FRISSONIC

Nifty iPhone app: mylibrary. Not the lite version … the full-blown, non-ad-supported version.

Since it incorporates the Occipital bar code scanner SDK, it allows the user to scan a CD (or book or DVD/Blu-ray) to get the data for the disc. The only thing it doesn’t automatically populate is the genre and the price, which are relatively trivial if you’re using the app to have a one-stop shop for your music collection.

So the big job comes in that I need want to scan my collection. This will be time consuming. Remember how long it took Boston to release 3rd Stage after Don’t Look Back? Ya. Think in those terms. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but not by much. We have two shelves full of CDs. I’m guessing there are at least 500-600, but I could be wrong. The good news is that I already have about 160 scanned, but those are just the ones that don’t fit on the shelves.

The problem I keep running into is that I go to Graywhale and find some CD, but I think I already have it, but I’m not sure, so I buy it anyway, only to get home and find out that, indeed, I already own it. Lucky me–I now have two copies. Thankfully, they’re pretty good about returning something relatively quickly. Also thankfully, this app will prevent any kind of duplicate purchases in the future. Nice, eh? And at only 99 cents, I can catalog my book and movie library as well. THAT’s a pretty sweet bargain.

Throw in the fact that you can back up your data to their server, and voila–you’re set.

My only issue with the app right now is that it doesn’t download much cover art. I would much prefer that I don’t have to go out to Google, search for the image, save it to my photos library, open the app, select the image as the cover art, then re-save the file. Not a HUGE pain, but a pain all the same.

Other than that, if you have a large library of ANY kind–books, movies, CDs … you’re gonna need want this app.

Nifty.

That’s about the best way to describe Moodagent. This app ($4.99 in the App Store) will take all your songs, catalog them and assign them to one or more categories (up to 5), then you can select your mood–sensual, tender, happy, or angry, then select the tempo. All of this selecting is done on color-coded sliders. The higher you slide a particular mood, the more songs of that type will be added to a playlist. The playlist can be up to 50 songs, but the default is 25. 

With the new 2.0 version of the app, you can tweet or Facebook your playlist. I *love* that. I’m a big fan of sharing what I’m listening to (though once it got me in a bit of trouble with FB friends who wondered why I was posting every 3-5 minutes, “I’m listening to ‘X’ by Y,” but that was a different app, iShareTunes). I’m also a monster fan of helping others discover new music. Others better than I have done it for me; the least I can do is return the favor. “Pay it forward,” as it were, only with a musical twist.

There is a music profiler that you can download from their site, both for PC and Mac platforms, that allows you to “speed up” the process. I’ve noticed that quite a few of my songs (read: a few thousand) weren’t catagorizable because they weren’t in the profiler’s database, nor could the program cull the information from the internet. I’d say about 90% of my items were cataloged. Pretty good, considering the amount of indie and foreign/world music I have.

Things I’d like to see in future releases:

• Longer playlists. Really, 50 songs is good, but it’s really only about 3-4 hours of music, if that. If all you have is Weezer, then it’s probably about an hour and a half of music.  And sure moods can swing in that 4 hour span, but … meh. At least it’d be another option.  
• Better cataloging. This has to be a no-brainer. 90% is good, but … when you have a 30000-song repository, that means you’re lacking 3000 tunes. Not good. That’s approximately 300 CDs. WHAT?! Yes–you read that right. 300 CDs not cataloged. So, again, 90% is good. 100% … yah. That should be the target. Always (again, a no-brainer).

Other than that, it’s a *great* app. I like selecting the “angry” mood with the slowest tempo possible. I get some seriously brooding, bruising tracks. Conversely, selecting the “happy” mood with the fastest tempo could very easily cause me to swerve off the road from the sheer energy.

For example, here are the first 10 tracks that Moodagent selected for me, based on the “angry” mood being all the way at the top, and the tempo being set to the lowest setting:

• Autolux – Turnstyle Blues
• Phaser – Life and Illusion
• Muse – Microcuts (a personal favorite)
• Adult – Contagious
• Land of Talk – Magnetic Hill
• The Beautiful Confusion – Rain
• Xandria (Casablanca)
• Krypteria – Victoriam Speramus
• The Music – Guide
• The National – The Geese of Beverly Road

Here’s an uptempo happy playlist:

• Niyaz – Arezou
• Vas – Moshka
• Mike Oldfield – Sunjammer
• Nouvelle Vague – Dancing with Myself
• Von Iva – Birds of Prey
• Of Montreal – Oslo in the Summertime
• Niyaz – Golzar
• Dido (don’t judge) – Us 2 Little Gods
• Straylight Run – Untitled
• Azam Ali – I Am a Stranger in This World

Anyway, for all you iPhone users out there, get this app. I think it’s well worth the $5 it costs. There is a free version, but the only difference is that it’s not ad-supported. In other words, annoying ads appear at the top of the app. If you can live with that, by all means, download the free version. I loathe ads, so I ponied up the $5.