App Freebie: Genius-y Moodagent As Confused As A Chameleon On A Pile Of Skittles

Eli Milchman ()

App Freebie: Genius-y Moodagent As Confused As A Chameleon On A Pile Of Skittles App Freebie: Genius-y Moodagent As Confused As A Chameleon On A Pile Of Skittles

Moodagent is one of those apps that seems like, at first glance, it’ll cure world hunger, or abruptly manifest all those single socks you’ve lost over the past seven years — a holy-crap,-I-just-gotta-have-this-app, app.

What it promises to do is create a custom playlist, culled from your collection, based on five settable criteria: sensuality, tenderness, joy, aggressiveness and tempo. Unfortunately, my pet chameleon could have created a more cohesive playlist (had I an actual pet chameleon — which I don’t, and had I days to spend waiting agonizingly while he crafted my custom playlist — which I also don’t).

As an example, in the screenshot above to the right, I’ve pushed three criteria to the max: tempo (extreme right), aggressiveness (middle) and joy (left); under the bars are the top-five songs of the quickly whipped-up playlist. Now, neither Tool’s “Sober” nor The Police’s “Synchronicity II” could, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered joyful; but even more horrible is that any playlist including both Tool and Kelly Clarkson within a few songs of each other could quite conceivably create a rift in the very fabric of space-time.

DON'T MISS
Automatically Add Lyrics To All Songs In Your iTunes Library [How To]

But it’s free. So check it out, may work for you.

4 comments »

About the author

Eli Milchman

When he was eight, Eli Milchman came home from frolicking in the Veld one day and was given an Atari 400. Since then, his fascination with technology has made him an intrepid early adopter of whatever charming new contraption crosses his path — which explains why he's Cult of Mac's technology editor. He calls San Francisco home, where he works as a journalist and photographer. Eli has contributed to the pages of Wired.com and BIKE Magazine, among others. Hang with him on Twitter.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by .

Posted in iPhone Apps, Reviews |

  • Andrew

    Brilliant. Moody (an app worth reminding the world about) for the iPhone.

  • http://www.syntonetic.com Richard French

    Eli,
    Thanks for reviewing Moodagent.

    Our app runs against the songs in your own personal music collection. Each playlist is made up of songs that most closely match the combination of all five sliders.

    In your example, it appears that Moodagent didn’t find many songs fitting that particular combination of slider settings. Did you try any other slider combinations or creating playlists based on a song?

    I’ve added this point to our FAQ. Interested in any other comments on Moodagent. Hope you’ll come see us at Macworld.

    Richard
    CEO Syntonetic, Inc.

  • Matt DiTrolio

    I’ve tried it, and you’re correct – it’s exactly as useless as you described. I understand their theory, but their implementation is severely lacking. It makes Genius playlists look fantastic by comparison.

  • http://www.superandrew.it suprandr

    To be honest, I find Moodagent a great implementation, but probably it depends on semantic (what do you mean with “joyful”? does it talk about smiles and have positive chords?) AND mostly on your library.

    I have a mostly rock/folk library (but I have the police as well :D ) and actually find that the app work very well in combining together songs. As a mere example, I go running with the two right sliders up to the top, and I assure, you have to keep a fast pace! :)