Music search and recommendation tool Mufin is opening to everyone this morning. The service, which launched in private beta in early October, lets you find music that's similar to a track you know based on a scientific analysis of its composition.
New on Thursday is both a Facebook app and the previously mentioned iTunes plug-in that scans your library to give you recommendations. Unlike Apple's "Genius" analyzer system in iTunes, Mufin actually scans your tracks for relational relevance instead of giving you an aggregate hodge-podge of recommendations based on the playlists and purchases of iTunes users. The only catch here is that you're limited to Mufin's relatively small 4 million-song database, which is roughly half that of iTunes.
Users are also getting the option to save playlists and notes--the service's equivalent to a shopping list. Previously these would disappear between sessions, which kept it from doubling as an ad-hoc music streaming tool.
As for the Facebook application, it's little more than a widget that lets you search for tracks without leaving the social network. It does however give you a "discovery wall," which lets you share and view tracks bookmarked by friends--similar to the MySpace version that was available back at launch. If you're looking for something a little more anonymous, the Mufin team is now providing weekly recommendations for music to look out for, although you'll have to purchase them off-site.
Previously: Mufin lets you discover new music with science
Note: The iTunes plug-in is currently Windows-only. You can download it here (.EXE warning). Here's what it looks like:
The new iTunes plug-in scans your library and offers up song recommendations based on musical similarities. (click to enlarge)
(Credit: Mufin )
Launching in private beta on Wednesday is Mufin, a Berlin-based music discovery service that helps users find similar tracks based on identifiers within a song. It scans each track for its density, tempo, and rhythm, then draws comparisons with other songs that match. What you get is a system that lets you find similar tracks by sound, even if they cross multiple genres.
Last week I chatted with Petar Djekic, the service's marketing manager, about this process and its origins. What's interesting is that it's a spinoff from the technology that was created to identify songs from short clips--the same thing that's found in Midomi and Shazam. The difference here is that songs must first be worked through a cataloging process that takes just a few seconds to scan a 10 to 20-track album.
The information gets fed into a massive search engine which assigns a percentage of similarity from track to track. It can also do the same for albums, so if you're in love with the specific work from an artist you can see other entire albums you might like.
You might have wondered what other songs are similar to Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up.' Mufin knows.
(Credit: CNET Networks)You might be asking yourself how this could be at all useful in an age where two of the highest profile MP3 players (iPod and Zune) now have built-in recommendation tools both on the player hardware and computer software. Djekic's answer to this is that both of these solutions, as well as those found on Last.fm and Amazon.com, are all based on user behavior. You can get similar tracks, but not without some effort either on your end or that of other users. Djekic says anyone can simply come to Mufin with their existing library and get a list of related tracks without having to make friends or provide ratings.
In addition to its search tool, Mufin provides a playlist creator for tracks that have streaming rights. You can't share these playlists with anyone else (yet), but you can save them for later, as well as pop them out in their own window to play while you're off doing other things. If you're more keen to own the tracks the service is integrated with iTunes, and soon Amazon's MP3 store, so you can buy what you like.
Mufin is a really cool and handy service. There are already 3.8 million tracks in the catalog, which is growing rapidly. It's currently in private beta, although we've got 100 invites to give out. To get yours, visit the service through this link.
Note: Last.fm is owned by CNET parent company CBS Interactive.
Note 2: Information regarding album processing times has been amended. It was originally stated that it took 2-3 days to process an album, whereas that's how long it takes to be fed into Mufin's search index.
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