q. Who came up with this idea?
a. me, a.k.a. DJ Bulge. It’s an idea I’ve had for a while, but not had the tricks or skills to make it happen. iTunes 8.1 introduced iTunes DJ which is almost exactly what I envisioned. Why reinvent the wheel? (particularly when it’s a shiny Apple wheel that works very well). So I just hijacked their feature for my own devices.

q. Is it a gimmick?
a. Maybe, we’ll see if anyone else becomes interested. There is some buzz on the negatives and positives of the concept in the forums where I have mentioned it. Let’s see if people are interested and what they do with it!

q. Why don’t you just let people verbally request tracks? This is all a waste of time.
a. Sure, that’s cool too. But with this concept people can actually see which tracks are available. No more disappointment when you tell someone you don’t have a track. Careful though, if you don’t want to play a track and it’s in your library you might not have an excuse.

q. Aren’t you going to create a world where everyone forgets how to talk to each other and just stare into their phone screens all night?
a. Take a look around next time you are out in a club. We are already there. :)

q. I don’t want a request coming from anywhere in my entire library, how can I keep a theme/style/genre to my night?
a. You can limit the requests to a particular source playlist with iTunes DJ. Tie that in with smart playists and it becomes very powerful. Smart playlists have rules, so you could set it to up for eg. - Genre=Hip Hop, Rating=>3, BPM in range 90-110.

q. That’s cool, but I don’t want to stick to a particular genre all night.
a. You can change the source playlist on the fly! As the night progresses you can tailor the request-able tracks to your needs or the room vibe.

q. I don’t want people requesting tracks at all. I am in charge. I take the dance floor on a progressive house / trance / genre journey with my sets.
a. No problems. Don’t use it. It certainly isn’t suited to all styles of DJing. I play party hip hop, funk. The concept works well for me.

q. I don’t want to pay to request songs via my iPhone. Data/SMS can be expensive on mobile plans.
a. The system uses local WiFi access. It costs you nothing! (apart from the iPhone / iPod of course).

q. How does it work?

a. iTunes DJ is hijacked, data is pulled from Serato and basically the Now Playing and iTunes DJ playlists are kept in sync with an unobtrusive background app.

q. When will you be releasing the software / scripts.

a. I am considering the options on this.

q. Can I help?
a. Yeah, if you are interested by all means contact me.