The Filter

The initial startup is ab it cpu intensive as we read in the information about the tracks you own and talk to the server. We are looking into it.

It is worth while trying The Filter more than once as it learns more about your collection through time, andby your usage patterns. The recommendation algorithm is based on known relationships between songs, artists, or albums, genre etc. We return, by necessity, songs from your collection since we are not streaming music. We also do take into account your preferences, not just as you play a song ( i.e. skipping it will reduce it's chances of coming up, playing it and seeding it will increase the probablility) but would have read the iTunes database on startup and know your playcount, ratings etc. The Filter will try and recommend the number of songs you request, you will find that if you have asked for a lot of recommenations from a band(s) for whom we are not overly familiar you may get "strange" recommendations but we will know some relationship between those songs based on people's playing, or purchase habits. (The lack of familiarity can be because The Filter has not been run for long enough - most analysis of songs takes more time than the initial analysis stage, which is just a analysis of artists for speed purposes). try again.

So far, The Filter has looked promising. It's certainly a very smooth-looking app, very professional in its style considering it's free. That said, its actual performance leaves much to be desired. Hoping I missed something, I read the Mac FAQ on The Filter's site. It says "The Filter server holds information on over four and a half million songs. That said, our server will not hold all of the songs that you hold in your library." I have over 10,000 songs in my library, most of them tagged properly. How does The Filter only find 127 of them in its database? And how can I find out which songs have been matched and which haven't? Obviously, I haven't had any luck with making a playlist. I'm not sure I selected a single song in the "vast database" on The Filter's servers, and I've been trying for fifteen minutes. I'm going to give this up as a bad job for now. Maybe next version.