Mufin, an automated music recommendation engine that actually works (most of the time), has released a new native media player in public beta. The player includes a powerful recommendation engine based on technology developed at the Fraunhofer Institute, allowing users to quickly generate playlists similar to any song they have in their library. The player is for Windows only at the moment, but Mac users can still try out the recommendation technology at Mufin.com, which launched to the public in November. You can see a full list of the new player’s features here
Mufin’s core technology is based on finding recommendations based on knowing a few songs that you like. Unlike Apple’s Genius feature, which creates recommendations based on aggregate data compiled from user listening habits, Mufin actually analyzes the sound file itself, ‘listening’ to 40 audio characteristics as it tries to recommend similar songs. In my testing the service has usually worked surprisingly well, though there are sometimes a few bizarre results. Oftentimes these apparent errors actually do share characteristics with the original song I used to gather recommendations, but they are very obscure and sometimes in a completely different genre (which is both the blessing and the curse of using such audio-based recommendation engines).
Mufin’s new player incorporates this recommendation technology, alongside a standard set of features that you’d expect from a modern audio player. Beyond creating the recommended song playlists, Mufin’s Player also brings a new twist to music management by allowing users to sort their songs by the way they sound (versus by song title or artist name). But aside from that I’m not sure if there’s a compelling reason to use it over iTunes at this point, especially since you can download a Mufin plugin to integrate the site’s audio recommendations into Apple’s music player (though the plugin is limited to creating playlists, and doesn’t allow users to sort by sound).
LOVE that name. Brand people rejoice.
Great job, mufin man.
I find the name and logo amazing as well
You are easily amazed.
gotta admit its pretty good
freefreebiefinder.com/
Wow…not mufin. LOL whats up with all of the names being made up after food? Come one now
who cares… like why would i want this. i have itunes; i don’t need to fuck around with shit to fuck around with it. it doesn’t do anything except try to be cute.
the ucon is good; otherwise…WTF?
is this like some german experiment from one of the universities..
word up motherfucker…. u late to the recommendation industry. silly con gots lots of reco mendo companies like gracenote for one.
How many of these recommendation startups do we need to see? I wish TechCrunch would do a 6 month follow up on their news (PostCrunch?); remember theFilter, and all the hype around that?
Pandora/iLike are the only ones that have mind share… nice try mufin, but this isn’t going to work out for you.
Their music player looks alot like Songbird.
I got all excited and then found out that it was PC only
Are you sure? looks like it was done on Adobe AIR
You are right, wow how stupid from them
I actually like recommendation websites, but as someone mentioned above, how many music recommendation sites do we need to see? Am convinced with Pandora and that’s on my laptop, my desktop and everywhere.. quite sufficient for me. Good luck, Mufin.
Being a recommendation fan, am all for some innovative technologies on this area. One website that is close on this is Cruxle (http://www.cruxle.com) that recommends across media. I tried it out and it works well across music, movies, television shows, books, videos. I’ll keep an eye on it — this company has potential. Let me know if you guys are aware of any such innovative companies.
downloading now, lets see what they got. seems its not so much about recommending new stuff but about how to organizing your existing music better
I’m loving Mufin! Every once in a while, TechCrunch really posts a gem.
http://tr.im/gQS7
Are people not happy with Pandora? I like these recommendation engines and have been very happy with Pandora so I really have no reason to switch. Besides no mac player lost my interest.
the problem with pandora is that it is us only. and actually there´s more people living outside the us than in the us in this world
Tristan and Brian and the rest of their team at The Echo Nest have been doing music recommendations that incorporate signal analysis for a long time. I use their echotron service and really like it a lot. My acid test for a music recommendation service is this: if I type in Kings of Convenience and (a) the service knows about this band and (b) it doesn’t recommend Simon and Garfunkel, then I’m interested. Otherwise, it’s bound to disappointing.
http://echotron.com/
Here is the better recommendation list for Kings of Convenience .. http://tinyurl.com/az23gb
I like the recommendations. However, I notice that it shows entirely different recommendations for the same song from different albums.
Looks nice and recommendations seem to work, however neither the player nor the iTunes plugin seem to be stable enough to be actually used at this point. Have to wait a few versions for them to work.
Looks like it has some cool features and the name is catchy. I’m definitely going to watch this one. I liiiike!
When it is coming for Mac officially.
I find the name and logo amazing as well
Have to wait a few versions for them to work.