Glu unveils innovative social-location-music mash up Tunity

Of all the games Glu detailed during its press day, there's no doubt Tunity was the biggest surprise as well as its most ambitious title.

The brainchild of chief creative officer Giancarlo Mori, it mixes up location, music and social aspects: think of it as Foursquare meets Digg meets iTunes.

The basic interaction is you can tag any location in the world that has a postal or zip code (i.e. is listed on Google Maps) with any music track from iTunes.

You can do it in situ - for example, automatically tagging the cafe you're in with the tune playing on your iPhone - or, more likely, selecting music and locations as you see fit.

The social element of the game comes as multiple tracks from multiple people will be tagged to the most popular locations - everyone can see all locations and tracks globally - with each track's status controlled by the interaction of hard and soft in-game currencies, respectively Mojo and Kudos.

Kudos is a way players will be able to vote up the relative status of tracks they like - similar to liking on Facebook, or voting up posts on Digg. Mojo is more fundamental, allowing you to ensure your tracks always remain attached to a location; they will otherwise disappear over time unless people are continually giving them Kudos.

Pricing hasn't been confirmed but it was suggested this sort of everlasting status might cost 99c per track per location. Of course, as a freemium game, you will be encouraged to buy Mojo with real cash to ensure your activities don't fade away.

Other social aspects of the game will include a commenting system, while Tunity will have an achievements system based on the frequency and range of music and locations you tag and various leaderboards.

Obviously Glu is also hoping it will be work as a music discovery tool, with people buying tunes they enjoy, as well as finding and adding friends with similar musical taste.

Developed using HTML5, Tunity is expected to be released as an app, initially for iPhone and Android during August, following on desktop browsers.