The Untapped Potential of the iPhone/iPod Touch app Remote

Last week, my family and I (FINALLY) had a meal at The Aquarium over at OpryMills. This has been something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, mostly because of how strangely attracted I am to water. (It’s a star-sign thing.) While having dinner there, we heard several tracks of music play over their dining room that we actually liked. It was at this point that I had an idea related to my iPod.

The origins of this idea date back several weeks before this dinner. I downloaded a free application for my iPod called Remote. It was suggested I get this application now that iTunes 8 has the option of being able to be controlled remotely from iPhones and iPods with this application. It actually helped me out greatly, because now I don’t have to get up from the dinner table to skip a track that my parents don’t want to listen to. You know, on those rare nights were I can actually play my MP3s because they actually found a collection of tracks that I have that they like.

Probably the best feature I like about Remote is the fact that it will tell you what is currently playing when you first launch it. This is especially useful for those tracks you like but don’t know the title or artist playing it. All you do is fire it up and your iPod/iPhone displays the information right there for you to take note of. This feature is what I wish I could have used in The Aquarium a week ago when the three of us heard a track all of us liked. If I had my iPod on me and if The Aquarium’s audio system was Remote-compatible, I would have found out what was being played.

An interesting feature that I’ve been playing with is the Request a Song option that you can open up in Remote if you or another person has the iTunes DJ playlist open. Just as the feature suggests, you can request a song to be played and iTunes will update the playlist to feature that song. As an added bonus, the music library’s owner has the option of allowing people to vote for songs. The most requested/voted song gets higher priority on the upcoming selection of songs until what is currently playing ends. The request then starts playing, and the whole process repeats itself. When no request is made, iTunes DJ just goes into its normal shuffle mode.

When you combine these two features together, you have a very interesting marketing potential for places like Starbucks or Panera Bread. I know Starbucks often will sell CDs, but they also have free wi-fi internet. As such, they could have an iTunes library that features tracks from those CDs on it that would play over their dining room. Customers with an iPod/iPhone with Remote could use it to check out what’s playing from those CDs, listen to tracks from them that they may be curious about, and hopefully like the music enough to buy it to import into their own iTunes collection.

The economic synergy of this idea can be pushed even further when you think about it from another angle. In order to have control over what music plays in your dining room, you need to have an iPod/iPhone with Remote. Which would increase sales of iPods and iPhones. And the more restaurants that feature Remote Controlled dining room audio, the better the dining experience is for the customer, which could mean a bigger tip for the waiter/waitress if it is that kind of establishment.

I mean, imagine this scenario. You go to a restaurant that has some rather loud dining audio and the hostess says in her spiel that their dining audio is accessible through an iPhone with Remote. You can make a request and keep an eye on the line up to know when it will play. You take a look at their selection and notice a track or artist you like and request it. While you are waiting for your food, the track plays. And then say you like what you heard. You ask the waiter if you could buy the album that featured the track you just heard, showing him the album cover on your iPhone. And then he replies that he will bring a copy out for you to purchase along with your check. How awesome would that be?

I hope someone for Apple stumbles across this blog entry and actually goes through with this idea. If it isn’t already in the works. I see a great untapped potential for this application and its simple features.