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Sometimes all you want to do is press play and hear music you like. That one-click startup has never been done as simply as in Nokia Music's overhauled Windows Phone app, MixRadio. You turn it on, and it plays something you like. Simple.
Until now, Nokia Music is one of the many software perks that comes with owning a Lumia Windows Phone. If you have the phone, you have the service, which is a basically a streaming radio app that doubles as an iTunes like hub for music you load on from your computer. You can either play your music or listen to generated 'mixes' based on artists you like.
The most important new addition is a new big square 'Play Me' button. Fire up the app, hit the button and it'll launch an automatic playlist tailored to your 'Taste Profile.' It's unbelieveably easy, and you know, good enough for the times you don't want to think about it.
Though Nokia is using some of its own secret sauce under the hood, the underlying tech is another implementation of the The Echo Nest's taste profiling system that was launched on Rdio over the summer. On Rdio it's called 'Me.fm' on MixRadio, it's called 'Play Me,' but the products are pretty similar.
The main difference between the two is an aesthetic one. It's the design. Nothing has ever been as simple to launch as MixRadio's PlayMe feature. Two taps and you're going. Nokia's VP for Entertainment attributes the simplicity to the fact that Nokia Music is 'genetically mobile.' The company built the product for smartphones, whereas other services are born on desktops and only later migrate to handsets.
This mobile DNA is also what gives Nokia an edge. You see, right now, the product might not seem all that exciting a casual Pandora user. When you open up Pandora, it just plays, too, right? Nokia's music chief Michael Bebel points out that, yes, Nokia's Taste Profiles now are just the sum of how you rate different songs. But it doesn't have to be that way. The key is your phone, which is basically a huge sensor with the power to give Nokia troves of contextual data that it can use to better understand you.
In fact, Nokia MixRadio is already collecting and studying anonymized location and time data for future products. Beyond 'Mario likes the Smiths but not The Fall' the playback algorithms will one day know that you're at the gym and that means that you want metal-the angry stuff.
Nokia MixRadio is live right now in the Windows Phone store.
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