PUSH!MUSIC                                 |home| |about project| |texts&presentations| Instead of actively searching for new music, what would it be like if music songs themselves could find their way to users who wanted them? Imagine that you have a mobile device that can store and play back music files, for example a mobile phone with an MP3 player. As you encounter various people, the devices you are carrying connect to each other wirelessly and media agents from the other nearby devices check the status of your media collection. Based on what you have been listening to in the past and which files you already own, new music might spontaneously and autonomously “jump” from another device to yours (and vice versa). Later, when you listen to your songs, your Push!Music player also plays some newly obtained tunes that you had not heard before. We are currently updating this page with more information! In the meanwhile, have a look at the publications and presentations of Push!Music. You can find them here! We have recently received a lot of attention in media and blogs, which is great fun! However, there are a couple of misunderstandings of Push!Music and our aims with the project... Just to clarify a few things: 1. Push!Music is a research prototype, not a product. We have tested it in a small-scale user study but have at this point no plans to commercialize the technology. 2. The purpose is NOT to spread music or other content illegally. There are a number of systems that allow you to pay for songs you have downloaded via filesharing and even give compensation to the person you got it from, for instance Shawn Fanning's Snocap. There are also several ways you can subscribe to "all-you-can-eat" downloads, for instance the current incarnation of Fanning's previous venture Napster. When a payment model is in place, Push!Music will simply help people find more music, which can only be good for the artists. 3. When we do our current user tests, we are careful to stay strictly within the limits of Swedish law: we only use music that the users have paid for, and we limit copying to within a small circle of friends. 4. Many have brought up issues like viruses, spam and unwanted songs, advertising, the problem of correctly predicting what someone will like, etc. We are of course aware of these as potential problems with new ideas but that is no reason to not explore them! We are building and testing prototypes to find out more about both problems and unexpected opportunities.