Posts Tagged ‘Music’
Moodagent: How it works on the iPhone and iPod Touch
Posted by Richard in Music Sunday, 20 December o 19:55 No Comments
Several people have asked me how moodagent works, so I thought I’d give it a try here. Syntonetic has spent several years developing the technology to create “high definition” profiles for every song it encounters. Over 7 million profiles have been created so far and many more are being created daily.
To create a profile we analyze the digital signal of a song, similar to Pandora, we then take a segment of the song, amplify it and run it through a series of artificial intelligence expert systems, constantly trained by the Syntonetic musicologists. We are able to create a song profile which measures the degree of each of the song’s characteristics, including moods, genres, sub-genres, styles, tempo/beat, vocals, instrumentation and production features. Even Beethoven may have some degree of “rock”. Once created these profiles are stored on our servers and accessed via the internet.
This brings us to moodagent on the iPhone. When moodagent is first installed it syncs the songs in your catalog with our 7 million profiles. It then takes the high definition profiles that correspond with your library and stores them in a small encrypted file on your iPhone. The app then interrogates this local file every time you move a slider or pick a song to seed your playlist. We have 5 sliders to help you select the characteristics of your playlist. These 5 sliders represent Sensuality, Tenderness, Happiness, Aggression and Tempo.
When using the sliders all positions are taken equally into account, setting one slider to a low value does not indicate a low priority, it is just as important as turning another slider up. Thus turning four sliders down will actually influence the result more than turning a single slider up. The result you get is always the closest match to the combination of all five slider values, in any given collection. After using the sliders you can always click the Moodagent icon next to the seed to get the actual values of the seed track.
My preference is not to use the sliders to start, but to pick a song from my collection that sets a particular mood then let moodagent build the playlist for me based on that song. If you select a song as the “seed” track it will look at all of the characteristics of the song to build the playlist, not just the mood profiles.
Several people have noticed that some of their tracks have no matching profile and are not synced. To find out how many, just click on the i at the bottom left hand corner of the page. To get the most out of moodagent you can use the optional desktop moodagent profiler. It will look at your iTunes collection on the desktop and create profiles for any songs where the profile doesn’t exist. This way, when you sync again you’ll get all of your non-protected tracks and have a better experience creating playlists.
Best iPhone apps at AppStoreHQ
Popularity: 100% [?]
Moodagent for iPhone available on iTunes App Store
Posted by Richard in Music Sunday, 20 December o 18:17 No Comments
At Syntonetic, we are really pleased Apple approved moodagent 1.0 for release in the iTunes App store. This follows on from our successful launch of Playlist DJ on Nokia’s Ovi Store.
Popularity: 87% [?]
The Christmas Song
Posted by Richard in Music Sunday, 14 December o 20:32 No Comments
I’ve known Natalie Brown for a couple of years and have always been impressed with her magnificent voice. Recently she posted a video of her rendition of “The Christmas Song” (Chestnuts Roasting on An Open Fire). Here it is for your enjoyment.
Popularity: 9% [?]
If only …
Posted by Richard in Media, Music Thursday, 4 December o 10:43 No Comments
Hindsight is 20-20. The record labels have never had great foresight, otherwise they may now been offering concerts, ticketing, merchandise, and many non-music ways to make money. This one beats it all. Seymour Stein as quoted in the Globe and Mail:
Stein says the rot set in the music industry 60 years ago. “We blew it,” he says on the phone from his office in New York. “The first major music labels were all phonograph manufacturers, but by the time the Beatles came along, most companies were no longer involved in the hardware.
“Had we remained in control of the hardware,” he adds. “We wouldn’t be hurting as much as we are now. And the iPod would be ours.”
Popularity: 6% [?]
Is the US at risk of a digital music retail monopoly?
Posted by Richard in Music Sunday, 9 March o 20:26 No Comments
Perhaps the demise of the CD will come more rapidly than first thought. Over the Christmas holidays, the number of downloads on iTunes skyrocketed, proving Apple’s smart tactic of selling iTunes gift cards at retail outlets. Since then more indicators are emerging.
Last week, Trans World announced their Q4 2007 financial results. Music sales dropped 28% in Q4, the top 50 music titles dropped 35% in Q4 and for the entire year the store’s music sales dropped 23%.
Two weeks ago, the NPD group released a report indicating that “consumer music acquisition increased by 6 percent in 2007, but average annual per-capita music spending fell by 10 percent”. The report also indicated that one million consumers dropped out of the CD buyer market in 2007, led by younger consumers. According to the press release, 48 percent of U.S. teens did not purchase a single CD in 2007, compared to 38 percent in 2006. Also NPD ranked Apple’s iTunes as the number two US music retailer, only behind Wal-mart.
Also last week, JupiterResearch announced that the digital transition was well underway, but digital sales are not enough to save the music industry. The announcement went on to say that “Yahoo! became the third big player to drop out of on-demand subscription services”.
Is Apple going to be the recording industry’s nemesis? Who will step up to the plate and provide consumers with a healthy alternative? Yahoo! couldn’t do it. Tower Records couldn’t do it. Trans World isn’t doing it.
Apple really understands the entire music experience. Apple also understands how to make it “just an Apple experience” and how to “lock us in” to their approach.
As far as the CD is concerned, its time has passed, just as vinyl and tape cassettes. This is the time for digital music, either as downloads or streams. As the market evolves, I hope that we have more than one choice of digital retailer to purchase and experience music. Competition not only maintains a healthy price point, but it also helps create interesting innovation.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Recent Comments