Mufin Player Brings Fresh Sorting To Music Playlists
Are you everybody’s designated musicman, the default iPod DJ at every party you go to, as if there’s some unspoken rule that you have the most complete and party-ready song library on your laptop? I’ve fallen into that role more than a few times, and if you care enough about music to read this tiny little blog, chances are that you have too. Every time I get sucked into the vortex of the dance floor DJ, I find myself wondering why nobody has developed a music player that could read your song’s audio content, and DJ for you.
We’ve had the technology to detect tempo and FFTs to find the keys of songs for years now. Nobody has capitalized on it by making a music player that could automatically string together songs of a similar tempo and related key to keep the music going without human input though.
Mufin player just might be the first music player to show promise in that department. Rather than basing song sorting on genres set somewhat arbitrarily by humans, Mufin actually analyzes the audio content of your song to show you similar songs that you own, and also songs that it has in its database which you can then listen to and purchase online. That part sounds somewhat like Apple’s Genius sidebar, only it bases the suggestions on audio content, not what other customers liked. That feature alone is not going to put Mufin over the top, but the continuous music “mood” playing could help. I also like the feature that allows Mufin to analyze the content of a song you don’t have the information of, compare that to a database, and then download the appropriate track info for the audio file.
In the end, I would expect iTunes to incorporate some of these ideas in a future release, when the new features will be heralded as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Until then, kudos to Mufin for paving the way!
So now you can let yourself slip away into your Kenny G without fear of getting kicked in the teeth by Mastodon on the next track.
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