Last night as I was reading a book and listening to music a thought briefly passed through my mind. There’s little to slow them down, so thoughts tend to pass through quickly.
Anyway, I briefly considered that it would be nice to have some kind of context to the music as it played, for example maybe a video of the performance of the song. Not the senseless music video things that you see these days though. But some pictures to go along with the music would be nice.
As often happens in this age of the internet, as soon as you can think of an idea it’s probably already being done! You just have to know where to look. Such is the case with Sun Labs Snapp Radio. Somehow I got distracted by shiny things again and found myself not being able to take my eyes off of this wonderful mash-up.
Snapp Radio works by taking the song you’re listening to on last.fm or Radio Paradise and grabs pictures from flickr that relate to make a slideshow that plays along as you listen.
The cool thing about this mash-up is how it seems to be more than the sum of its parts. I mean it’s just an internet radio station, some pictures, and some code. But Radio Paradise was playing some kick-ass music and there was this kind of juxtaposition between song and picture that I haven’t experienced since the first time iTunes played Method Man right after Alison Krauss.
There are so many community produced pictures that show life as more than the controlled medium that corporations and advertisers want us to see. I love the expression of interest that people share and the way they are put to creative uses. People are into some far out stuff, and God bless them for it! And now their interests are put to music.
