I’ve been looking for something like this my whole life — and of course now that I’ve found it, I can’t have it. MusicBox is the Masters thesis project of MIT Media Lab student Anita. I’ve never been impressed with things like Coverflow and Genius because they seem so shallow; there’s so much metadata in and around our music libraries that something more robust should certainly be possible, I always thought. And look, someone like-minded but far more capable than myself has created a powerful, intuitive, and attractive tool for visualizing, sorting, and playing your music.
The idea behind MusicBox is that it analyzes every song for not only written metadata (artist, genre) but also beats per minute, length, tone, and a whole bunch of other semi-tangible quantities (check out the demonstration video). 
It then organizes them based on whatever axes you choose — looking for your short, fast-paced songs? They’ll be on the upper left if you tick “song length” and “tempo.” Want those songs that change up their beat? They’ll be on the left if you just tick “time signature stability.” It even puts together graphic previews of the songs, much like what I found when using a spectrum analyzer (documented here at my own blog).
Meanwhile, the interface is not only attractive and clean but functional and well laid-out. Selecting songs is as easy as clicking, or you can select multiple by means of a box (for entire areas), a circle (for finding songs like one in particular), or a line (for “drawing” a playlist, very cool”). All the usual media player controls are there and I’m sure such luxuries as a graphic equalizer or links to Amazon and iTunes could be easily added.
Can you imagine a scaled down version of this on your iPod Touch, or a full version on a media center with a big touchscreen? I don’t know what scale of data it’s pushing, but with a good web interface (Zune’s Social actually is the closest at the moment) it could be a real killer app. This type of interface has been touched on by many players, but it’s never looked this great or apparently worked so well. I really hope someone swoops down on this lady’s excellent work and gives her a sweet job for life.
[via Reddit]
This looks like the perfect software for a music nut with lots of categories and songs to navigate through.
There must be someway to convince her to distribute this software. I would not mind paying upwards of $40 for a copy of this.
So, basically that is the SICKEST thing i have seen in a long time!! Can’t wait.
… btw.. how sweet is it, that in her video, the last two songs plaid are gangsta rap! I would love to see the face on the MIT proff who grades it… def. extra credit!!!
Someone needs to get Anita on the phone and ask her price.
This is the sort of thing all of us music lovers with 100+GB of are looking for: a smart way of visualizing our collections, and some really cool ways of engaging it.
I would pay for this. No doubt about it. The ability to draw a path through the collection, and have it update the playlist is worth it alone.
And being able to assign a random walk, then dial in the degree of randomness?
Lincoln is right. $40+.
Totally agree. Something like this would make me actually USE iTunes instead of simply tolerating it.
Very cool stuff. Someone send Steve Jobs a link to Anita’s work. I can see it now: iTunes 9…
http://www.dimvision.com/musicmap/
Well 40$ does not seem a very attractive offer for the software… I guess the industrial use of the software would reflect a much higher value to the developer - Anita. Congratulations to you !!!
Cheers,
Marvin
http://www.latticepurple.com
Congratulation Anita for creating a innovative tool.
For those who want to read more about this tool can download her thesis at
http://thesis.flyingpudding.com/documents/Anita_FINAL_THESIS.pdf (10mb)
very very impressive.
There is a program like this on the market called music finder.
http://www.mufin.com/
I’ve used it. It is great to see a visual of how your music library has such similarities in sound. Really shows you what you like just based on that criteria.
Wow. That looks freakin’ amazing! I wish I could try it out as well.
The Musicbox visualization looks awesome.
Good job Anita.