Filed under: Audio, Web services, Mobile
Mufin launches public beta with Facebook and iTunes support; licenses patented audio ID technology
Last month I wrote about mufin.com's music discovery engine. Unlike traditional music discovery services like last.fm or the Genius Mode in iTunes 8, mufin analyzes the actual musical structure of a song. This is great for music lovers because it can really open up more opportunities to discover new bands.
Co-developed at the Fraunhofer Institute (the creators of the MP3 format), mufin uses audio recognition technology to analyze the actual musical characteristics of a song. Mufin creates a unique "fingerprint" for each song, using 40 characteristics like tempo, instruments, rhythm structure and sound density. Then, when you search for a song in mufin's database, an alogrithm compares the fingerprint of that song against the database and presents you with results of songs that are similar in structure.
Today, mufin is officially entering public beta. If you missed out on the private beta, you can now sign up for the service and give it a whirl. Even better, mufin's public beta now supports both Facebook and iTunes.
Mufin for Facebook is pretty similar to the existing mufin widget for MySpace. You have access to the mufin discovery engine and song catalog from within Facebook and you can add your discoveries to your profile or share them with friends.
Mufin for iTunes (currently Windows only) uses mufin's discovery engine to create playlists from your iTunes library. This is different from iTunes 8's built-in Genius Mode because it uses the song structure, not the meta-data or the iTunes Store catalog. This means you can now build a playlist around a Beatles song, or even a song from your friend's band.
The Mufin.com website has also received an update -- you can e-mail discovered tracks to friends, save playlists and note pads and look at the editorial recommendations from the mufin team.
Mufin is also announcing the licensing of its patented audio ID, navigation and recommendation technology to digital music stores, mobile service providers and mobile device vendors.
Four products are being licensed
- Mufin AudioScout - provides recommendations
- Mufin AudioID - it can identify music based on short audio samples, even from low quality recordings made on a mobile phone at a concert.
- Mufin AutoGen - instantly creates offline or online playlists
- Mufin Vision - vendors can allow customers to see their entire music collection in a single view
To me, this has lots of potential for device manufacturers and consumers. Mufin's technology is really impressive and really lends itself to mobile technology. The AudioID tech alone is a feature I've been clamoring for for the last 8 years (we're getting close, it's still not there).
Mufin.com is now in public beta and is free.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Roberto Carlos Gutiérrez Lemus said 1:42PM on 11-24-2008
good-good
Reply