Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Web services, Freeware, Windows x64
Music recommendation site Mufin releases desktop player
by Lee Mathews Feb 27th 2009 at 6:00PM
Once you install the player and show it the way to your stash of audio files, and it begins the (lengthy) process of examining each track's "sound fingerprint." It can take quite a while for Mufin to complete its analysis, so you might want to relax and check out some Time Wasters while it does its thing.
Suggestions can be made either from your own library or from Mufin.com. Now, they might not always right on target, but I'm not going to hold a grudge against a piece of software that can't find decent, non-Primus matches for a song like "Here Come the Bastards." Even if Mufin misses the mark now and then, it's still a great way to familiarize yourself with new artists.
Apart from recommendations, the player can also analyze a file for artist and track information using AuidioID. You can also let it auto-generate playlists based on a single track, and essential functions like ripping, burning, and copying tracks to an MP3 player are also included.
You'll need to register for an account in order to take full advantage of the player, so head over to Mufin, sign up, and download the player. More details about the desktop player are available at Mufin.com.
If you've tried it out, tell us what you think in the comments!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DeoWulf said 7:51PM on 2-27-2009
Muffin lead me to the awesome Norwegian band "The White Birch"... I think I owe this a fair try. Hope there's more great stuff to come.
Also, the first sentence of this post seems to have been accidentally butchered.
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DeoWulf said 8:57PM on 2-27-2009
Followup: The player crashed and burned after indexing only 27 or so files. It took Firefox down with it. I barely sent the error report to them when the Crashguard died too. Pretty colossal, overall. I'll wait to see if they update it...
Lee Mathews said 8:58PM on 2-27-2009
That's too bad...It did about 1400 songs on my test machine with no error...Windows 7 even...
DeoWulf said 10:28PM on 2-27-2009
It seemed to get hung up on some Audacity project files I had in my Music folder. I have no idea why it would do that.
DeoWulf said 10:32PM on 2-27-2009
Yup, tested it again, it's those Audacity files. The program seems to inexplicably want to read them, and then crashes. When I pull it back up again, it tells me that the files cause dangerous operating behavior and that I should move them to a different folder. Seriously, Mufin? You want me to move unrelated files out of my folders which I never told you to open? That's a tad ridiculous.
Muffin_man said 8:19PM on 2-27-2009
The name of this site pleases me.
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Jeff said 9:10PM on 2-27-2009
Another music discovery service to checkout is http://www.lastvid.com, it combines last.fm recommendations with youtube videos.
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El flee said 8:22AM on 2-28-2009
Well......Mufin took more than 3 hours to 'analyse' my collection. But that's what you get with 11GB collection of MP3s.
The suggestions it came up with from mufin.com were ok, if perhaps a little off. But most disappointingly, only a few were playable, and at that only for 30 seconds, which is not long enough to convince me to whip out my credit card. Thankfully there are other possibilities for listening to free and full length samples of unfamiliar artists.
The suggestions mufin suggested from my own, shall we say eclectic, collection were at least entertaining and wouldn't make a bad playlist. Although the connection between Tom Waits'-Underground and Kraftwerk's-Trans-Europe Express is not immediately clear.
The Audio-ID identification is pretty good, but the Free DB service is a waste of time, failing to identify even reasonably mainstream artists.
All in all mufin is fun and compiles entertaining playlists, but I'm not sure if it;s worth the 3 hour wait if you have an extensive music collection. To be honest I think last.fm is just a little better at suggesting new artists based on your musical taste (and easier). I don't think mufin will be hanging around on my hard drive too long.
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Cowman said 4:00AM on 3-01-2009
heh, anybody want a muffin?
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Bhansen99xj said 8:53AM on 3-03-2009
I like mufin, but, I do not like its lack of organizational attributes. Yes you can sort by title, yes you can sort by album, but you cannot, lets say, see only albums from the eagles, and chose one to burn. I just like options, and this really doesn't have many. I am giving it a shot though.
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Hammer32 said 9:59AM on 3-03-2009
I tried it some time ago, but then I returned to MusicIP (http://www.musicip.com) -- the best software for automatic playlist generation.
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crakpot said 3:16PM on 5-10-2009
I decided to try mufin player recently, i only used it on a small portion of my music collection, knowing full well most programs will not hold up to the amount of music i have. This 1 particular folder has around 108GB of music. After letting it run for several days, all it does is crash, crash, then crash some more..
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