So, it was a month or so since I first tried tuneDNA and I thought I’d give it another shot.
One big problem when I tried it last time was that there wasn’t enough users to give me any information useful. A month later that problem is still obvious, though a bit less so. tuneDNA did in fact find one user with some similar music taste, but the rest was a bit of a wash.
Even after an update the user interface is still pretty unimpressive. I’m not one to push for flash over substance, but I did feel like I was using home-cooked software. Given how young the project is I’m willing to over look the UI, it would be nice if it got spruced up a bit, but I’d rather see improvements to the function before the form.
One thing I noticed is that tuneDNA needs to connect outside sources a lot more than you’d expect or want. When it comes to applications I’m the jealous/controlling type— I don’t like my programs talking to anything but my computer unless I tell it to. Little snitch reports an annoying amount of requests for tuneDNA to connect to various places. I doubt any of these connections are malicious, but my bet is the job could get done with half as many.
A big problem is the use of ratings to get your DNA. I like that it uses the ratings, but I have a lot of tracks and not many of them are rated. But the real problem is that songs with one star are treated as if they are preferred over unrated songs. You may ask why I bother keeping songs with one star, but that isn’t the point, the point is one star means it’s not a favorite and so shouldn’t be considered part of my “music DNA.”
All said, the experience was better, even if only marginally. I imagine that in another month the results might be even better, but ultimately I was left wondering what the point of it was. Even if I did get interesting results I’d still only have a bunch of artist and album names, but I’d still have to hunt down the music in order to see if I even liked it. It seems to me that, while not perfect, Pandora Radio is a much better solution.
Related items
itunes, music, music software, Pandora Radio, review, tunedna, UI
