Zune Thoughts: Zune at the Museum

This past weekend on a visit to a friend in New York, we happened to go to the New Museum, a contemporary art museum on the outskirts of the East Village. One thing I noticed as we walked around looking at art I didn't understand was the number of people with iPod Nanos hanging on lanyards around their necks. Apparently the museum was using the Nanos to distribute their guided audio tours, a practice done at many other museums throughout the world.

This scenario got me thinking: why not put Zune's wireless sharing to good use? Sure sending songs and podcasts are fun amongst friends, but I would've loved to have someone beam me a recording of some deep-voiced academic telling me exactly what the artist was going for when she splattered paint across a canvas or he Googled and collaged hundreds of people sleeping*. Why can't the front desk send me an audio file to let me listen to the tour on a device I already own? Plus, if it's tagged as a podcast, I can send it on to a friend who is either with me or is planning on going to the museum—viral marketing, people!

There are tons of scenarios the wireless sharing enables that fall outside of the typical "hey, listen to this song. You might like it." There's not much technically that needs to be done to really open this up. Much of it comes from just general market adoption.

*Oh, I wish I was joking. The several-feet-by-several-feet piece consisted of assorted photographs the artist found on the internet. The common theme was that each of the subjects were in some state of sleep. You might call it art; I call it Flickr.