Feeling out your music can be more trouble than it’s worth. Getting in touch with your sensual, happy, or perhaps aggressive sides might lead to a quick trip to thesixtyone, but what if I told you there’s an easier way (with local music)? Moodagent by Syntonetic is a new favorite app of mine that accomplished just this. While I was initially turned off by the low ratings on the iTunes store, I’m gonna have to knock down these preposterous 3 to 3.5 star and knock it up to a 4.5. What makes this app such a winner for me? Read on to find out.
Moodagent works like this: It basically scans the music in your iPod’s library, calls home, and uses the information it gathers to decide how it should arrange your music when you start playing with your emotions. So if you’re feeling a little sexy, want to listen to some cheerful music, and you’re looking for a slow tempo, you can adjust the sliders, and after a second or so of deciding, Moodagent creates a playlist based on this information. It’s a really cool system that just works.
And the best part is that it’s visually attractive. The app lends itself to a great design, because it encourages touching things until you get into mood you want.
But the perks of this application go beyond just finding the right mood. If you’re not sure about what mood you want, but you know what song you want to start out with, you can browse through your library and select a “seed” song. Then Moodagent will compile a playlist based around that song’s mood. It’s very cool, and it works quite well. Like radio you can actually enjoy.
So what happens if you close the application down? The current song keeps playing, and you can access the iPod library at your leisure and do other things. The only minor downside is that when you go back into Moodagent, you might experience a very slight pause in music. While small, it’s annoying that it isn’t seamless. Your mileage may vary on faster models, as I’m reviewing with a 1st gen iPod Touch.
For free, Moodagent is a heck of a download. You get an amazing application that picks out music based on how you’re feeling, and I thought the selections were pretty boss. For such an excellent music picker (akin to Genius), I think it’s definitely worth giving a shot.
