MusicSphere

[cpkdude]

Has anyone spent the time to thouroughly check this app out - aka letting it spend all night reading your iTunes library and assembling it's "sphere's" (for lack of a better word)?

 

Is it any different than just using Genius playlists? Better? Worse? Waste of time? Life changing?

 

just wondering

[troymdaniels]

Thought it was a waste of my time personally. Took all night like you said, and the mixes for the most part just didnt seem to match with their category. I have all these new playlists on my phone now that I really dont see myself listening to.

[random1]

Has anyone spent the time to thouroughly check this app out - aka letting it spend all night reading your iTunes library and assembling it's "sphere's" (for lack of a better word)?

 

Is it any different than just using Genius playlists? Better? Worse? Waste of time? Life changing?

 

just wondering

 

It didn't take that long on my iMac, it's not very diff't from genius playlists, but the sphere interface on the Pioneer is a cool show-off kind of feature. The playlist choices were often questionable, especially the beats per minute ones. It hardly costs you anything to let it churn away for a few hours - you'll be asleep after all. Some people love it. I think it's amusing, and I use it a bit.

[cpkdude]

It didn't take that long on my iMac, it's not very diff't from genius playlists, but the sphere interface on the Pioneer is a cool show-off kind of feature. The playlist choices were often questionable, especially the beats per minute ones. It hardly costs you anything to let it churn away for a few hours - you'll be asleep after all. Some people love it. I think it's amusing, and I use it a bit.

 

 

yeah, mine finally finished browsing 3,000 songs, but only used 800 for its' playlists. You're right, some of the choices seemed out of place, but I guess the graphic is sorta fun. How do you make it re-shuffle the playlists it creates so it creates new ones? There's no manual of any kind that I can find, so if there's a link to one, please post it.

[Morry]

I've got about 6,000 songs, so it is taking forever to churn through them all. Probably going to end up being a waste of time.

[Vibe2.0]

I allowed it to analyze 6,000 songs on my ipod overnight - the playlists make no sense to me at all. The sphere is neat looking but really of no functional use.

 

Let me add if the playlists were good i would think this is a decent feature. However since the playlists are pretty much nonsensical it is no more than a gimmick.

[toptentwist]

I like Musicsphere.

 

I've used Genius playlists as well.

 

 

There are ways to change the default playlists for Musicsphere but I haven't

messed with that much.

 

 

I have noticed that Musicsphere doesn't seem to care about ratings (mine or anyone elses)

when it creates a playlists. Genius seems to just immediately go looking for what it

somehow knows is popular. For example, if I tell it to build a genius playlist using

a song like "Purple Haze" by Hendrix, I basically get a very typical classic rock radio

sounding playlist. With Musicsphere, it seems much more likely to find "deep tracks"

(album tracks that radio ignores).

 

I've also used "smart" playlists (which are different than Genius playlists) on Itunes.

 

I did that most because I was unhappy with Musicsphere's "decades" category (which ignores

the 50s, shouldn't have a "10s" because the decade is too new, and lumps the 60s and 70s

into one decade).

 

With smart playlists I can subdivide parts of a decade into any segement if time I like.

For example, I did "class of 81" smart playlist that includes all of the years I was in

high school. Note that I straddled the 70s and 80s.

 

I really do like using Musicsphere for some of the moods... "calm" seems to find really

cool songs on my ipod. Some of the categories make no sense to me (edge1, edge 2, etc.)

but I can just eliminate those if I want to.

 

Of course, sometimes there are songs that don't belong in a playlist - but you can edit

those out manually.

 

There is a way to refresh the playlists. Just delete them on the itunes and hit the arrows

that look like a circle. You might want to resync the ipod while the playlists are missing

so they get cleared from your ipod.

 

To be clear: refreshing the playlists is NOT the same as analyzing the library. A list

refresh takes maybe 1 minute (tops).

 

There is some very sparse documentation in the app itself. It helps - but its far from perfect.

 

 

So if I had to rank the four playlist types available I would rank them as follows:

 

1.) Musicsphere (for SOME of the lists)

2.) Smart playlists (for extreme granularity)

3.) User created lists (ultimately the best - but takes time)

4.) Genius playlists (really only seems to work well for some songs)

5.) random shuffle (I hate doing this - I have way too many different

types of music from too man eras)

 

 

I have been amazed at some of the song transitions that Musicsphere created.

Those might have been accidental - but they don't seem completely random.

 

 

My only real disappointment with Musicsphere is I don't think it will ever

evolve. I think they coded it once, and will never improve upon it.

[Shane H]

Musicsphere is "churning" my music as I type. I can't wait to check it out. The graphic part looks cool for sure. Somethin out of Minority Report, with the spin and touch of the sphere. And I am sure it will be updated with better features as it "gets out there" more.