I was having a party at a friends the other day (you know, as you do) and someone introduced me to SynchTube. SynchTube essentially allows you to sync up a YouTube playlist, allowing for simultaneous play across different computers, either in the same house or elsewhere. It was really awesome being able to move across between rooms and hear the music playing in different rooms, almost perfectly synced.
Firstly, why hadn’t I thought of the concept behind SynchTube before, and secondly, how could it be taken further?
It led me to consider the fact that we now have Zune available on Windows, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone, all 3 items that are used to play music at parties already. As Microsoft’s plans to unify products crawls ever closer, I considered what could be a damn awesome idea.
What if it was possible to sync playing music between Zune players over Wi-Fi? For example, you could have a Windows 7/8 PC playing music in Room A, Xbox 360 on Zune playing the music in Room B, a Windows 8 Slate playing music in Room C, while someone has their Windows Phone hooked up to speakers in Room D. (Or any combination of the above.) All playing the same music, at the same time. Here it is in terrible diagram form:
Ideally, the music libraries on each device should coalesce into one huge mega library in the cloud, although that will be a massive headache for users and developers. Alternatively, you could set one Windows 7/8 PC/Slate as a host, and every other device could run off that Zune Library to play the music simultaneously.
Microsoft currently have a massive advantage in that they can have a device in almost every room, and crucially under the TV too (With the Xbox 360 now being used more for media than for gaming). Plenty of people have Xboxes, and plenty of people have Windows PCs. With each of these products having Zune on, it only makes sense to me to have a party mode such as this. The Xbox 360 can currently stream music and video from a Zune-equipped PC, but it’s not the same as this.
Furthermore, this could also drive people to purchase Windows Phones, knowing that they could use it in Party Sync mode. Which is always good.
