Great Moments by Design - iTunes and Podcasts
iTunes has long been my software of choice for music. In recent years, the application has been developed to work with more than just music files. Podcasts, movies, games, audiobooks and television shows have become a big part of the entire iTunes repertoire.
And while the ability of the application to play and interact with musical files has in no way diminished, one cannot help to think that improvements have been made by the way iTunes interacts with podcast files. I would like to see the way iTunes uses music files imitate some characteristics of podcasts.
The two features that really impress are as follows:
First, subscription is a simple method to bring the user the content (same concept as RSS). Once subscribed to a podcast, iTunes does the rest. No having to visit the iTunes store or someone’s website. Simply hit subscribe once and every new episode will just appear on your computer once available.
This idea would be interesting if applied to music. It’s not hard to imagine an additional option when purchasing a band’s album — a checkbox with the option to automatically purchase any new music from the artist in question. Radiohead is one of my favorite all time bands. I will most likely purchase every album they ever produce. It would be cool if all their future material was automatically synced to my machine once published. Heck, give subscribers incentive by releasing music to them a few days earlier than the general release.
Pardon the digression above, but appreciate the simplicity that is a podcast subscription.
And secondly, the way iTunes handles podcast playback is brilliant. Get interuppted in the middle of a podcast and end up starting to listen to music or another podcast? No problem. The next time you return to the original podcast and press play, you start right from where you left off. Simple, but brilliant. It would be so nice if music and playlists worked the same.
iTunes. It’s a magical piece of software. And podcasts with iTunes make it even better. This a good example of great design.
