Mac Monday: There’s a Party in My iTunes
Apr 12th, 2009 by Ealeal
If you’re a musical snob like myself, it is probably only on rare and few occasions that you allow others to pack some external punch into your playlists, let alone dictate your listening choices. After all, why risk the chance of an Air Supply song creeping on you when you’re just getting the party started, right?
However, there are times when I’m either feeling lenient and tolerant enough towards the musical tastes of friends and colleagues, or end up feeling optimistically curious to a degree that pushes me outside of my iTunes stash, and into the loving arms of other people’s musical bounties, courtesy of iTunes’ sharing capabilities.
This time, with the recent release of iTunes 8.1, Apple have revved things up by introducing iTunes DJ, the older and hotter sister of its predecessor, Party Shuffle. The iTunes DJ feature allows your tech-forward pals toting an iPhone or the iPod Touch (so long as you grant them entry to your Wi-Fi network) to request and vote for songs to be added to the iTunes DJ playlist (which greatly resembles the party shuffle playlist you’re already familiar with). The more votes a song racks up, the higher it will climb in the coolness hierarchy within your iTunes playlist, and the sooner it will play.
While a tad inconvenient for ultra-paranoid types or really anyone with an encrypted wi-fi network, the only real requirement is that your pals all sport the Remote iPhone app, which can be downloaded free of charge from the iTunes Store.
To set up iTunes DJ and get the party started, you first need to open iTunes on your Mac and click on the Settings button underneath the iTunes DJ playlist. In the settings window that opens, check the box to allow guests to request songs, and even type in a welcome message warning them not to push it with The Jonas Brothers tracks. You can also check the little box to enable voting, and then sit back to watch (and hear/possible groove to) democracy in motion.
The highlight of this feature for musical snobs and chronic playlist patrollers and no doubt a huge draw for control freaks is the fact that while the owner of the iTunes-paired iPhone will blossom into a musical tyrant with a ability to pause, skip and play the hell out of a given playlist, guests (those less fortunate ones whose iPhones are only satellites revolving around the Party Master, but not paired to the host) will be able to rock the vote, but not the actual order or behavior of the playlist.
That said, guests can still put their music where their mouth is, and vote for songs, request new songs, which will be added to the bottom of the playlist. You, the power-hungry Party Master, are a different class altogether – you can balance out all this democracy-shmemocracy by repeatedly casting multiple votes for the song of your choice (just right-click on the tune of your choice and let your voice be heard!), unlike your guests who will only be able to vote once for a given tune.
Of course, all of this is just fantasy unless you’re equipped with friends who are total Apple fanboys, because we all know that no matter how pumping, it ain’t no party if the guest list includes only you and your iPhone. On the other hand, do you really want to hang out with folks who are still using Zune?!
