Playlists? Na, Life's Too Short!

I've never been a fan of building playlists for my music player, it's just too time consuming. I'm not a DJ and life's just too short to bother having to sort out what I want to listen to so what I do is either just play an entire album or select a genre or artist and then select the shuffle option. But now, there's another way to do it…

The Filter

The Filter is a free plug-in for iTunes that will create playlists for you. All you need to do is pick a few tracks in iTunes and The Filter will build a playlist to suit the mood and tone of the selected tracks.

The iPod Filler function will also create playlists for specific activities, such as getting to work or going to the gym and it'll refresh those playlists each and every time you sync your player. Creating these mixes is easy, all you need to do is plug in your music player and press the iPod icon in the bottom left hand side of The Filter. This will bring up a window where you can control how you want your mixes built.

When you first install it, it cross-references its index of your music collection with other behavioural data it has online. Based on this, it uses a magic algorithm to produce playlists as required. Obviously it will have some trouble with untitled tracks and those with no ID3 tags but those are pretty rare nowadays.

Versions for Mac OS X iTunes and Windows Media Player are due for release in December but you can download the Windows iTunes version now. There's also the possibility of a Winamp version in the future too. They recommend that you have at least 200 tracks in your library to get the best out of the system and you'll also need a broadband connection.

Audiobaba

Again, this one's still in development and Audiobaba is also a free plug-in for iTunes and Media Player. It uses music analysis technology to improve three of the main issues pertaining to your music experience. First, it generates instant, personalized playlists based on your existing music collection. Second, it provides an AutoGJ auto dj function that actually learns about you as you listen to your music. Third, it provides you with relevant, personal online recommendations for other songs based on the song currently playing in your media player.

Although other solutions have addressed these issues in the past, they say their Triple Play Analysis™ technology takes into account the underlying acoustic wave pattern of music, what the software has learned about you while observing your listening habits, and various subjective "Human Factors".

It's Windows only at the moment but they're working on a Mac version - no known release date though.