Musicovery: Music And Discovery
With a name that blends “music” and “discovery,” Musicovery is aptly monikered. A music suggestion engine with a visually oriented interface, Musicovery lets the user sample music by genre and mood.
It’s rather easy to get the hang of Musicovery, but that’s because it’s so visual. Starting at the left Musicovery console, users are able to select the feel of their music. Energetic, dark, positive, or calm are the labeled points on the Musicovery mood map, but they understand that moods are rarely just dark or positive, so they give you the option of clicking in between for better mood suiting. Next you can click the genre of music you are interested in (or genres), and you will see a map generate on the right, with song bubbles in various colors with lines between them. The lines are links from one song to another generated by linking within the Musicovery engine, but what you’ll find more interesting is how the map changes quickly with your input. Change a genre and the color changes. Click a song and the map adjusts to show your new center of the map – your song, which is now playing. Controls for the music, such as bookmarking, pause, fast forward, and volume are in the song bubble, as are one click links to purchase.
Now that you’ve got the basics, you’ll be thinking of how too tweak this, move beyond the simple find and play, and start customizing. On the console you can see a slider bar to narrow your focus by decade, and on the top a narrowing bar that specifies the range of your music search. Click closest to the heart icon and you’ll only see only what you’ve bookmarked (premium members only), and closest to the magnifying glass you will get the widest range of search including uncommon tracks.
The benefit of Musicovery is that it truly does let you discover music by your mood, either by specifying the tone of the music directly or narrowing your search, but it is not without a few sticking points. The interface is effective, though we noticed a tendency for our preferences to slip to nearby categories. This may be the Musicovery engine compensating for music not in the database, which could send users that have specific tastes elsewhere. Someone looking for Latin and Country or World and Rock, for example, may find better results with one of the larger databases. Another problem facing Musicovery is bookmarking. Where we can sympathize with the need to monetize, bookmarking a few songs is not enough of a reason to pay a monthly fee of four dollars.
The good news is that the console is always there for you, helping you modify your listening, and making Musicovery a fun experience. Even without the ability to bookmark, Musicovery does exactly as the name says: it helps you discover music. Find Musicovery and other music suggestion engines with the Listio search discover+music.
Previously in this series: Pandora: Music Genome Project And Suggestion Site
Next in this series: Jango: Music Suggestion And Networking
Application: MusicoveryListio Profile: http://www.listio.com/web20/app/Musicovery/
Website: http://www.musicovery.com
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Tags: discovery, genre, mood, music, search, visual
Posted in: Music Suggestion | Respond
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August 12th, 2008 at 10:11 am
i read your article..the things you have written sound very sincere and nice topics i am looking forward to its continuation.