MusicBox: Music Library Mapping + Visualization

MusicBox is an amazing new music visualization software project created by Anita Lillie for her Master's thesis [pdf] at the MIT Media Lab.

The software analyzes the songs in a music collection and categorizes them based on a number of attributes: tempo, genre, time signature stability, song length, various other metadata, spectral analysis... Using the map, you can grab a bunch of songs or draw a path for your musical journey. The smart shuffle features are really cool, too.

MusicBox looks like a great way to visualize your iTunes library, create playlists and listen to music. I like how it includes a colorful SoundSieve visualization of each song in the bottom right. The software was coded with Java and uses Processing for the visuals. Check out the youtube screencast above [or the high-quality version here] to get a feel for the visual music player.

MIT owns the MusicBox software so it may not be available publicly for a long time, if ever, but here's what Lillie has to say about the possibilities:

“I hope to make a simplified version of MusicBox for the Apple iPod/iPhone. With a platform designed to enable such easy map navigation and music playback, the iPhone begs for an innovative spatial music player like MusicBox. Users’ music libraries would be analyzed and stored on their personal computers, then synced to their iPod/iPhone. The MusicBox player on the iPod/iPhone would simply visualize the space and allow the user to move about inside it in order to find music of interest. Simple shuffle and filtering features would be included. To take even greater advantage of the connectedness of the iPhone, the view of a user’s personal library could also be enhanced by setting it against a backdrop of the iTunes Music Store, showing relevant recommendations and encouraging discovery with instant reward. MusicBox can also provide a way to navigate a social music space. A social network like MySpace, for example, could benefit greatly from having a geography by which to navigate its artists. Thus, MusicBox can act as a gateway to an ever-expanding social music experience.”

I hope MIT releases MusicBox soon. Hey Apple, how about giving the MIT Media Lab and Anita Lillie lots of money to incorporate this technology into iTunes?

For more info on MusicBox, visit thesis.flyingpudding.com and read Anita Lillie's comments here.