On-line Radio & Player

 revised by Billy Simpson

Description

• About

• Choose Your MOOD

• Musicovery has created a graphical interface on which the mood is defined by two axes - dark / positive and calm / energetic. Axes are continuous and progressive, and thus offers an infinite range of moods.

• Find the Songs fitting Your Mood

• As every song has a specific position on the mood pad, when rolling over the mood pad, music samples are played, allowing the listener to intuitively find the mood and the music he wants and to launch the program from the desired position.

• Customize the Service

• A Playlist is created based on the choice of the listener (genres, decades) and ratings (positive "I like it", negative).

Access

• Free Account vs. Musicovery Premium Link

• Heart/ ban your favorite songs
• Keep track of your smart radios 

• Musicovery Premium Terms of Contract Link

• Hifi sound quality
• listen to favorite songs only
• unlimited number of skips 

Sample Usage

• MusicMap Experiment  

• MusicMap Displaying All Genres
• MusicMap Displaying All Genres Minus Rock

Tips, tricks, and tutorials

• You are able to explore mood playlists without an account, but if you would like to save and share your favorite songs/ artists you must register for an account.
• Like Pandora (free version), in Musicovery (free version) you are only able to skip 5 songs before you are no longer allowed to progress through the song list. 
• Verify the price, I focused on the free version, was unclear about Musicovery Premium version's pricing and didn't investigate very deeply. 
• MusicMap Disclaimer
• Mapping music by likes discussion

What the Tool Does Well

• The user experience is truly simple, intuitive and playful as the creators proposed.
• A widget for playing favorite songs can be embedded in other web pages. 
• There is a free iphone app.
• User Interface allows user to view songs coming up on the playlist, unlike Pandora
• Allows you to choose music by mood, i.e. romantic dinner, creative design, or classical relaxation 

What it Does Poorly

• A Premium account is required to enjoy the services Interactivity (decide what level of familiarity you want for you playlist), ratings from other users.
• The free account can only get low-Fi music from the website.(The iphone app is Hi-Fi.)
• Delay between songs and applications shuts down frequently as confirmed by reviews. 
• Only allots 10-11 songs before you have to select a new mood (free version). 
• You are only able to skip 5 songs, then you have to let the playlist finish. 
• Mood may seem limited to some users. Only available spectrums is dark/ positive and calm/ energetic. Knowing where certain classifications judge music could be cloudy. 

What happens when you...

• What are some uses of it that are perhaps unanticipated by the company?  

• The MusicMap experiment could be cross-referenced with the "Visualizing Instagram" study by Hochman and Shwartz to see popular choices of color correlate with popular moods in music within similar regions. 

• How might a user challenge the tool's systems & affordances rather than simply accepting it at face value?

• An evolutionary use of such aggregated MusicMap information could be used in a restaurant setting to determine the overall music mood of your diners. Each diner would select a particular mood of music as they are forced to wait for a short while as their table is being prepared. The MusicMap would be able to provide music closely related to each other by artist and mood as it is inputted by diners. 

Additional Resources

• Music-Map
• Music Mapping 
• ATT Research - MusicMap 
• TheMusicBed 
• Pandora