When you first start the app, it needs to go online to grab extra information about the tracks on your device from its online library. Depending on how many tracks you’ve got and the speed of your data connection, this may take a while, so grab a coffee while you’re waiting.
Once it’s ready, you have five sliders to choose from, which you can move upwards and downwards with your finger. Each of the sliders corresponds to different moods. They are sensual, tender, happy, angry and tempo. Move one or more of them up and down and a playlist is generated dynamically – without any pause on my admittedly small library of 475 tracks. Eagle-eyed readers will have remarked to themselves that “tempo” isn’t actually a mood. You might want to mentally replace it with “energetic” since it will choose tracks with a faster or slower beat.
The other way you can use it is to press the magnifying glass in the top-left and select any track from your music library. The app will automatically create a playlist based on the same mood and tempo. This can be particularly useful if you know when you want to listen to ‘This Charming Man’ by The Smiths, and songs like it, but can’t decide quite how happy or tender it is.
As you would expect, you can save and load generated playlists, and – like the regular music player – incoming calls will pause your tune while you conduct your call. In a nod to modern manners, you can share your mood and current music choice with Facebook and Twitter friends.
Here’s a video so you can see the app in action:
So the million-dollar question: is it any good? Yes, it is. It’s very polished and I found that the automatic playlists generated sensible selections and unearthed old tracks from my library that I hadn’t listened to for ages. Even if you try to fox it with silly choices like 100% happy AND 100% angry, it’ll find something that kind-of makes sense (‘Night in Tunisia’ by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers). I would perhaps have liked some sort of cover-art display while tracks are playing, and I did experience one crash during use – while saving a playlist. But I was using the beta version, after all, so that’s only to be expected.
Moodagent works on S60 5th edition touch phones and new Symbian devices. The full, premium version of Moodagent is available from Ovi Store. At present, it’s available for £1, which is 80 per cent off the normal price.
Have you tried it yourself, yet? What did you think?