Here I come reviewing a new software that every music lover should have! It’s called Playlist DJ and does something we all have been wishing to have our devices to do.  When competing on the Nokia Widget Competition I can remember lots and lots of music widgets that were designed to play the music depending on your mood. The idea is simple, and at the same time amazing. How else could you device pamper you? Yes, by being sympathetic with you and play the music you want to listen at that right moment.

Playlist Dj is a playlist creator that will “listen” to your emotions and select the music from your mp3 library, that easy. You may save the resulting playlist to listen at it anytime after. Also you may choose a song and let Playlist DJ select more songs that are alike the one you chose. This app runs only on S60 5th edition at this time, and its planned to be included on the Nokia’s upcoming music phone the Nokia X6.

So let’s start. After installing and running it you will be asked to let the phone connect to the Playlist DJ server in order to profile your music so it can identify them in the different emotions that you  may adjust later. This profiling has two phases, the first one is the shallow profiling and here, the app will put the known tracks in their mood levels. Then there is the deep profiling, here the tracks that were not recognized at the shallow profiling will be examined and after recognizing some music charateristics it will put them on different mood levels. This whole process might take some time and also needs data transfer to the server, so I highly recommend to profile the music at night, when sleeping and connected to the wifi, so when waking up you will surely find the music completely profiled. Also do not worry if your tracks aren’t properly tagged by genres (or titles Im guessing), there is no need for these tags, the app will get the info from its own server and scan the music by its own.

The next thing you might want to do is let the phone to find the music you want depending on the mood you have/look for. So there are this 4 sliders that refer to different emotions: joy, passion, anger and tempo. You can mix the emotions and get different playlists depending on the mix. You can add a lot of joy, a small bit of passion, with or without anger, and finally choose the tempo you are looking for, it coul be fast or slow music, you choose.

After mixing the emotions you will instantly get a new playlist that might be listened instantly or saved for later. One of the things that I miss here is the lack of the equalizer, I am not sure, but I do feel that the app doesnt share the saved equalizer settings from the default music player. Could be just my imagination, but anyways, if you do feel like me, you can save the playlist and play it from the music player.

Sometimes, when creating a new playlist, you may find tracks that have nothing to do with the mixing you were looking for, in example, when looking for passion songs I get Run to the Hills from Iron Maiden, so unless I’m missing the passion part of it, I guess that the profiling process is not without flaw. Still most of the songs (90%) do fit to the mix and if you feel that a song should not be there you can use the option “Remove song from playlist” before saving or playing the list.

Another feature from the Playlist Dj is that you can build up your own playlist by comparing it to another song. As easy as the first step, you may select any song you like and choose the option “Playlist of similar songs” . Instantly you will get a new playlist that contain songs that are very alike to the first one. This playlist can also be manipulated by removing songs you dont like or find apropiated and also might be saved to be listened later.

The interface is very simple with half of the screen with the mixing bars and the other half  for the playlist and options, the mixing bars are big and can be touched without problems. Something that I find curious is that there is no landscape view (yet).  Also I would love to see this app on other non touch screen phones, since there are lots of music lovers that will thank for this wonderful app.

In conclusion, with Playlist DJ you can let the phone play the music you want to listen at that moment, or set up the mood at parties, romantic dinners, roadtrips, or study sessions (if you have classic music). Anyways, its a great app for all the music lovers, who usually have thousands of tracks and cannot always handle them all. They will be so happy to have an app that will choose the music for them, which is sometimes a tiresome task. I find it way better than using the shuffle option, because I feel better control of my music.

So what are you waiting for? Rush to the Ovi Store and download this wonderfull app. Free until october 31st 2009, so get it while you can.

David Castro