The device that saves you from atrocious music at a party

Washington, Jan 21: Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, have designed a new software that polls the music preferences of people at a party and creates a playlist enjoyable to all.

Smart Party system that relies upon the Wi-Fi-enabled music-playing devices carried by people, beams each user's playlist to a nearby computer connected to an amp and speakers.

The computer then takes a poll of titles to work out the most popular genre and copies and plays the tracks from each device, and then plays the most popular overall music genre.

The software, developed by Kevin Eustice and colleague Peter Reiher, has the ability to detect proximity of people by triangulating wireless signals and removes their playlists once they walk out of the room.

"In our current implementation, all votes are equal - one device might propose heavy metal, another pop," News Scientist quoted Eustice, as saying.

However, the software faces a problem. Since the central PC temporarily copies tracks from each device before playing them it could be deemed as copyright infringement.

"We could deal with content that has no DRM (digital rights management) issues - free content - but that's not a very realistic scenario," he said

"So we may need to figure out ways for the mobile device to temporarily and securely transfer its licence to play the music to the computer," he added.

ANI