Overview

Music Explorer FX is a visual tool for discovering new music. Start with your favorite artist and take a musical journey based on recommendations provided by the Echo Nest. Up to six recommendations will be given for each artist so no two journeys will be the same. As you take your journey you can listen to music from the artist, view images of the artist, and follow links to view videos, reviews, news, and blogs. At any point you can automatically tweet your journey if you discover a path that you particularly enjoy.

Screenshots

Click here to check out screen shots of the application.

Getting Started/Installing the Application

MEFX is free to to use. There are currently two ways to run the application.

1. Go to the Java App Store (store.java.com), register for the private Beta, and download "Music Explorer FX" from the store (last time I checked it was on the first page of apps).
2. or just click the "launch" button below...

System Requirements

The primary supported platform is Windows XP SP3, JRE 1.5+. It has also been tested on Windows Vista, Macbook Pros (both 15" and 17") and newer iMacs running OS 10.5, and informally tested on various Ubuntu systems.

There are known issues running on Macbooks or older iMacs, and so these platforms are not supported at this time -- but hey, give it a shot anyway, you never know, right?

The application requires 128MB of RAM to run. It's minimum supported resolution is 1300x900 (which barely accommodates 15" Macbook Pros). Recommended resolution is 1300x1000 or greater.

FAQ

Have a question? Perhaps its among the frequently asked.

Using the Application

After the application finishes starting up, you'll be presented with a search box. Enter the name of a musical artist in the search box and press the search button (or press the "Enter" key). Entering the name of an artist that you are already familiar with is a good start. You'll be presented with a list of artists matching your search. Click on the artist that most closely matches your intention and you'll be brought to the explorer screen.

In the explorer screen, the currently selected artist (the artist in the middle of the screen) is surrounded by up to six artists that sound similar to the current artist. You can click on any of these recommendations to promote that artist to the middle and in turn, generate recommendations for the newly selected artist. The old artist travels to the top of the screen and becomes part of the history. This process of selecting new artists while remembering the path it took to get there is your musical journey. At any point you can click on an artist in the history to make them the current artist again.

A row of buttons will appear below the current artist.

The search button will return you to the initial search screen.

The "info" button will display aggregated information about the current artist from around the internet, including reviews, videos, artist links (such as iTunes, Amazon, etc.), news, and blogs. Clicking on any item in any of these sections will open the link in a browser window.

The "image gallery" button will attempt to find photos of the artist from Flickr and display them two at a time.

The question mark icon ("?") will display a help section summarizing the information in this document.

If the application is in either "info" or "image gallery" mode, it will display the "find similar" button, which will return the application to "similar" mode with the six artist recommendations.

The green gauge on the artist boxes is a "familiarity" rating, which is a measure of how well-known an artist is in the wider world. The yellow gauge is a measure of "hotness", which is a sort of popularity metric.

If any music is found for the current artist, audio controls will appear below the artist image. Use the buttons to control playback or scroll through available tracks. The "auto play" button (the "robot" icon) is a toggle which will, if enabled, automatically play music as it is found. If you are experiencing performance issues, it is a good idea to disable auto play. Auto play is disabled by default.

The icon in the lower right will put the application in full screen mode. Once in full screen mode you can click the button again to re-enter windowed mode.

If you have a Twitter account, you can press the "Twitter" button (the "singing bird" icon) and tweet your musical journey.

Known Issues

• Full Screen mode is not supported across multiple monitors.
• Playing Audio can be a performance sink. This seems especially true on Windows machines. If you're experiencing performance issues playing when playing audio, try disabling "auto-play" (untoggle the "robot" icon -- it is untoggled by default).
• The button icons do not show up on some older macs.

Contact Info

So thanks for coming and checking out MEFX. I'd love to hear about your experience using the app, or know of any issues you ran into. I'm particularly interested in how intuitive (or not) the application's interface was to use.

Feel free to contact me at sanderson att citytechinc dott com. If you're interested in upcoming MEFX news, or this document has endeared my writing style to you, please be sure to subscribe to my blog.