We told you about a closed alpha of The Filter back in December, and now a beta is available for download. Basically, The Filter is a little program that interacts with iTunes automatically to create playlists based on your mood. The first time you run it, it analyzes your iTunes library, comparing your tracks to its online database of 4.5 million songs. Then you just select a few (it recommends 3) tracks in iTunes, and hit the 'F' in The Filter's window. It will then create a playlist drawing from your personal iTunes library based on those songs. For each song it will put up a nice translucent window with the album art and the All Music Guide entry on that artist. In addition, you can use The Filter to generate appropriate playlists for your iPod based on mood or activity (e.g. high tempo music for working out).
The Filter FAQ says that "the music recommendation engine that is continually learning the listening tastes and choices of tens of thousands of music lovers. This huge collection of information is combined with your own likes and dislikes to create a personal understanding of what songs from your collection you will like to listen to and when." It sounds a lot like Pandora or last.fm but using your own music library. I haven't used it enough to decide if it's accurate, but I think this might be nice alternative to using the randomly generated Party Shuffle. One thing that is unclear to me, however, is their business model since it does not seem to be advertising supported.
The Filter for Mac is in beta right now and available as a free download.
[Via theappleblog]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-24-2007 @ 7:46PM
Ed said...
MusicIP Mixer has been doing this on Windows, Mac, and Linux for a long time. http://www.musicip.com
It can create a mix from one song, album, or artist.
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3-24-2007 @ 7:49PM
eric said...
Registration using this program (which sounds awesome) is a bit of a pain here. If you don't have at least one numeric character in your email address already, it won't allow you to register... What do I do?
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3-24-2007 @ 8:38PM
Skoalbandit said...
I had a similar problem registering this program. My email is not long enough for it. My email is fine for the million other things I use it for everyday. But not this program.
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3-24-2007 @ 9:13PM
LittleJoe said...
this program is awful. it would not let me register either as i do not have a number in my email address. on top of that after selecting 3 tracks and hitting the F button all it does is make a playlist with those 3 tracks. Thumbs Down. Wait for the RC.
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3-25-2007 @ 2:15AM
Spaceman Spliff said...
This program is fantastic. It is very accurate and basically picks songs off of your mood. Highly recommended.
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3-25-2007 @ 3:35AM
James Smythe said...
I have to disagree, Spaceman Spliff. The program seems fundamentally broken, registration issues, awesomely slow, doesn't function as it should, doesn't create the playlists properly... Heck, even the traffic light buttons are oddly placed, with different sized spaces between them! Great idea - I love anything that can (allegedly) make me a playlist based on tempo and mood - but this isn't that program, unfortunately.
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3-25-2007 @ 3:46AM
Mat Lu said...
I don't understand why people are having so many problems. I was able to use The Filter without registering at all (as Guest) and it generated playlists just fine in iTunes.
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3-25-2007 @ 11:47AM
Rob said...
No one has mentioned that one big problem with services like this one -- Privacy.
You will be sending to who-knows-who the complete list of the music in your iTunes library. I would make sure you read the Privacy Policy carefully before you decide to use this service.
Rob
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3-25-2007 @ 12:07PM
Benji said...
yea, Music IP mixer has been around for a while. I've been using The Filter and don't particularly enjoy it. Hard to use.
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3-25-2007 @ 12:17PM
Spaceman Spliff said...
James Smythe - I'm not sure why there are registration problems, but I had no problems. I'll admit the UI is very cluttered but there is really only one button you would want to use anyway. The "F". I think the problem is, is that it was ported over from a Windows application. I read the Privacy Policy (gasp!) seems pretty standard, but then again I have poor comprehension skills.
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3-25-2007 @ 2:17PM
mars said...
It is slow, crashes all the time, does not do what it is supposed to, and the interface is confusiing as hell.
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3-27-2007 @ 8:55AM
Steve said...
Thanks all for the comments on The Filter application. I would like to appologise to those readers who tried to login/register this weekend, as we we experiencing some load-related issues on our backend server over the weekend. Ops and Dev guys had it fixed early Sunday, so I hope those who experienced problems would try to login/register again as the service is back to normal now.
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