MusicIP
Latest
Moody: mood-based iTunes tagging and playlists
We've talked about automated iTunes playlist generators before, like MusicIP and The Filter, which purport to create playlists that reflect a certain mood or musical style, etc. In some ways similar, Moody also helps you generate playlists based on mood, however unlike those tools it does not analyze your music or tie into an online database. Instead it requires you to go through your iTunes library tagging your tracks according to mood along two axes: the vertical represents intensity and the horizontal represents happiness. Once your library is mood tagged (with the mood saved in the comments field of the ID3 tags), you can then define playlists (including Smart playlists) based on mood.The supposed advantage of this method is that your mood tags will be set by you, reflecting your own individual taste, etc. Thus a mood based playlist will more accurately reflect what you think of as intense or happy, etc. rather than some online database. Personally, I think this sounds like an interesting concept, but much like star ratings I don't know if I could get around to tagging enough tracks to make this worthwhile.Moody is a free download from Crayon Room (donations requested).[via Cool OSX Apps]
MusicIP automatic playlist generator
In comments to our recent post on The Filter, several TUAW readers suggested I check out the MusicIP Mixer. Like The Filter, the MusicIP mixer creates playlists based on the mood or style of several songs that you feed it with (i.e. you select several songs and then hit the mix button to create a mix or playlist based on those songs). Unlike The Filter, which does its magic by sending song titles to a remote server, the MusicIP Mixer actually does an acoustic fingerprint analysis on your own computer, which can take quite a while. On my moderately sized 4000+ track iTunes library it took nearly 2 days to finish (thought there were some breaks in the time)! Also the MusicIP Mixer does not seem to be as integrated with iTunes as The Filter, rather having you use its own interface for selecting and controlling your music. As far as the quality of the mixes go, I haven't played with it enough to compare them, but both MusicIP Mixer and The Filter have created enjoyable playlists. Between the two, I moderately prefer The Filter for its better iTunes integration, but I know there were a lot of folks out there who didn't like it, so they might want to give the MusicIP Mixer a shot.MusicIP Mixer comes in two versions: a free version with the basic feature set and a Pro version for $19.95 that adds more features.
