Comments on: "Oh, I own that song?"

"Oh, I own that song?"

beaucoupkevin — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:07:50 -0800

Peter Gabriel has introduced a new iTunes plugin for Windows XP called The Filter. Using the All Music Guide in a fashion similar to Pandora, the software builds playlists from your library for you after you select a few tracks. Their marketing copy tells you that you should "Prepare to be reengaged and reinvigorated by your iTunes library."

OS X, WinAMP, and WMP versions are slated for the near future.

By: beaucoupkevin

beaucoupkevin — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:09:50 -0800

Oh yeah, it's free. At least I can't find a cost...

By: three blind mice

three blind mice — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:18:06 -0800

How often have you had your iPod on shuffle and ended up on the treadmill listening to Joy Division instead of Basement Jaxx? Never, ever.

By: mds35

mds35 — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:23:01 -0800

Joy Division is great workout music. "Dance dance dance dance dance to the radio!"

By: dsquid

dsquid — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:27:49 -0800

We have to wait for an OSX version? Oh the irony...

By: boaz

boaz — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:32:18 -0800

Rock Stars: Is there anything they can't do? But seriously, what's the connection here? At first glance, it seems like The Filter is a plugin made by All Music Guide, not Peter Gabriel. AFAICS, The plugin isn't mentioned on PG's site and PG isn't mentioned on the plugin site.

By: Biblio

Biblio — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:33:07 -0800

Peter Gabriel is already messing with my ipod. I have over 400 songs, so how come in a 30 minute period last night the shuffle pulled up 3 songs from his Passion album?

By: spicynuts

spicynuts — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:33:37 -0800

Maybe it's not THAT Peter Gabriel? Seriously though, I hate the iPod shuffle mode and I also hate making my own playlists from the six billion songs I have so I'm willing to give this a shot.

By: beaucoupkevin

beaucoupkevin — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:34:56 -0800

Original article where Gabriel's name was invoked.

By: beaucoupkevin

beaucoupkevin — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:35:46 -0800

Oops, here's the copy: Peter Gabriel is ushering in the second wave of the digital revolution by backing a new piece of software that the creators claim will change the way we listen to archived music. Gabriel won the Pioneer Award at the recent Digital Music Awards, and has been at the forefront of musical innovation from his championing of world music and embracing of video technology right up to his current digitial innovations. "The Filter" is a free piece of downloadable software, which say the makers, will organize your ipod record collection into intuitive playlists at the click of a mouse. The programme scans your iTunes library using Artificial Intelligence – as it gets better at judging your tastes, it is said it will even playlist according to your mood. On the new generation of AI software, Peter Gabriel, says, "The first wave of the digital revolution was about the freedom of choice, trying to make everything accessible to anyone, anyplace, anytime. I think the second wave will be about freedom from choice. It will be able to filter and focus so that you get more of what you want."

By: mkb

mkb — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:36:49 -0800

Sweet, a FPP that counts as work time for me! I can't find the connection to Peter Gabriel. He's not listed on the Filter site and the filter isn't listed on his site.

By: mkb

mkb — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:37:40 -0800

Blarg, never mind then!

By: CynicalKnight

CynicalKnight — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:43:03 -0800

Peter Gabriel writing code now, is he? Hmmmm? Accessing Windows API's? Squeezing out a few global variables? Maybe, ah, you know, putting together a little database? Hmmm? A little indexing to primary and secondary keys? Perhaps a little UI action there, Peter? Radio buttons, eh? Selection boxes? Some greyed out, some active? Huh? State machine?

By: mkb

mkb — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:46:54 -0800

He's almost certainly just a financial backer/evangelist. The software itself is developed by Exabre.

By: dw

dw — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:47:48 -0800

You'll need to talk to Youssour N'Dour. He did the UI. Peter did the back-end.

By: Gungho

Gungho — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:48:23 -0800

Nice that PG has some work. Must be boring putting out a new album every six to ten years. Hey Peter, never mind the iPod just get back in the studio. OTOH if this will prevent me from sliding into and out of music genres in shuffle that would be cool.

By: matthewr

matthewr — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:50:42 -0800

Peter Gabriel is a co-founder of OD2, a UK rival to iTunes which allows MSN and others to stick their branding on OD2's product to create the MSN Music Store etc.

By: justkevin

justkevin — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:52:20 -0800

The details are a little sketchy, but this sounds like what I've been looking for in an Mp3 player-- something that figures out what music is appropriate for a situation based on my history. I even wrote my own using Winamp and MySQL, but something that was integrated into the player would be even better. Anyone tried this yet? Does it actually work?

By: hal9k

hal9k — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:03:12 -0800

Hello, I'm a Mac so I can't check this out. But it reminded me of Todd Rundgren who made a mix CD for Mac or PC back around 1993: No World Order. You'd choose tempo, mood, maybe even color and hit play. The software would pull x bars of y tunes and string them together. Pull the bridge from one song and flow into the chorus of another without skipping a beat. No two sessions were alike. Not all of it was ambient either. Loaned it to a friend. Never saw it again.

By: mkb

mkb — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:04:50 -0800

Gungho: It's not like he was totally idle between 92 and 2002. He released two full soundtracks (Long Walk Home and Ovo), and probably another album's worth of material for other soundtracks (some excellent, some not worth mentioning)

By: FreezBoy

FreezBoy — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:23:13 -0800

I downloaded and tried it last week. There are some privacy concerns - it scans your collection, reports back to and gets info from the Mothership, will use your data for various purposes, etc. That being said, when selecting 3 very different song types to base a playlist upon - from A Perfect Circle, Sufjan Stevens and Mel Torme - it generated a quite listenable mix using various songs from my collection.

By: Fezboy!

Fezboy! — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:26:04 -0800

Hey, not too shabby. It bridges Combustible Edison, Plaid, Fortyone, and Dean Elliot quite nicely. Thanks!

By: Armitage Shanks

Armitage Shanks — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:31:21 -0800

I have over 400 songs, so how come in a 30 minute period last night the shuffle pulled up 3 songs from his Passion album? Steven Levy on the iPod shuffle feature:

From the results of this admittedly nonscientific survey, it appeared that nearly everybody's iPod seemed to have a favourite artist, or two, or three. Or, they believed, when their iPod performed a shuffle, it would decide which artist it was in the mood for and then flood the listening session with that performer's works. After I wrote about the Steely Dan problem in Newsweek, my inbox was flooded with emails - iPod owners were taking serious note of what happens in shuffle, and virtually all of them seemed to think that something funny was happening. A lot of them felt compelled to report their theories to me.

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:34:05 -0800

Oh no, not Steely Dan again: for those of you who unimpressed with the shuffle function of your iPods, here's an interesting article from The Guardian.

By: verb

verb — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:35:51 -0800

Just ran it through my relatively large 20,000 MP3 collection. (It makes me kind of sick when I realize they're all legal, but that's another matter). It's certainly not as perfect as a hand-rolled playlist, but it's easily the best automated system I've used. It's not so much a 'better shuffle' as it is a way of grabbing lists of songs that share elements. You can tell it to build you a playlist based on similarities to a given song, a given artist, or a given genre. I like it. A lot.

By: micayetoca

micayetoca — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:36:26 -0800

Damn, Armitage. Didn't see you coming.

By: bashos_frog

bashos_frog — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:41:24 -0800

Trying it now - so far, pretty decent. Hopefully it will get a mite better as it learns.

By: Armitage Shanks

Armitage Shanks — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:42:22 -0800

Damn, Armitage. Didn't see you coming. It can't be random, I tell you!

By: QuietDesperation

QuietDesperation — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:01:55 -0800

I want to find a way to choose the music I want to listen to from what I own. Oh, wait, I have that. Never mind.

By: mkb

mkb — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:05:05 -0800

FreezBoy: It probably reports to the mothership because the AMG dataset is mindbendingly huge, and correlating all the releases is incredibly time-consuming to do in real-time.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:41:01 -0800

I'm writing a program that makes a playlist by filtering the Filter playlists and every third song will be a text to voice news article or obituary. If you listen between 5-12GMT there will be commercials and song repeats. I am going to call it MetaFilter.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:47:04 -0800

Hello, I'm a Mac -- hal9k Can't fool me. You're a supercomputer. Oh, I give them points for wit on the download page. Peter Gabriel on CNN 2 years ago: The future should be [that] you can get anything, anytime, from wherever you are, anywhere, and whoever you are, whatever country, whatever language you speak. And then the question that is fundamental to me that follows that as day follows night, is how do I actually filter the stuff, how do I really get to the stuff that means something to me? And that you can only do with an intelligent filter systems, and we were beginning to look at that with OD2 and I'm sure we'll continue. It's something that interests me a lot because you have limited time, and you don't want, like with e-mail, you don't want all of the junk, you just want the bits that have some meaning for you.

By: dreamsign

dreamsign — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:51:37 -0800

This is sweet. I hate making playlists.

By: joecacti

joecacti — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:52:17 -0800

Two thumbs up. Very cool, and thanks. Best of the web.

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:52:18 -0800

I'm using it now, but it seems to be having an incredibly difficult time recognizing that what I want is uptempo. If I want specific artists or genres, those are playlists I can easily make for myself. I want to be able to create playlists of happy or melancholy or loud or whatever, and it doesn't seem in tune with that.

By: NoMich

NoMich — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 10:07:18 -0800

Doesn't beatunes do this very thing? I may be mistaken though, but it does sound similar. Plus beatunes is already compatible with OS X.

By: grahamwell

grahamwell — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:09:23 -0800

The Peter Gabriel connection is, among other things, the city of Bath - home of Gabriel, Exabre and site of Solsbury Hill. The Filter is great. Previously known as iCueMix, it has been in development and slowly released to the world over the last eighteen months. Exabre themselves are good guys. They made a fortune with Baysean recommendation engines for shopping websites. The Filter brings that know-how to music, it's not entirely clear that it will ever pay. To see a debug trace of the Filter at work is just amazing. Be patient with it. It does take some time to build a working index and to understand what you like. There are still some bugs. If you have a big, rambling iTunes library it's wonderful.

By: wendell

wendell — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:29:35 -0800

I can't believe nobody has made this comment yet: FilterFilter.

By: Loudmax

Loudmax — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:27:18 -0800

The future should be [that] you can get anything, anytime, from wherever you are, anywhere, and whoever you are, whatever country, whatever language you speak. Yes, and any operating system or software platform please. I'm not sure what Exabre's business model is, but if they're giving away their software for free, they might consider releasing it open source.

By: Tenuki

Tenuki — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:53:10 -0800

Reminds me of that wonderful bygone website, firefly.com

By: vronsky

vronsky — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:04:42 -0800

fyi - If you look in iTunes preferences under playback, you will see something called smart shuffle. Depending on how this is set is how often you will hear songs from the same artist.

By: homodigitalis

homodigitalis — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 15:00:59 -0800

Tried it and it made some weird playlists. I wanted some suggestions regarding a Soundtrack (Thin Red Line by Hans Zimmer) - that automatic playlist included Pop Muzik from M and Open your Eyes by Guano Apes. That's what I call a strange mixture.

By: infowar

infowar — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 15:27:04 -0800

Thanks NoMich. I've been looking for a free auto BPM app. Apps like the Filter will end up in the hands of the distribution cartel. That's what their business model should be. Flooding the market with cheap music and then selling a service for recommending selections. At least in my rarebit dreams.

By: arto

arto — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:27:39 -0800

Yes, and any operating system or software platform please. I'm not sure what Exabre's business model is, but if they're giving away their software for free, they might consider Toreleasing it open source. Amarok, for Linux (and presumably other Unixy OSes) does something similar to this plugin, and it's open-source. The UI for recommendationy goodness is a little clunky, though.

By: StrangeTikiGod

StrangeTikiGod — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:49:54 -0800

Anyone else getting an error about the Filter server cannot be found? Cuz I am. Phooey.

By: dnash

dnash — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:03:45 -0800

StrangeTikiGod - yes I'm getting that too. It seems to take that to mean I'm using a proxy server and asks for the proxy address, but I'm not. Thanks for asking that, I'm glad to know it's not just me!

By: StrangeTikiGod

StrangeTikiGod — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:12:03 -0800

dnash...I'm re-downloading the installation file for iTunes...the only thing I spotted on the support page was that there were occasionally issues with iTunes 7, and reinstalling it may remove them. Unfortunately, Apple's download server seems to be taking for-freaking-ever.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 18:00:53 -0800

I love this feature in Amarok... so much so that it's now the house's primary music-player, and I can't think where I'd use this itunes version. But I'll probably grab it anyway. Maybe I can get them to fight....

By: HyperBlue

HyperBlue — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:02:34 -0800

Anything that makes itunes more functional on a pc is welcomed. I swear Apple makes itunes clunk on the pc on purpose. This_is_good.

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:31:55 -0800

It can't be random, I tell you! Yeah, I would settle for a truly random music grabber, but apparently that's difficult. I haven't tried iTunes/iPods much, but none of the other players I have tried do it very well either.

By: Slarty Bartfast

Slarty Bartfast — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 21:16:54 -0800

dnash and StrangetikiGod, Are you still getting that Filter not found error? I'm assuming it's a problem on their end and I should just wait it out... ps. im using itunes 6, itunes 7 sucked hard when i installed it.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 00:32:07 -0800

"Prepare to be reengaged and reinvigorated by your iTunes library." I'm not entirely sure why this makes me want to stab someone in the eye, but it does. I am wanting to stab!

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 02:17:38 -0800

you're misreading it stavros. It's reengaged not reenraged.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 10:35:14 -0800

I like the playlists this creates, but I hate the RAM it sucks into its bottomless maw. My system is slow enough already. I'm also thinking of backing out to iTunes 6. Ever since I upgraded, every song change is accompanied by five seconds of judder. Is it too much to ask it to pre-fetch? iTunes knows what's coming next.

By: caution live frogs

caution live frogs — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 20:13:38 -0800

Except 7 finally (!) allows gapless playback. Makes me happier when listening to mix sets - no more inane gaps between songs. For that I can put up with iTunes 7. It also changed one of the more annoying menu items - I believe it now says "delete" instead of "clear" on Windows.

By: aristan

aristan — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 21:42:29 -0800

Using the latest version of itunes7, which I reinstalled, and the latest The Filter (I hate products with articles in the name). Sadly, after reinstalling everything involved, The Filter still doesn't work. Keep getting the 'The Filter Service Can't Be Found' error. Seems like a great idea, hopefully it'll work one day.