In comments to our recent post on The Filter, several TUAW readers suggested I check out the MusicIP Mixer. Like The Filter, the MusicIP mixer creates playlists based on the mood or style of several songs that you feed it with (i.e. you select several songs and then hit the mix button to create a mix or playlist based on those songs). Unlike The Filter, which does its magic by sending song titles to a remote server, the MusicIP Mixer actually does an acoustic fingerprint analysis on your own computer, which can take quite a while. On my moderately sized 4000+ track iTunes library it took nearly 2 days to finish (thought there were some breaks in the time)! Also the MusicIP Mixer does not seem to be as integrated with iTunes as The Filter, rather having you use its own interface for selecting and controlling your music. As far as the quality of the mixes go, I haven't played with it enough to compare them, but both MusicIP Mixer and The Filter have created enjoyable playlists. Between the two, I moderately prefer The Filter for its better iTunes integration, but I know there were a lot of folks out there who didn't like it, so they might want to give the MusicIP Mixer a shot.MusicIP Mixer comes in two versions: a free version with the basic feature set and a Pro version for $19.95 that adds more features.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-29-2007 @ 8:27PM
lakiolen said...
Am I the only one who thinks the icon looks like the 'Plays For Sure' one?
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3-29-2007 @ 9:02PM
(01) said...
I was slightly interested until I saw that it took you 2 days for a 4K song library. At 9000+ songs I feel like my MBP would be sorely hating me by the end. Ive been using the Filter for a few weeks now and am pretty happy with it, definitely found some music I'd forgotten about in the recesses of my music folder.
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3-29-2007 @ 10:05PM
Mgkwho said...
lakiolen beat me to it! The triangle is the same!
how lame.
-=|Mgkwho
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3-30-2007 @ 2:06AM
Marco said...
Unfortunately MusicIP is limited to only a few songs per generated playlist in its free form. You need to cash out %20 to get more than 70 songs in a playlist, which is what I need (I use the playlists -about 250 songs- to generate lists for syncing with my shuffle - the "random" selection of iTunes itself sucks, the addition of "selective" lists based on mood etc are a very nice addition).
I bought musicIP, but then I found out The Filter, and actually use that mroe often, mainly because its already mentioned better iTunes integration.
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3-30-2007 @ 2:35AM
seth said...
Per the last post I played with The Filter and found it to be tedious. I use Beatunes; it's neither free nor fast but it's hella thorough and highly customizable. Also includes some nice file maintenance stuff that neither the Filter nor MusicIP provide.
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3-30-2007 @ 5:24AM
thevil said...
Plays For Sure? Surely not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plectrum
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3-30-2007 @ 10:30AM
Barry G said...
PlayForSure icon anyone? :p
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3-30-2007 @ 12:38PM
Robert Jones said...
I was slightly interested until I saw that it took you 2 days for a 4K song library. At 9000+ songs I feel like my MBP would be sorely hating me by the end.
It does take time to do a full audio fingerprint of your entire library, but the time is variable. MusicIP first tries to look up known fingerprints for your library based on tags, and only actually fingerprints anew if it can't find any. If your music usually gets good hits from things like MusicBrainz, it will probably process alot faster.
It took about 3 full days for my MacBook to rip through my 8000 songs, but once done, I was impressed with the quality of the mixes it made. I paid for the full version to be able to expand my playlist length and perform waypoint mixes, which are quite cool for parties and other thematic events.
To be fair, I've not tried The Filter (downloading it now), but since it's based on an affinity engine, rather than fingerprinting, it probably a) takes longer to develop a good idea of what you'd like to hear, and b) wouldn't be as good at handling less common moods as picking one of the 10 tracks in your library that you can think o that you want to hear at the time, and letting MusicIP handle the rest.
I'll give it a fair shake, though.
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3-30-2007 @ 12:39PM
Robert Jones said...
Er. Add a blockquote around the first paragraph of the above.
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4-17-2007 @ 11:27AM
Claphamcowboy said...
Hmm - musicip - not convinced yet really. Have got the filter and it really has got upto speed with what kinda vibe i'm looking for at that moment.
Word of warning avoid tangerine - very disappointed with it - just glad I didn't buy the full version - the choice it made were questionable at best, appalling at worst...
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