Now You Can Bump iOS Devices to Share Music
Bump, the application maker known for its mobile device contact and photo exchange technology, has just released an update to its iOS applications — iPhone, iPod touch, iPad — that supports user-to-user music sharing.
Context & Ripple Effects
Device-to-device media exchange on Apple hardware has been an awkward story since at least 2007, when CNET's Infinite Loop was already untangling the workarounds around sharing video between iPods and iPhones. Bump built its name on removing that friction for contacts and photos, using a physical bump gesture to pair two devices over the network.
First-order effects
- iPhone, iPod touch and iPad owners running Bump can now pass songs to each other with a tap, moving the app beyond contact and photo exchange into licensed media.
Second-order effects
- Putting user-to-user music transfer in consumers' hands forces rights holders and Apple's own download ecosystem to decide where personal-copy sharing ends and redistribution begins.
Third-order effects
- If the bump-gesture model keeps absorbing new content types the way it absorbed music after photos and contacts, proximity-based pairing becomes a general-purpose transfer layer for iOS rather than a single-purpose trick.
The trend: Mobile sharing is shifting from cable-and-iTunes sync toward gesture-paired, app-mediated transfers that expand format by format across iOS devices.