My iTunes Signature
I game across the iTunes Signature Maker and decided to give it a spin after reading the description.
People often ask me what music I listen to, and I find it difficult to describe my enormous music collection in just a few sentences. So I created iTSM to answer in sound a question I cannot answer in words.
iTSM selects a small number of your “favorite” tracks based on some simple selection criteria, such as the number of times you have played them or the rating you have assigned them. Then it analyzes the audio content of these files, combining a small bit of each of them to create the signature.
Sounds worth trying, and the outcome is pretty interesting. After a couple of tries, here’s mine.
Firefox crashed before I could grab the details, like Michael did with his. So you’ll just have to guess what songs are in there. Some are more obvious than others.
My only complaint is that the iTunes Signature Maker — for technical and legal reasons — can’t include music purchased via iTunes. So, it’s not really a representation of everything in my collection. Just everything not from iTunes.
Update: Here’s another attempt along with — thanks to some workarounds on my part — the details of the songs include.
| Title | Artist | Album | Starting At | Ending At | |
| Neither One of Us | Gladys Knight and the Pips | 3:18.4 | 3:22.8 | ||
| Everyday People | Sly and the Family Stone | Anthology | 1:59.7 | 2:04.6 | |
| Ode To The International Debt | Sweet Honey In The Rock | Live At Carnegie Hall | 0:08.5 | 0:10.6 | |
| Ask | The Smiths | Singles | 0:39.8 | 0:42.9 | |
| Respect Yourself | The Staples Singers | 1:41.4 | 1:44.8 | ||
| Brick | Ben Folds Five | whatever and ever amen | 1:51.3 | 1:56.9 | |
| Theme From The Valley Of The Dolls | k.d. lang | Drag | 0:13.6 | 0:15.8 | |
| The Power | Cher | Believe | 1:34.9 | 1:38.9 | |
| Ella’s Song | Sweet Honey In The Rock | Breaths | 0:10.1 | 0:12.6 | |
| Patchwork Quilt | Sweet Honey In The Rock | In This Land | 0:05.3 | 0:08.0 | |
| A Song for You / Goodbye | Shirley Horn | I Love You Paris | 4:26.6 | 4:30.9 | |
| God Thank You Woman | Culture Club & Boy George | Best Of The 80’s | 5:05.0 | 5:08.7 | |
| Keep Me In Your Heart | Warren Zevon | The Wind | 0:00.0 | 0:05.7 | |
| Last Night I Dreamed That Somebody Loved Me | The Smiths | 0:13.9 | 0:16.7 | ||
| Sweet Toxic Love (Deliverance Mix) | Boy George And Culture Club | 0:02.4 | 0:04.8 | ||
| Stomp (extended version) | The Brothers Johnson | 4:00.6 | 4:05.7 | ||
| God Bless The Child | Fredco Mix | Billie Holiday Remixed Hits | 1:29.5 | 1:32.4 | |
| I Look Good | Bernadette Cooper | Greatest Hits | 0:00.0 | 0:05.4 | |
| If You Love Me (Smooth Out Remix Extended Version) | Brownstone | If You Love Me (Single) | 4:20.9 | 4:25.6 | |
| May the Music Never End | Shirley Horn | May the Music Never End | 3:44.6 | 3:49.4 | |
| The Voice Of The Innocent | Sweet Honey In The Rock | The Women Gather - 30th Anniversary | 0:36.3 | 0:41.5 | |
| The Staples Singers - Let’s Do It Again | Various Artists | Sounds of the Seventies - 1975 | 0:06.4 | 0:09.6 | |
| Higher Ground | The Blind Boys Of Alabama | Higher Ground | 2:43.3 | 2:47.2 | |
| The Way of the World | Earth Wind & Fire | Wake Up Mix | 0:35.9 | 0:39.5 | |
| Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself Again | Sly And The Family Stone | 2:20.9 | 2:24.4 | ||
| Best Of My Love | The Emotions | Boogie Nights | 0:00.0 | 0:05.8 | |
| If You’re Ready (Come Go With Me) | The Staples Singers | 0:13.6 | 0:18.1 | ||
| Victims | Boy George & Culture Club | At Worst The Best of Boy George | 0:08.2 | 0:12.4 | |
| Here’s to Life | Shirley Horn | Here’s to Life | 0:26.6 | 0:32.0 | |
| I Want You Back (Z-Trip Remix) | The Jackson 5 | Motown Remixed | 3:15.5 | 3:21.5 |
December 12th, 2005 at 3:32 am
Terrance, something you may want to check out is Last.fm
Using a plugin that works with ITunes they track the music you listen to and make charts that can be categorized a lot of different ways. They show your most listened to artists and songs and they also show what you have been listening to based on chronology…from the past week…month…etc. Another cool thing is they take the tracks you listen to and make it into an RSS feed. This service is free. For about 3 dollars they can give you a streaming radio station based on your tastes.
You can check out my own profile page as an example. They have tracked close to 12k songs since I signed up in December of last year.
I have a varied taste in music and run into some of the same issues you do when asked about it.
One more very cool tool that I found a few weeks ago is called Pandora based on the Music Genome Project. This is like a streaming music discovery machine. You type in a song or an artist and it streams music you would like based on actual charectaristics of the song or artist you chose. It is as if a group of people sat down and tried to file the world’s music in an empirical nature. Pretty good results came about.
December 12th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Interesting. I love that Sweet Honey In The Rock have so much play in your list.