uploads them to Flickr or Picasa, those shots are
automatically placed on a map. In other words, when you got home that
night from the show, if some of your pictures were blurry, you could
find the other shots that were taken.
- One of his favorite applications was
Twinkle, “a Twitter widget that lets you see posts from users in your
area, even if you don't subscribe to their feeds.” Whether you were
waiting outside or standing around during a set changeover, this would
serve the same great purpose of talking to those around you. Another
interesting aspect would be to project this on the screen, but like
most good things, it would be abused. Nonetheless, I think this
introduces interesting ways to make shows more interactive for fans.
"The location-aware future—good, bad, and sleazy—is here.” Matt continues, “Thanks to the iPhone 3G and, to a lesser extent, Google's Android phone, millions of people are now walking around with a gizmo in their pocket that not only knows where they are but also plugs into the Internet to share that info, merge it with online databases, and find out what—and who—is in the immediate vicinity.” All this information creates another curious scenario for people to explore, if indeed the braver social net workers haven't already done it.
There's been many times throughout the years, where a show date came up, but despite my best efforts, I couldn't convince anyone to go to the concert. But, through Facebook, Last.fm, or iLike, over time they might introduce 'Transparent Compatibility Settings' where in a situation like that, if you are set as attending the show and no one to go with, they would essentially 'ping you' with other users that have the similar song and social-graphs. After some conversation and breaking the ice, what's really preventing you from considering to meet up outside the show and going together? At first thought, this seems just short of creepy, but music runs deep with people and this could be an opportunity to meet someone else within your ‘tribe.’
