When iTunes 8.0 was released last year (September 2008) i wrote a blog post about the future of iTunes and how iTunes would incorporate social networking features into its software to help people discover new music which would inevitably increase iTunes sales.

Since then iTunes 9.0 has been released and it didn't really implement anything new into the software, the software is still the same old iTunes with a nicer interface and couple of new features and i honestly don't believe these small changes deserve a full new version release, instead it should have been called iTunes 8.5 at the most.

So taking into account the new features and what has really taken off online in the last year i thought i would throw some new ideas into the mix. These are only ideas and would most likely affect iTunes revenue in some way if implemented which may be the reason Apple are reluctant to incorporate the features into iTunes, but its worth a shot.

Shared Playlists

The concept is simple, you create a playlist like you could do in iTunes but instead of the playlist only being accessible by yourself on the computer or someone on your local network the entire playlist would be accessible to a selection of your friends.

This would work in the exact same way that Simplify Media works in that you have a selection of close friends who you share music with, then when you are connected to the internet your friends can see your entire library and stream the music. Shared Playlists would work in the same way but unlike Simplify Media you can share specific playlists with specific friends.

This means i could setup a playlist called "The Best Of The Killers" and choose specific friends that like The Killers and share the playlists with them, they would then see the shared playlist in the left navigation and can stream the music for free over the internet.

Friends

For many of the social features to work iTunes would need to create a system that allows listeners to add friends they already know as well as discover new friends through the iTunes store. iTunes already has a login service that people use to buy music, if they opted to be part of the social aspects of iTunes they could fill in a detailed profile.

Discover Friends

Social networks like Facebook and MySpace are built on you already knowing the people you make your friends, iTunes could adjust this by allowing you to discover new interesting people (like Twitter) by finding people who are listening to the same music you do.

This feature could use similar technology to iTunes Genius which collects data from iTunes users and recommends music that go great together, simply by reversing this information iTunes could find people that go great together allowing you to expand your network of friends.

A feature like this could allow you to find new people who like the music you like which means new music you discover could easily be shared with these people which would increase sales in iTunes which would eventually help artists.

Finding Your Friends

A small feature that is quite common in social networks is the ability to discover people you already know, using this feature you could enter your details for your current social networks, this feature would then scan your friends and find them on iTunes allowing you to rapidly build your network.

Integration With Social Networks

Already we have established social networks like MySpace, Bebo, Facebook and Twitter so it would be foolish for iTunes to ignore these. If iTunes integrated with Facebook and Twitter they could allow you to easily share the songs you have rated, listened to, bought or shared with friends which would increase user activity on iTunes' social network and potentially increase iTunes sales.

Free Streaming

Over the last year services like We7 and Spotify have grown massively in popularity because they allow free streaming of music across the internet legally, the music is then supported by advertising. iTunes doesn't offer a service like this out of fear of loosing revenue from music sales, however if Spotify continues to grow it could potentially damage iTunes anyway so i believe that this is an option iTunes needs to look at.

iTunes could offer a service like this for free (supported by advertisements) and users could stream, for free, all of the songs in the iTunes Store. iTunes could easily support this with advertising because they are a much bigger property than We7 and Spotify and could potentially charge more for advertising because of larger numbers.

Users of the services could then create playlists of streamed music on their iTunes library for listening at any time, they could even share the playlist using the proposed "Shared Playlists" featured above meaning the streamed music can be shared amongst friends who like similar music.

Public Timeline

A feature like the one on Twitter and Facebook would allow you to see global activity on iTunes including what is being listened to, rated and purchased and by who. This would also open doors for iTunes as they could start providing time sensitive data such as Live Charts which would show the most listened to music at a specific time.

The public timeline feature (if switched on) would publish what is being listened to by a specific person, from here you could then click on a user's profile and learn more about their favourite music, see a personal chart of their favourite music and also discover more music.

Friend Timeline

Again a feature based purely on Facebook and Twitter is the friend feed, this feed would show you what is being listened to be your friends, what your friends are commenting on and what your friends are rating.

Live Charts

This could provide a key feature is the discovering of currently popular music as users would be able to see the music that is popular right now with the positions being formulated from the number of listens a specific track has gotten recently and also music that is highly rated.

Comment On Music

As music is playing/streaming users could make comments about what they are hearing, these comments would then appear in the public timeline and also the comments for the specific track.

User Profiles

With any good social network comes user profiles, without them it couldn't be very social, so obviously iTunes would need a user profile feature that allowed random people of the public to see what you look like, what your like and what you do etc.

The iTunes profile would be slightly different however because they would display more information about what music you like and what you have been listening to, something that other social networks don't do because they simply too generalised.

Mini-Timeline

This would have all the details of the music you have been listening too, the comments you have been making and the songs you have been rating. It would be similar to a user's Twitter feed or a user's Facebook wall.

Charts

The charts would show a list of the music you have been listening too the most between specific dates and times. A profile may contains several charts such as "Top 10 Listened Today", "Top 10 Rated" and "Top 10 Listened Of All Time"

Shared Playlists

As a friend of person you could also see a users shared playlists and stream these for free over the internet or if iTunes offered free streaming you could stream the music for free regardless of whether the user was online.

Part 2

In part two i will discuss how iTunes could be made social outside of the internet in real world places using a brilliant feature called iTunes DJ. Keep an eye out for that article.

Keywords: itunes, apple, music, technology, ideas, social itunes, music player, free streaming, profile,