Browsing over at NewScientist earlier today, I came across an interesting article, being music minded I guess it “struck a chord” with me – come on, you know you like the cheesy joke! 😉
Anyway, a new technology in the workd could let your computer recommend new music you might like based on an acoustic analysis of the tunes it already knows you enjoy. By analysing the characteristics of a song – like timbre, rhythm, tempo and chord changes – then comparing it to a database of a million songs, the software can recommend similar pieces of music, and even rank them by characteristics, like their key or dance-ability.
If you’re familiar with WinAMP (which I use in the office…. ah Club 977!) you might have heard of the MusicMagic Mix plugin (which generates playlists for you based on the similarities between a particular song and your entire music collection), I’m guessing it will be something along those lines – which is pretty genius in my opinion. If your iPod could predict what mood you were in and suggest music based on that…. now that’s something I’d pay to have!
Hi Ken,
Isn’t that similar to http://www.pandora.com. They employ professional musicians to categorise their catalogue of songs in the manner you describe above. If you havent checked it out, I highly recommend it.
Hey Paul,
yes, I guess I forgot to mention that one. I had been playing around with Padora today upon an earlier suggestion but must spend a bit of time and go through it.
Would be nice to see it working on the move though (having the software on an actual iPod do it, as opposed to just iTunes). you think?
even if you could tell it what mood you where in and then it had music based on that…
wouldn’t be too bad… social tagging on your ipod. you can define your genres as standard but add in something like “pissed off”, or “walk to work” or “busy day” or something like that…
yeah.. that would be handy.. i might go do that now..
ah yeah. sure when you have it developed, come back here and we’ll have a chat about it. i want 80% since it was my *cough* idea 😉
yeah 😉 it would be better to set them as playlists though Ken because if you set them as genres you might have to have more than one song..
true, but its not just about particular genres of music. sure, a track can be classified as Rock, or Classical… but if you implement social tagging (like delicious or technorati) to your offline music collection then you might hit something…
Hmmm…. music to suit your mood on the move 😉 cool idea!
It’s gonna take off… I’m telling you!
yes and then ken will be a thousandaire.. he will originally be a millionaire but due to gambling, drinking and paying women he will loose it all! 😀
I hope its the other Ken you’re talking about! Bet you a tenner I won’t lose it gambling!
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