Never been a big fan of automated playlists. Even the Genius function in iTunes 8 sucks. Moodagent, however, is beginning to make me change my mind. There might be hope for this "smart" playlist thing, after all.
Instead of building a playlist based on seed songs, as is the norm, the app does things a little differently, producing one based on your mood. That should prove a tad more fitting to the way most people actually listen to music, rather than the pointless criteria (e.g. era, genres, albums) employed by typical playlist creation methods.
Moodagent gives you five sliders (Sensuality, Tenderness, Joy, Aggression and Speed) that let you set your exact mood. That's a whole range of possible states right there, which allow for a great amount of variety.
What's impressive, though, are the playlists it manages to turn out. When I'm feeling a little aggro, it piles on the angry punk, hardcore and psychobilly songs in my music inventory. Surprisingly, it managed to pick out one of the two very angsty country songs in my collection too. When I was in a festive mood a while ago, it picked out a bunch of really upbeat, poppy numbers. I'm very stoked.
The playlists it produces are restricted to 25 songs, which is fine (unless you're on an extended listening session). If you want to adjust it, simply move the sliders and it will replace songs on the fly. Should you chance upon a killer playlist, you can save it directly in the app.
You'll need an active internet connection to analyze your songs, which Moodagent compares to its 8-million song database (the process could take a while). Note that it won't work on DRM-protected tracks, so if you've got a lot of those, you might as well pass on this app.
It's available free from the App Store.
