The Filter for iTunes: "Better than shuffle"

Filed under: Audio, Utilities, Windows, Apple, Freeware

The Filter for iTunes: "Better than shuffle"

by Jordan Running (RSS feed) Oct 11th 2006 at 4:48PM

The Filter boasts quite a lot. Its tagline is "creates perfect playlists from your iTunes library," and its web site says it's "better than your shuffle button!" What The Filter is is a plugin for iTunes (Windows version only for now, Mac coming soon) that generates playlists when you select a few songs and click on the big black "F" button. Like many programs, The Filter claims to excel at building playlists based on your mood. I gave The Filter a try and found that it's actually not too shabby. I selected a few songs that I thought would go well together in a playlist and it filled out the rest of the playlist with songs that fit in pretty well. While not every one was one that I would have picked myself, none of them seemed out of place, and after all, The Filter touts its ability to help you rediscover music that you'd all but forgotten you had. Like Pandora and other services, The Filter learns from your listening habits and tweaks your playlist based on which tracks you skip and which ones you listen to all the way through. I've tried a number of products that claim to do what The Filter does, but most of them either didn't work very well or were far too complex. The Filter is the first one that really seems both smart enough and simple enough to really give a shot.

Tags: filter, free, freeware, generator, itunes, music, playlist, the filter, TheFilter, windows

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Seven of Nine said 4:57AM on 10-12-2006

iTunes is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.

Enrique said 6:43PM on 10-14-2006

I played around with this yesterday and there are not nearly enough options available. I gave Filter a Led Zeppelin song, and it decided that I wanted to listen to (among other great songs on my iTunes) Denis Leary's standup. So ... I'm in the middle of a 20 minute rock block when all of a sudden Denis Leary starts yelling at me (and this wasn't the A$$hole song either...) about beer and coffee - I love listening to standup, but not when I'm trying to make a playlist based on music.

I wasn't able to find a way to exclude specific genres (ie - Comedy...) which pretty much made the program worthless for me.

Jigsaw hc said 4:57PM on 10-12-2006

I'm trying this out now and it looks like the playlist it generated was pretty good. I'll give it a full run-through to really see.

Zach said 11:33AM on 10-15-2006

I tried this out, and it seems like a pretty nice app. I do have a few complaints like the inability to exclude by genre. Also, the fact that the Filter player or toolbar player is always on top, and I can't seem to change that. Otherwise, infinitely better than the built in shuffle.

Queen of the Damned said 3:08PM on 11-07-2006

Must say that since I saw the cartoon for The Filter it piqued my curiousity. Must say I can't fault The Filter.

http://www.thefilter.com/video.html

Shame about the Dennis Leary incident, but I've not had any mishaps - and the playlist I made for when I go running will probably result in a heart attack as it picks stuff which make me not want to stop!

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