I use iTunes to listen to my collection of over 15,000 songs. I love iTunes for its ease-of-use and simplicity, but with a song library this large, it’s easy to “lose” music and forget about it. How do you even guess what to listen to? I’m sure I have hundreds of cherished songs buried in my library that I haven’t heard for years.
Chris Messina blogged about Soundflavor, a layer on top of iTunes. It looks at the tracks you’re listening to, and makes suggestions for other songs that you already own, thereby letting you rediscover stuff you might have forgotten. Here’s a screenshot:
In this screenshot, I’m listening to “Is It Any Wonder” by Keane. The next track in my playlist is by Jesus Jones, and the one after that is “Higher Love” by Depeche Mode. Notice the little cherry at the bottom right of the Depeche Mode artwork? That means Soundflavor cherry-picked that song out of my collection because it thinks that particular track fits along with the other stuff I’m listening to.
Generally, it’s pretty good at picking similar music. This one particular choice is a stinker - “Higher Love” is a dead slow, mellow track, whereas the previous two were fast, frantic pop songs. I have to give it credit, though, because most of the time, I’m very pleasantly surprised by its choices.
Above the fourth song in the list, there’s a “get this song” link. That means the music isn’t even in my library at all. Soundflavor doesn’t play it, or even play a preview. When this song comes up in the rotation, Soundflavor breezes right past it. It’s just a suggestion - if you want to hear it, you have to buy it. The odds are pretty low that I’d buy a song, though, especially since I’ve got such a huge music library, and since Soundflavor is already paying off by giving me lots of “new” free music that I haven’t heard in years. I like the idea anyway because I’ve got a few tracks that “stump” me, like Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise. I’d love to have more music like that, but I don’t know where to find it.
Soundflavor also shows links to concerts in your area just like it shows tracks: they show just like a CD would. If you’re interested in a show, you click on it. No popup ads, no audio commercials, not intrusive at all. Two thumbs up.
The red slider at the top left of the user interface determines how much “flavor” Soundflavor injects into your playlist. Strangely, the more you turn up the slider, the less work Soundflavor actually does - it’s more like a purity slider, I guess.
The whole package works great - but only on PCs. I do 95% of my music listening at work on a Mac, unfortunately, and that’s where I need Soundflavor most. I’m eagerly anticipating its OSX release, whenever that may be.
As a business model, it makes sense. People will buy music tracks and tickets out of this thing.
on Oct 28th, 2006 at
Hey Brent, thanks for the review — and I totally hear you about the Mac version. Last I hear it was three months away (Q1 ‘07) — which is crazy — but alas, at least there are plans.
Funny about the slider — the idea was that, the more you slide it up, the more “flavored” the list would become; in fact, the flavor is based on whatever is currently playing when you slide it up, so in your case, with “Is It Any Wonder†playing, as you slide it up more songs like that one would be added to your playlist.
The goal being: “Hey, I really dig this tune and want to hear more like it.”
Since I’m on a Mac I haven’t tried it yet and don’t know how clear that is, but that was the intention anyway!
on Oct 28th, 2006 at
That’s the interesting thing - it works exactly in the reverse. The more you turn up the slider, the LESS suggestions you get from Soundflavor. I’m with you - I would have expected it to turn up the volume of Soundflavor, but it does the opposite.