Yet another digital threat to the humble party DJ comes in the form of the new ‘Smart Party’ system. Computer scientists at the University of California have come up with a way of gathering info on party-goers musical preferences by beaming playlists from their Wi-Fi enabled music player or phone to a central computer. The software then decides the most popular genres and artists, uploads the tracks and belts them out through the soundsystem!

Thankfully it can’t mix the tracks… yet. But much as this may seem like a good way of avoiding arguments at rubbish student houseparties with only a poor selection of old mix CDs that keep getting taken off, it could also actually increase violence, as the angry dancefloor mob try and work out who slipped in multiple copies of Boney M’s Rivers of Babylon for a laugh.

The inventors say the system is ‘democratic’ because all votes are equal, weather for heavy metal or pop, which sounds a little too eclectic for our liking. They also say it’s ‘fair’ because once a party-goer heads off to wait on the stairs for 45 minutes for the solitary, thoroughly despoiled toilet, the computer detects the loss of wireless signal and removes their bad taste from the musical jumble sale going on in the living room.

One slight problem, is that by creating copies of each track, the system is of course breaking the law, and the dodgy DRM-protected music that major labels have only just started to see is a bad idea won’t play at all.

That hurdle should stall the project enough to ensure the real, human party DJ gets a look-in for the foreseeable future, but in the brave new wireless world, you can bet this sort of technology is going to get used much more.

What do you think about it?