One of the biggest challenges I have faced, is trying to wrangle all of the skills learned over the course of My Learning Pathway, and turn them into something tangible. While I have been progressing through the modules, I have not been adequately playing around with the tools that I have been learning to use. It wasn’t until I reached the database module that I found the inspiration to take action.
The ability to store large amounts of data and call them up to serve a specific purpose inspired an idea for an jukebox-style app. While there are existing solutions out there, may of them come with a price. Whether it is an up-front charge, or a subscription-based model that pulls account information from a platform like Spotify, I wanted to see if there was a way to break the current system and create something that was totally free of charge.
The concept is relatively simple. Create the infrastructure that allows users to suggest songs via any connected device, and essentially generate a crowd-sourced playlist of songs. Just like physical jukeboxes of yesterday, song suggestions would be entered into a queue, and be heard by anybody who was in proximity of the speaker. Instead of quarters to reserve a spot for a song, this would operate on a credit system, preventing any single user from suggesting too many songs, and overtaking the playlist.
Additional functionality that would make for an interesting application could incorporate Pandora-like thumbs-up/down buttons that could veto or skip a song and move onto the next track. Aside from preventing the gathering from being Rick-rolled, this democratic approach places emphasis on the current mood of the party, while also allowing individuals to share their personal taste in music.
Obviously, this would require a significant amount of work, so building the basic infrastructure for data population and and recall is the first priority. To be continued…