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Undersound, a way to trade music on the London Underground
Just in case waiting for a train in the London Underground while listening to your iPod has already become passé, a group of techie art types are putting together a new musical installation in the Tube network based on Bluetooth, which they call "Undersound." From the group's site: "In the same way that Londoners leave and retrieve newspapers as a kind of common good, so too will they with music. Unlike newspapers though, which are of unknown origin, each track in Undersound will have a birth-place, giving added meaning." The idea for Undersound is that people can transfer songs via Bluetooth (using public domain, non-copyrighted, royalty-free or creative commons-friendly music, of course) to a "transfer point" at a particular station. Then others can come along with their own mobile phones and pick up some new tunes as well, leaving a trail of metadata behind them, begging to be analyzed -- in a good way. We hope. We're not sure if there's going to be a huge difference from the tracks dropped off at Waterloo Station versus the ones at King's Cross, but we'll find out once the researchers get their gear up and running. [Via BoingBoing]Update (Oct. 24): We just got an email from Peter MacLennan, a spokesperson for the Transport for London office saying: "We have no plans to introduce this service on the Tube and have not received any approach from the organisation who are indicating that this will be reality."
