Mufin music finder enters public beta, adds widgets

The labs that brought you the MP3 codec have moved their Mufin music-finder project into the public-beta phase, adding two widgets options to its collection.

The Mufin service, which makes tracks-like-this suggestions via algorithm, has worked on usability and bug-hunting since the last time we visited. The drawn-out process of lining up the licenses to play clips of the music seems to be progressing, though slowly; a number of tracks had clips available, but a sizable minority did not.

We chose Tom Waits (unique-sounding artist, wide range of styles, heavily covered by other bands, multiple anthologies) and set to testing, and we found several glitches in the current iteration. The Facebook widget was simply not up to the task, claiming no matches for the songs we chose; when we double-checked by searching directly on the mufin.com site, matches existed. An iTunes version of the widget is also available.

The recommendation process is still rather opaque. A Waits song that appears on multiple anthologies garnered different recommendations depending on the album, though the tracks were identical. The recommendations in each case were indeed similar, in the occasionally strange ways Mufin results tend to be, but the lack of list overlap was odd.

But obscurity is often Mufin's great strength. "Innocent When You Dream" pulled a raft of comparisons to Dinah Washington and to other Waits tracks, but it also teed up some interesting songs from soundtracks of foreign movies -- the feeling Waits often evoked in that period. Patty Griffin tracks were pulling up recommendations for Celtic artists along with fellow genre denizens Tracy Chapman and Rosanne Cash; both comparisons are accurate to human ears.

As far as the algorithm itself, the recommendations we saw on our previous visit don't seem to have changed much, including some that didn't really resonate -- Collapsed Lung's "Eat My Goal" and a remixed Lindsay Lohan number, for instance. (The backing track and percussive qualities of the two were close enough, but Lindsay Lohan...no.) However, we'll forgive it that one for the match of "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me" (Waits again) and BB King's "The Thrill Is Gone," which not only clicked but made us laugh. A lot.

Aside from the strange matches and the Facebook malfunction, the site's generally well-behaved, with one exception -- but that exception could pose a problem for the project's revenue hopes. Bluntly put, the "buy" links were maddening; the obscure tracks we found most alluring were exactly the ones about which iTunes knows nothing, nor does Amazon. That's hardly Mufin's fault, but it would be helpful if the search driving the buy-button link were as smart as the search you come to the site to use.

Add to that list a Connie Francis track with a more complex melody line that I'd ever have credited to the mid-century pop princess, and Mufin again makes a case for being the online version of that bizarre audiophile guy you know who's always got some strange new thing for you to hear: He's not always going to point you to your new favorite song, but if you listen with open ears and an open mind, you're going to have a lot of fun hanging out with him.