Sudden wishlist

This is mostly iTunes, but at the bottom you’ll find one other wish…

• I want to see a pop-up window that displays the lyrics of the song I’m listening to – it could appear as a semi transparent overlay called by a keyboard shortcut.
• I want to see a pop-up window that displays album art at decent resolution so that I can stare at the intricacies of the design, dream and get inspired while I listen to the music. Then I’ll close the window when I’d had my fill, just like putting down a cd or album cover. One day when the functionality’s been around for a while, the virtual album covers will be animated/interactive. Then things might just get as silly and entertaining and wonderful as those Hypgnosis covers for Led Zeppelin.
• I want to see an iTunes pop-up window or overlay that tells me all those trainspotter details that I love on cd/album covers such as who the band’s manager is and who played timpani on the fadeout to track 13.
• I want to see the Gracenote or CDDB databases enlarged to hold all of that textual information. Bands could supply their own downloadable design content from their websites to enhance the mp3s they sell via iTMS et al. They might compete with each other to deliver ever greater visual/interactive designs. Sigh.

Is this just not doable because Apple hold the code (and they like things oh so simple) or because the industry aren’t interested (couldn’t they see a revenue boost in this somewhere?) or because audiences aren’t interested (if they’re not, why were all those details supplied for so long?) or because it’s still such a young medium? (is there any other time like the present? okay, it’s not the right place for such a philosophical question…)

And my only non iTunes wish tonight?

• I want to see a fine art equivalent of the AllMusicGuide because there’s no such thing at the moment – most of the links to artist resources are patchy, crappy and seem merely to be landing pages to poster vendors.