Recollect the piped “musak” that once played, and still plays, in many hotel elevators and public waiting rooms. Remember the perfectly designed mood music in restaurants and museums. Now, re-imagine the ambient soundscape dynamically customized for a space based on the music preferences of the people inhabiting that space. Well, there is a growing list of apps for that.

[div class=attrib]From Wired:[end-div]

This idea of having environments automatically reflect the predilections of those who inhabit them seems like the stuff of science fiction, but it’s already established fact, though not many people likely realize it yet.

Let me explain. You know how most of the music services we listen to these days “scrobble” what we hear to Facebook and/or Last.fm? Well, outside developers can access that information — with your permission, of course — in order to shape their software around your taste.

At the moment, most developers of Facebook-connected apps we’ve spoken with are able to mine your Likes (when you “like” something on Facebook) and profile information (when you add a band, book, movie, etc. as a favorite thing within your Facebook profile).

However, as we recently confirmed with a Facebook software developer (who was not speaking for Facebook at the time but as an independent developer in his free time), third-party software developers can also access your listening data — each song you’ve played in any Facebook-connected music service and possibly what your friends listened to as well. Video plays and news article reads are also counted, if those sources are connected to Facebook.

Don’t freak out — you have to give these apps permission to harvest this data. But once you do, they can start building their service using information about what you listened to in another service.

Right now, this is starting to happen in the world of software (if I listen to “We Ah Wi” by Javelin on MOG, Spotify can find out if I give them permission to do so). Soon, due to mobile devices’ locational awareness — also opt-in — these preferences will leech into the physical world.

…

I’m talking about the kids who used to sit around on the quad listening to that station. The more interesting option for mainstream users is music selections that automatically shift in response to the people in the room. The new DJs? Well, they will simply be the social butterflies who are most permissive with their personal information.

Here are some more apps for real-world locations that can adapt music based on the preferences of these social butterflies:

Crowdjuke: Winner of an MTV O Music Award for “best music hack,” this web app pulls the preferences of people who have RSVPed to an event and creates the perfect playlist for that group. Attendees can also add specific tracks using a mobile app or even text messaging from a “dumb” phone.

Automatic DJ: Talk about science fiction; this one lets people DJ a party merely by having their picture taken at it.

AudioVroom: This iPhone app (also with a new web version) makes a playlist that reflects two users’ tastes when they meet in real life. There’s no venue-specific version of this, but there could be (see also: Myxer).

[div class=attrib]Read the entire article here.[end-div]

[div class=attrib]Image: Elevator Music. A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong; Revised and Expanded Edition. Courtesy of the University of Michigan Press.[end-div]