Bowers & Wilkins Gives Customers Special Airplay Party Mode

Airplay’s pretty great, right? You can zap whatever music you like on over to your compatible device. Fun. Great. Just one problem: Only one person can be Airplayin’ at any given time. Minor quibble? Maybe, but it’s a tad antisocial.

Think about it: Your friend wants to show off his knowledge of the Greenpoint IndyFolk scene by playing a song over your Wi-Fi-savvy device. No problem. Until you want to one-up him by playing something else — he’s got to hand the connection over.

One more reason to wish we were rich enough to own the fabulous $US600 iPod dock that is the B&W Zeppelin Air:: Starting today, it has a special app that lets multiple people jump on its Airplay feed at the same time. It’s kind of like a closed-circuit turntable.fm, allowing anyone who has the app to hop on the airwaves and play songs from their iOS device’s music library. And whoever starts the session has veto power.

The app only works on this one product for now, but you can bet your fanciest shoes that Apple will ape the functionality in a future iTunes build, destroying yet another of its partners’ competitive advantages.