FoxyTunes started out as a Firefox plug-in that provides users with the ability to play their music without leaving their browser. It’s one of many similar services which may be either useful or redundant depending on how you’ve set up your computer. FoxyTunes Planet is of more interest as it’s a mashup that aggregates a diverse range of music-related services into one webpage. As they claim on their FAQ:

There are a lot of cool music sites and services out there and their number is constantly growing. The problem is that there are simply not enough hours in a day to discover, try and use all of these services. FoxyTunes Planet plans to solve this problem by integrating all the best music sites and services into one convenient place.

Type an artist’s name into the search box and by default you’re presented with:

• YouTube videos
• Lyrics from LyricWiki
• Flickr photos
• Artist info from Last.fm
• Pandora’s artist radio
• MP3s from Hypemachine
• Google links for video, blog, news and general search
• Amazon albums

Despite the awful name, Foxytunes Planet provides a much more usable interface than, say, MusicMesh. It could do with - besides a better name - tools to personalise the interface, a proper URL and even the ability to add user comments so fans could add their enthusiasm.

Links: Foxytunes Planet, MusicMesh
Related: Fan Sites RIP (Net, Blogs and Rock’n'Roll)

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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

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Peel is an attractively simple program whose primary function is to keep an eye on your favourite MP3 blogs (scroll to the end of this post for an explanation, in case you’re unfamiliar with them). As you can see from the above screenshot, it’s adopted iTunes’ look and feel wholesale. When Peel finds new MP3s posted on any of your bookmarked blogs (saved in the left-hand pane), it lists them on the right. You can choose to play the songs and, optionally, download to your hard drive and import them into iTunes. A nice touch is that Peel provides browser functionality so that you can read MP3 blogs within the program itself:

And that’s about it. You’re reliant upon the tagging efficiency of the blog author - I found quite a few tracks to be lacking in any artist details and, perhaps more importantly, Peel doesn’t give you a lot of guidance on where to find good MP3 blogs past the couple that are already listed. However, a bit of Googling turns a number up.

Recommendation: Useful if you’re both a Mac user (no sign of a PC version) and an MP3 blog enthusiast. As previously stated, it’s currently in beta so is a free download, though the site states that it will be $14.95 when finished. However, when the combined player/browser Songbird (PC, Mac and Linux) has progressed further on its development route it will surely eclipse Peel. Until then, Peel is well worth a try.

Background: MP3 blogs are a relatively recent development. Author/s writing about their favourite music on their blog also post an MP3 in illustration. Typically, the MP3 is posted for a limited period - say a week - together with an invitation to third parties to get in touch if their availability is problematic and a link to a vendor to purchase the CD. Bloggers keen to write about musicians tend to cover less well-known ones, therefore in theory, they serve to promote the artist under discussion without impacting upon sales. This post on the 45RPM blog serves as ample illustration of the two sides of the debate. Examples of popular MP3 blogs include: Poptones, Fluxblog and 20 Jazz Funk Greats.

Download: Peel website

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I have a confession. Despite my interest in new ways to interact with music as evidenced by this blog you’re reading, I never managed to get enthused by iTunes’ random and smart playlist capabilities. Two things stopped me: I could never be bothered to rate individual tracks and, more importantly, I’m an old-fashioned album sort of person. I like the cohesion and sense of flow that a collection of music deliberately sequenced by an artist/group/DJ conveys. The few times I’ve tried the various flavours of shuffle facilitated by iTunes or my iPod have resulted in an all too disparate musical experience.

Yet here I am listening to a really good, software generated playlist courtesy of MusicIP Mixer, a freeware smart playlist generator. The seed track I chose for my first playlist was Erik Satie’s Fantaisie-Valse. In next to no time, MusicIP Mixer displayed its recommended playlist based upon my preference for a duration of 40 minutes and a lack of artist repetition within 10 songs. Thus, the Satie piece was succeeded by a gentle Krautrock song by Harmonia, a fragment of Steve Reich’s multimedia opera Three Tales, a soundtrack piece by Ornette Coleman and Howard Shore, Kate Bush’s domestic paean Mrs Bartolozzi, a Ligeti piece, Brian Eno’s Another Green World, one of Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives, a piano-led song by Nuyorican Soul, Bach’s first Brandenburg, (surprisingly) Charley Patton’s Hammer Blues and another Satie piece to finish up. All of this music was accessed from my iTunes library and each piece flowed into the next with admirable ease. I would never in a million years have made such a compilation, but am very happy with what it has provided. I’m a convert.

If you’re ready to grab MusicIP Mixer now just skip to the end of the post for the download link.

Here’s a little more detail for those interested. After downloading, the program asks to analyse your music library and pops up a progress window:

Although it threatened to take 45 hours to complete the analysis of my 44GB library, it in fact finished up in about an hour. As can be seen from the screenshot at the beginning of this post, the interface isn’t very different from iTunes, but nor is it exactly the same. For one thing the music controls are tucked into the bottom right hand corner. This seems to be because MusicIP Mixer is intended to exist as much as an adjunct to iTunes as a standalone player in its own right. Once a new mix has been created, a right-click option allows the user to ‘copy playlist to iTunes’. This feature didn’t initially work, but quitting and restarting iTunes sorted the problem out.

The interface itself isn’t entirely intuitive, especially for a new user, and there are no help files available from the Help menu at the top of the screen. However, after a little experimentation, it becomes clear that it’s necessary to:

• Click on Library at the top of the source window (as per iTunes) to access the music library
• Select a song as a seed from which to create the mix
• Optionally, set criteria e.g. length of mix, file size of mix or number of tracks
• Click the Mix button (illustrated with stars) at the top left of the window to create the desired mix
• To save the mix, right-click in the Source pane, choose New Playlist, select the tracks in the mix and drag them into the new playlist

Apart from the slightly unintuitive interface, MusicIP Mixer declared 806 of my songs unanalyzable and therefore not to be included in any of its mixes. 8% of my library is a bit of a loss and it would be good to know what the reason for their rejection is. Also, although the majority of the mixes have been excellent, it doesn’t always get it right: selecting Kraftwerk’s proto-Techno anthem, Numbers, as a seed prompted MusicIP Mixer to sequence Serge Gainsbourg’s gentle Couleur Cafe followed by Bill Laswell’s stripped-down electronic funk Work Song. Then again, listening back, there is a strange kind of sense to such a choice…

MusicIP Mixer is available for Mac, Windows and Linux. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple didn’t repeat its behaviour with the previously separate Coverflow and buy it lock, stock and barrel for integration into iTunes.

Download: MusicIP website
Related: Tangerine: BPM playlist analysis
Via: Jon Stahl’s Squeezebox report

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Like many people, I’ve encountered occasional news items about Second Life. For example, I read a while back that BBC Radio One ran a festival there last year. Although I’ve been intrigued by the development and popularity of this virtual world, I’ve never quite got round to setting up an account and travelling there. However, encountering an article entitled Virtual open mic shows in the Hummingbird Café finally prompted me to go ahead and do so. Here’s an example of what piqued my interest:

The Hummingbird Café is one of the most popular destinations for live music in the Second Life community […] With a few taps on his computer keyboard, [club owner] Harlow’s avatar flies through the air and lands comfortably on the stage […] “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a big round of applause for our next act: Peter Greenstone from Austin, Texas!” The crowd erupts into a hearty ovation that sounds as raucous as any crowd you’d hear at a major concert venue. But in reality we know that around the world the hundred or so patrons of the Hummingbird Café have just typed the word “clap” on their keyboards from the comfort of their living rooms.

Thus was the entity known as MusicInterfaces Miles born (when creating your avatar, you can choose any first name, but the list of available surnames is predetermined - I’m a big Miles Davis fan…). After downloading the Second Life client (61mb for the Mac version), and typing in a login and password, I found myself in the orientation centre. This consists of four little islands where you pick up the basic skills necessary to navigate and communicate in Second Life.

At time of writing I’m still there. I’ve managed to stop looking like a transvestite trucker - that’s me pictured above (yes, I realise I’ve opted for a very unimaginative look…) I’ve learnt to fly, drive and gesture, but clearly there’s some more stuff to learn as I haven’t yet figured out how to leave the centre! When I manage that, I’ll go in search of the Hummingbird Cafe and, if successful, some other music venues.

Link: Second Life

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I’m slowly but surely writing longer capsule reviews and plugging the gaps in my coverage of music recommendation services. I’ve just discovered another site that I like a lot: MusicMap. Why do I like it so much? Because of its simplicity, there’s no signing up, no pressure to make friends, submit data or anything extraneous: just type in an artist and MusicMap presents you with a cloud of names garnered from Last.fm data, those names being larger or smaller depending upon their relevance to the original query. The recommendations are pretty good, but then Last.fm’s service in this area is, in my experience, currently the most accurate. Nicely presented, my only wish would be that the recommendations were linked to the relevant page on Last.fm. Otherwise, colour me happy.

Link: MusicMap
Link: Last.fm
Via: All Along the Watchtower

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It’s been a while since I last listened to Ornithology by Charlie Parker, but that’s what I’m doing as I write this post. I don’t own a copy, but on impulse I typed the artist’s name into Seeqpod’s search box, hit the button and the search engine came up with it along with 11 other songs. As it finds relevant songs, it displays them in a list on the left of the page (see screenshot above), clicking the green arrow adds it to your playlist. Registering allows you to save your list to play again another time, provided you register.

A search for Ornette Coleman turned up only five results, two of which provided no track details apart from the artist’s name (these two came from the otherwise brilliantly written free jazz blog Destination Out). Searching for Madonna turned up 95 results although a significant proportion of them were for Madonna Over Yorkshire which is either a t-shirt manufacturer or/and some kind of music act… such uncertainties might be cleared up by clicking the Artist Info link beside the artist’s name on the playlist. This takes you to a Seeqpod page that aggregates links under categories for Videos, Blogs, MySpace, Wikipedia, Lyrics, Buy, Tour Dates and Ringtones.

Perhaps more interestingly, The Pod Crawler tab provides a scrolling, continually updated, list of whatever music the search engine finds as it grazes the web. As with the specified artist search, artists can be added to the playlist to save/play later. As an indication of the variety of material Seeqpod turns up, within the space of a couple of minutes I’d assembled a playlist containing Love, Solex, Derek Bailey, Public Enemy, Don Quixote (from the Gutenberg archive), Incredible Bongo Band, Frank Zappa, Fu Schnickens, Joanna Newsom, Rimsky Korsakov and Craig David…

As a front end to a search engine with a specific focus, Seeqpod is impressively intuitive to use. It could do with some spit and polish on its graphic design to improve its credibility, but it’s a great way to try out an artist before buying, rediscover old favourites or simply discover new music.

Link: Seeqpod

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