Musicovery: Interactive WebRadio

On one of my recent posts, I highlighted a website called Pandora, the internet radio. Upon further surfing, I came across Musicovery, an interactive web radio very similar to the Pandora web radio site. Musicovery lets you choose and explore music by mood (anywhere from dark to positive and from calm to energetic), style, genres, time periods, and much more. You can mix and match filters and customize your internet radio experience to suit your tastes even if that happens to be dark energetic pop or jazz from the 80s. The major difference between Pandora and Musicovery is that in Pandora, you enter an artist or song in and it spits out songs similar in their "music genome" while in Musicovery you input a mood and dance level and it picks a trail of songs that fit, and does so in a more visual way.

Each time you change your preferences in the nav bar the music selector jumps across the screen and plays another song. Genres are color-coded and really add to the aesthetic appeal of the experience. There's a large selection of music to listen to as well, from classical to disco, hip hop, world, rock and so much more. You can even scroll around the map and choose songs manually. For users with a good internet connection there's no lag or song loading time, so you can expect smooth listening from start to finish.

Musicovery has a fantastic interface. It's definitely a brand new way to think about music. Users are presented with what looks like a remote control. In the center of the remote is a coordinate axis with four adjectives: Energetic, Positive, Calm, and Dark. There is also a blinking dot placed in the axis. At the bottom of the remote is a list of 18 genres of music. Users can first select a genre and then place the dot anywhere on the axis. Musicovery then uses an algorithm to play a composition that relates to the location on the axis. In a manner similar to the Pandora site, Musicovery plays actual tracks in their entirety - and it’s perfectly legal. The graphical interface is very slick, and there are connections to related artists and works based on your placement of the dot in the axis.

This might sound a bit confusing, so the easiest way to understand it is to check it out for yourself. The first time I visited the site I spent a great deal of time playing in the Pop genre and found the selections in relation to my placement of the dot on the axis to be very interesting. I think that the site has some pretty interesting possibilities for the classroom, especially in terms of critical listening skills, discussions about music in relation to emotions, and more.

Musicovery is a great way to find new songs and play with different styles of music. It isn't really a game, but it's got the same sense of exploration and fun as any web toy on the internet. Click!