Webware

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.

If you're a person who loves live music but hates having to keep up on when your favorite bands are coming into town, there's a great new service for you. It's called Songkick, and it's been designed to help you stay on top of upcoming concert dates, as well as discover new music from your existing tastes. It's making a complicated process wonderfully simple, and I expect it to be the next big thing in live music in the same way that Last.fm and Pandora were with prerecorded music tracks.

To figure out what you like in the first place, the service makes it easy by letting you import the library data from iTunes, Winamp, or Windows Media player using a small plug-in. That same plug-in will also update the data if you add new music to your collection.

Each artist has a page on Songkick that lists some similar bands as well as pricing and direct links to buy the tickets from 17 different vendors. Users can also leave comments (called "two cents") about a band, although CEO Ian Hogarth told me they might add a bona fide rating system to complement it later on. Also on artist pages, and an integral part of the service is the blog listing guide. Songkick will scour the web and pull up any references to the band or artist in blog posts. These show up in reverse-chronological order on the band page, and can be toggled with upcoming tour dates.

Battle of the bands tracks three different bands of your choice against MySpace activity and sales data. (Click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

To compliment the band mentions on blog posts there's a really great service the team has built called battle of the bands. Like Alexa and Compete, battle of the bands lets you compare up to three bands together to see which one's been the most "hot" in the past five weeks based on various interactions on MySpace as well as mentions in blog posts, and the Amazon.com sales rank. The system is built to accept other streams of data, so if and when Facebook begins to make the data on artist pages a little more transparent, those numbers could be integrated into the stats too.

This third leg of the service, called "BandSense" is a very novel concept. Bloggers who want to opt into the service can embed a line of Javascript into a single post or their entire blog template and get links to bands at the bottom of a post if they're mentioned. It's not just any a link spamming option, the service will only create links for bands only that are on tour. Clicking the band link in the blog goes straight to the tour dates and ticket pricing information, and if a user buys a ticket, the blog owner gets a cut. To compliment the system and keep bands you don't like (but mentioned) off your blog, you can create a blacklist. These blacklisted artists will get no such link love.

In the future Hogarth tells me there will be music integration on the Songkick band pages as well as the recommendations so you can listen to some tracks without having to navigate offsite. The only delay has been finding a way to do it democratically with all of the music hosting services out there. Songkick already has integration on partnered sites like Qloud and Seeqpod, and in the future intends to spread its tour date and recommendation engine even further.

The folks over at Trademork have uncovered a trademark filed by the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) for the name "SoundUnwound." In the description, IMDb lists the potential future service as:

"Providing information regarding, and in the nature of, social networking services; online social networking services designed for people with a common desire to meet other people with similar interests; Social networking services for music enthusiasts."

While IMDb is currently limited to movies, TV shows, and other visual mediums, it's also expanded into a resume service as well as offering video games. The company is owned by Amazon.com, which just happens to be a massively popular music provider, both for optical media as well as digital downloads. While Amazon hasn't released sales numbers since the launch of their DRM-free music service in late September, what's a better way to leverage a large catalog than with an integrated user community? IMDb is already selling movies inside their site, using Amazon.com's catalog and kicking users off via affiliate links. The same could easily be done with Amazon's music catalog, which is to be expected of SoundUnwound.

What's a bit interesting is that Amazon hasn't chosen to simply pick up one of the current sites that are offering social matching based on music taste, including iLike, Last.fm, and MyStrands (which incidentally took $24M in funding this morning); the first two of which have successful Facebook apps in addition to their own communities. Amazon must be looking to either provide deeper integration or leverage their own account system, which would let users buy music without requiring a separate registration. Stay tuned.