collaborative DJs: partyStrands
I just happened to read about partyStrands, a music-service demo’ed at yesterdays TechCrunch 8 party in NYC. partyStrands tries to replace oldschool club-DJs with a collaborative, SMS-based voting-system. to get things started, venues hook up a video-beamer or -screen with a PC running the locally installed partyStrands software (the music-library isn’t provided by partyStrands, venues have to provide their own media-library - and of course pay royalties for public performance). during the party, on-screen instructions encourage the party-crowd to join the voting by texting their song-requests to a special phone-number provided by the service (which is, of course, a value added number). partyStrands not only cues up the requested tune (if available, that is), but also considers the request for auto-generatig a playlist fitting the “overall-mood” of party-attendees (sounds a lot like a collaborative music-recommendation engine). other than song-votes, users may also send greetings & MMS-pictures for public display. in addition, partyStrands is marketing the display-estate for advertising to 3rd parties - revenue from both ads and messaging-fees are split with the venue.
I don’t see partyStrands as a DJ-replacement accepted by the average club-head anytime soon. the service is probably better aimed at DJ-less lounges & bars which are playing the same old compilation-CDs over and over again. and of course tech-events like mentioned TechCrunch party 
update: a friend of mine just told me that he had seen a similar setup in a London-club recently, people seemed to be kinda into it. what do you think about systems like partyStrands? any chance to get into the groove while fumbling away on your mobile? or, imagine a sequencer-based system that could acutally mix (i.e beatmatch etc.) tracks? now that sounds interesting to me…
sounds like a fun party where people are writing sms to talk to a screen or vote for music instead of partying…
all tomorrows parties
indeed very cool. reminds me a bit of an austrian project by fm4 editor chrisitan davidek. they set up a bilateral soundstage. each person received free headphones at the entrance and with a simple switch you were able to chose which channel you prefer to listen to.
besides that: im loving the digg integration. ive been looking for exactely this way of integrating the buttons for months now.
thx lukas… I’ll probably release the voting/digg-plugin after giving it some more polish…