Instead of piping bland background music over tinny speakers, enterprising music promoters are loading hundreds of hours of hip tunes onto iPods and renting them to restaurants, nightspots, clothing boutiques and hair salons.

"It's hard for (smaller independent) labels to get exposure, and it's hard for stores to get the right music," said Lara Wiesenthal, the brains behind an iPod music service called Activaire. "I really get the perfect music into the stores, and it allows me to disseminate the labels' music to a different audience."

. . .

Wiesenthal has licensed hundreds of songs from nearly 100 independent labels, most specializing in cutting-edge electronica.

From her library of nearly 100 GB of songs, Wiesenthal can tailor about 30 hours of music for each client. She often creates special playlists for different moods -- upbeat or mellow -- or different times of the day.

"The point is to provide the stores with more music than they were used to, and to make it automatic, hands-off," she said. "The iPod makes it really easy. They can even hit different playlists for different moods -- one for the morning, the afternoon or evening."

Every three months, Wiesenthal ships a new iPod to her clients with a new selection of music. The clients return the old iPod via package delivery service.

One of his nonpaying clients, Roger Main, general manager of the Adriatica restaurant/lounge, said he's delighted with the service.

"I'm a technophobe. I didn't know how it was going to take care of us," Main said. "But it does a great job. The bartender chooses the playlist. It's better than a jukebox. The establishment controls the mood, not the customers."

Porter said he's been trying to find a way to market independent music for years. He experimented with mix tapes and custom CDs, but was never able to provide the variety and convenience of using an iPod.

"When the iPod came along, it was so easy, it was beautiful," he said. "You edit out all the bad stuff, all the filler songs, and you give people beautiful music. There's an endless supply, and it's always cutting edge and hip and cool."

UPDATE: Bah! Kris is way ahead of me, sort of. He's had a computerized house-control system forever, called "James", which until just recently consisted of the LCD and keyboard and trackball of an old Mac Portable mounted on the wall, and used for monitoring open windows and doors, temperatures, and so on. A little while ago he replaced it with an iBook (James Jr. II); and it's now being used as the music broadcasting point for the house. See, it has iTunes 4 on it, and shares music over AirPort from his main desktop Mac. Then, the audio out is piped to his main house stereo. That way the wall-mounted machine doesn't need to actually store any of the music-- it just relays it. And it's controllable using iTunes' own interface.

It's got an Orrin Hatch detector, too.