Juvenall Wilson

When it comes to Winamp and upgrades, I’m always slow on the trigger. The update is often trivial and addresses security concerns I don’t need to worry too much about (For example, when I download music, I always wipe the ID3 tags from the file and run it through MusicBrainz.) Add that with the fact they rarely add a feature I’d use in the first place and I’ll look into updates once or twice a year.

So for the past few months, Winamp 5 has been bugging me about an upgrade. Since I’m too lazy to turn off the notifications, I would just close the message out and be done with it. That is, until the other day when it finally annoyed me to see what the big deal was (as it’s designed to do). As I’m looking over the typical “what’s new” garbage, a fimilar name is sitting there looking back at me; Predixis MusicMagic Mixer!

Now, I’ve been a psudo-paid user of their full version for about a year and a half. The old marketing director for allmusic.com, Beth Stefani, got me a copy after I ranted and raved about the software (which I was using in it’s “free” mode for a while). The thing really is bad ass. In short, it lets you create a custom playlist based around the tone/mood/tempo/style of any set tracks you want. This is infinitely useful when you’re like me and have a personal music collection in the range of 10-15,000 tracks.

As it turns out, the team at Winamp has integrated the basic core of the application into the current version of Winamp. Now, right from the Winamp Media Library (the only reason I still use the damn thing), you can create a basic, 20 track playlist of similar tracks to whatever you choose. What I like about this is I no longer have to fire up the full client to generate my playlists. I only wish there was an option for us owners of the full version for a direct integration. Oh well, maybe when I upgrade next year, they’ll have that part worked out.