Not so long ago half your record collection would sit in the attic, gathering dust. In 2006 it’s more likely to be languishing in the dark recesses of your iPod or laptop, unplayed, unloved. We always think we’ll get round to making great playlists and rediscover hidden gems, but let’s face it, who’s got the time?

So declares The Filter’s homepage. Until last week this free software was only available for PC, but a new Apple-compatible version has just been released. The Filter’s profile is probably significantly higher than its market share due to the frequency with which it’s associated with Peter Gabriel’s name (certainly did the trick for me). It turns out that he’s an investor in the project rather than having much to do with the product’s creative approach.

The Filter acts in partnership with iTunes on Windows XP and OS X (a Windows Media Player version is in development) to:

• Create playlists from a user’s existing music library using user-specified seed tracks.
• Making recommendations, again based upon tracks suggested by the user.

The playlist function is very like the primary purpose of Music IP Mixer, a product I looked at a couple of months ago. Like that program, The Filter is standalone rather than web-based (like Last.fm, Mog, Pandora) or an iTunes plug-in (as per iLike). The main window is an attractive shelf design on which are displayed the upcoming cover graphics for the songs in its active playlist:

An additional window, which can be closed, also opens up with good quality information about the playing track supplied by the AllMusicGuide. By default both windows stay on top of all other open programme windows, which can be rather awkward. The window can be minimised and reopened using a keyboard shortcut, though this still doesn’t make it quite as user-friendly as iLike’s iTunes drawer. It would be good to see the window accessible via its OS X statusbar icon, but such an option isn’t currently available.

To create a playlist, the user chooses three different tracks in iTunes and clicks the ‘F’ button in the player window. My first three seed tracks (Brian Eno’s Energy Fools The Magician, The Durutti Column’s The Beggar and Manu Dibango’s Massa Lemba), chosen on impulse, resulted in a playlist of 15 tracks with five suggested artists and the rest made up of additional tracks by the chosen artists. The suggestions (Peter Tosh, Fela Kuti, John Martyn, Laurie Anderson and U Roy) were reasonably on target. Given the aforementioned proximity of The Filter’s functionality to Music IP Mixer’s, it seemed a good idea to try it out with the same seed. Choosing Erik Satie’s Fantaisie-Valse, Harmonia’s Kekse and a part of Steve Reich’s Three Tales multimedia opera resulted in a different, but still serviceable playlist that included Sufjan Stevens, Vladislav Delay and Bach amongst others. Skipping songs quickly or letting them play through enables The Filter to build a better idea of listening habits. The programme can also build playlists to sync with iPods - these are based on either a chosen genre or, as before, by selecting seed tracks.

The recommendations option produces a window of recommended songs available at the iTunes Music Store:

Some of these recommendations are good, some are not - how Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit relates to Brian Eno’s Another Green World is anybody’s guess… A more mainstream track (Madonna’s Confessions of a Dance Floor) results in a fairly diverse mainstream set of recommendations (Sean Paul, Britney, Cyndi Lauper and Beyonce) which it’s hard to argue with. Clicking any track opens up the iTunes Music Store to listen to the standard 30 second clip and purchase if so desired.

Recommendation: My copy of The Filter tended to hang fairly frequently and was slow at delivering iTMS recommendations, but the program is still in beta so perhaps that can be excused. It’s an interesting product, particularly for its integration with the iTunes Music Store which makes for potentially intuitive discoveries - the inevitable downside is that you’re locked into Apple’s DRM. Its ability to offer up forgotten gems from an overstocked iTunes library is also attractive. In my experience, its recommendations have been fairly mixed, but The Filter is definitely worth trying.

Link: The Filter
Link: Screencast guide to The Filter

Share this post: