How to develop an iPhone app to work with the current iPhone's music library

My friend (who knows nothing about programming what-so-ever) asked me if I could develop an iPhone application that lets the user select an artist from thier current synced artists on their iPhone music library, and display to them a list of concerts they will be playing in the near future. Maybe even use your current location to display the certain one you would be interested in.

Obviously, I told him no.

As I have no iPhone development experience and have only recently really started programming properly, I do开发者_开发知识库n't think I'm capable. But I'd still like to explore, seeing as I have just purchased a MacBook anyways!

Any ideas on how to approach this app?

Thanks in advance to everyone!

I'd rather recommend you playing with Last.fm API services. Not exactly what you want but I am not sure if iPhone lets you access the artist library directly. If it doesn't (which is yet to find out), you can write a plugin for iTunes that exports your music collection to your website and then access it from the iPhone.

The choice is up to you, but I'd probably stick with Last.fm.

The best place to start learning iPhone/iPad programming in general is to read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPhone-Development-Exploring-SDK/dp/1430224592

And more specific to your question, yes, apps are allowed to access the iPod music library in the phone, through the MPMediaQuery class and its brethren:

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Audio/Conceptual/iPodLibraryAccess_Guide/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008765