Opera Unite Jukebox

Yesterday we had a look at Opera Unite’s attempt to ‘revolutionise’ the web and although it’s hard to gauge its long term success at this moment in time, it does look like it could well change the way we use the internet as they’ve promised.

An integral part of the Unite idea is the apps which run on it, so we thought we’d have a look at one of the most popular ones and see what it is, how it utilises Opera Unite and whether it is actually worth using, and the one that caught our eye first was the Opera Unite Jukebox.

Jukebox is one of the six simple applications designed and released by Opera to give a flavour of what the Unite system is capable of – but despite the basic appearance of the app it does have some interesting features that make it well worth using.

The theory behind it is fairly simple – you and a few (online) friends all select a few songs from your computers which are then chosen at random and streamed directly from the computer in question to everyone else allowing you all to listen to something together, kind of like an online radio but with a social aspect.

Obviously the main way in which this uses the Unite system is by directly streaming the music to the other computers without the need of an intermediate server, something that will also lead to privacy issues (something becoming an increasing problem) and could well hinder the music markets overall growth as people find it easier to listen to their friends music than go out and buy it themselves.

However this is just the simple backbone, numerous additions could also be made to this system to further extend its practical uses and general fun, things like:

• Rankings of songs, allowing you to rate your friends songs, not have to listen to the worst ones over and over again and ultimately see who has the best music taste!
• Along with the information displaying the track info (length, artist, genre etc) if could also have links to online stores allowing you to purchase the music for yourself (which could make up for the fact that it could be depriving stores of music sales).
• A chat box allowing you to talk to your friends about the music, artist and everything else under the sun!
• You could also create/submit trivia questions which other listeners could answer whilst listening, and create playlists for others to listen to both of which would be uploaded for the millions of others over the world.

So I think it’s fair to say that this is an application that could definitely prove popular, but it does have one major flaw and that is that no-one uses Opera except for perhaps using Opera Mobile on their smartphones, and it would be fairly pointless using this by yourself. But with a little persuasion and a few friends this could prove to be a fun way to chat and share music and is a good example of the future that Opera has planned for us.

Via – Opera

Related Pages:

1. Opera Unite – A Web Revolution?
2. Opera 10 Review (Internet Browser)
3. Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta – Free Download!
4. Spotify iPhone App – Is It Worth It?
5. Sky Songs – Online Music Streaming and Download Service

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