Love listening to music? Then I am sure you have spent plenty of time scouring the web for tracks that enthral you. While there are plenty of music discovery apps, most of them use a playlist suggestion algorithm and they don’t work well all the time. Serendip is one that uses suggestions from real people, people who shared the same musical taste, to find music that truly matches with what we love to hear.
Serendip learns about your musical taste and then scans the timeline of the vast number of Facebook and Twitter users who shares common interests and presents you with a curated playlist most of which are perfectly exact to what you expected.
Usage
You can create a free account with the web app by allowing access to Twitter or Facebook accounts. Once you are in, type in your name and desired username and email to subscribe to the service. Next, you will be asked to add artists. Note that those are not artists (who actually create music) but your friends on Facebook and Twitter who shares common musical interests with you and are on Serendip. You can then choose a few or all from the list to get started to create your playlist.
You will need to authorize the app to access songs that you share on your Facebook wall so that they can be played for Serendip users who are not your friends on Facebook. Also choose how Serendip will add/suggest your new friends who are likely to share common musical interests with you. The last step is where you will be tell the app about your musical tastes.
Enter names of your favorite artists and bands to let Serendip understand your choices.
Once you have set it up, you will be presented with a player where songs will start playing from default from users who shares your musical taste. The songs are fetched in real time from the user’s social (Facebook and Twitter) timeline.
I was literally amazed at how close the suggestions were to the kind of music I really enjoy. A quick example, I discovered 3 new singers whom I’d love to hear again in just 15 minutes. That’s how actual the suggestions are. One thing that I missed though is to add a singer/band (that I loved while listening to a song) instantly from the player page. Or maybe a smart algorithm that can trace the name of the artist from the status update, tricky, I know it is. Yet a simple add box to add artist to likes would suffice. Although you can add favorite artists from the settings page.
Basic actions like voting a DJ (the Serendip user who shared the song), which is called RockOn, sharing a song (action named Air/ReAir) is possible. Cross posting those updates on Twitter and Facebook are also allowed. You can also follow an user on Serendip.
The app creates a real-time playlist based on user’s activity on Twitter/Facebook that relates to your musical taste within a nifty radio interface that offers a lean-back listening experience. With near perfect song choices, you hardly have to do anything to listen to something you enjoy except for sharing/following the eargasmic experience.
Serendip
Soumen is the founder/author for Ampercent, a tech blog that writes on computer tricks, free online tools & software guides.
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