Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist
9 August 2005
Filed under:Gadgets at5:15 pm

I am thinking of getting an MP3 player and I would like one that could for example keep track of the number of times I had played a particular tune and pass that data on to iTunes when I connected my player back to my Mac. Is that something only an iPod would be able to do or is there software provided with other MP3 players able to do this?

Does Apple make the interface to iTunes for that sort of data syncing available to developers or is it proprietary?

I confess that I am just geeky enough and fashion-conscious enough that I will probably end up spending a little extra and buying an iPod mini if other players won’t let me track my music-listening behaviour…

If the right software did exist is there any other MP3 player around that other people would recommend over the iPod? I wouldn’t mind something with a built-in microphone for recording interviews…

2 Comments »

  1. I think you have quite enuf toys for grown man. However , i found the ideal I pod sub was iriver for less than 1/3 the price. Works well on one small battery and hold an amazing amount of music.Why would you want to “track your listening behaivior” Wouldnt your brain eventually suggest you had had euf on one kind?.

    Comment by Russ — 10 August 2005 @ 3:24 am

  2. Nope, iTunes is strictly iPod-only. It may be possible to write an iTunes plug-in that would support a third party device, but anyone who uses Apple’s iTunes SDK has to sign an NDA that prevents things like this.

    The only other mp3 player I like is the iRiver flash players, and that’s mostly because of their high recording quality. I recorded a 6-hour Rolemaster session on a 256 MB model hanging from the ceiling in Hrach’s basement.

    Comment by Reid — 10 August 2005 @ 4:03 am

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