Music enthusiasts will have another way to search for their favorite tunes in coming months. Mufin, a Berlin, Germany-based company, has launched the beta version of its music-discovery platform, mufin.com.
Mufin’s free technology recognizes and identifies music titles for users and provides music recommendations. Mufin automatically searches out and plays music suitable to an individual’s tastes and mood, according to the company.
Mufin, which is short for music finder, is based on technology developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology, the same Germany-based research organization that developed the MP3 player’s compression algorithm.
AudioID is Mufin’s audio-identification technology is capable of recognizing a piece of music in a split second, according to the company. Mufin generates a fingerprint for each song based on more than 40 characters, including tempo, sound density, instruments and rhythm. The AudioID database currently includes more than four million audio fingerprints and is growing.
The Fraunhofer, which has several locations in Germany and the United States, is focused on different fields of applied science.
To find favorite tunes, users search by song or artist in the Mufin database. The discovery engine then presents the user with a selection of songs that sound similar.
Users are then able to create playlists featuring their favorite songs, listen to music, or purchase songs.
“Mufin’s unique approach to music discovery puts geographic borders, big marketing machines, and genre classifications aside,” said Juergen Jaron, Mufin’s president. “As soon as a song has been indexed, it can be instantly recommended even if no one has ever heard it before.”
For example, an unknown artist’s music can be recommended alongside Ozzy Osborne’s if the songs have similar metrics, according to Jaron.
Mufin differs from other applications like the iPod’s built-in recommendation tool and Amazon.com because it is focused on a song’s musical characteristics. Other music-discovery…