Website Review: Musicovery

After I installed the Stumbleupon toolbar and chose music as an interest, I was blessed in that the first site I stumbled upon was Musicovery.com. The site is simple to operate, with a rectangular control panel on the left side of the screen and songs positioned on a sort of road map on the rest of the screen. The music map moves when you click and drag it to reveal other songs offscreen. Follow me through a tour of the site.

On the top of the control box one can choose between lo-fi Musicovery, which consists of 32 kbit/s tracks and hi-fi, which plays 28kbit/s tracks. Lo-fi is free and hi-fi costs various prices depending on subscription length. Prices are listed in Euros.

Below fidelity choice are three boxes labeled "hit," "non hit" and "discovery." Below that is what looks like an old pre-LED display radio dial which is labeled by decades that you can choose or allow music from different time periods. Then comes the really unique part. A large gray rectangle contains the following music descriptions on an axis: "energetic," "dark," "calm" and "positive." Clicking anywhere in the box changes the mood of the music that comes up. The gray in the box changes color on each side depending on the mood represented.

Below the mood box is a check box labeled "all genres." Under that are various genres labeled along a color spectrum ranging from rap, which is bright red, and in a clockwise direction down the rainbow until violet, which is R&B. One can click as many genres as desired or just one, or leave all of them checked.

I set the mood between dark and calm and leave all genres checked. The songs that immediately come up include "Miss Perfumado," by Cesaria Evora, Bill Withers's "Let Me Be the One You Need," "Mocking Bird" by Eminem, Van Morrison's "What is Wrong With this Picture" and K's Choice's "Not an Addict." As each song plays a small shot of the album from which it came pops up. Under the album cover is a link to Amazon, one to iTunes, and a play/pause button. The links to Amazon and iTunes open in new tabs. Each song in the map is colored based on the color of its genre in the spectrum. Clicking on a song causes the song to play.

Clicking on energetic and positive while still leaving all genres checked brings up "It's Too Funky Here" by James Brown, " Armand Van Helden's "Hear My Name," "yeh Yeh" by Matt Bianco, "Material Girl" by Madonna and Keziah Jones' "Walkin' Naked Through A Bluebell Field," among others.

The disclaimer for purchasing hi-fi Musicovery explains that the site is governed by French laws, and two flags at the very top of the control panel allow the user to toggle between English and French text. This is refreshing in a United States/English speaking dominated internet. A Google search shows very little information written in English for the first couple of pages, so it seems Musicovery is relatively undiscovered in the United States.

The site is useful for when you know your mood but not what you feel like listening to, want to hear new music for free or go shopping. It stimulates the sense of sight as well as hearing. Musicovery is not well known, but could be the only web radio you ever need. Certainly it will revolutionize internet radio listening by giving the listener so much creative control.