Do you really, really like one particular song – enough to listen to it forever? Well, now you can. Seriously, you can now start your favorite song and hear it played in random variations until the end of time. Or until December 21st, according to some people.
Your gateway to this is the Infinite Jukebox, “for when your favorite song just isn’t long enough,” it says.
The Infinite Jukebox is a product of a Music Hack Day hosted at MIT in Boston. Its developer is Paul Lamere, the director of developer platform for The Echo Nest. He had previously created something called Infinite Gangnam Style, and the Infinite Jukebox is the expansion of that concept to allow any song to be looped on and on into infinity.
Here’s how Lamere breaks down the process behind the Infinite Jukebox:
“The app works by sending your uploaded track over to The Echo Nest, where it is decomposed into individual beats. Each beat is then analyzed and matched to other similar sounding beats in the song. This information is used to create a detailed song graph of paths though similar sounding beats. As the song is played, when the next beat has similar sounding beats there’s a chance that we will branch to a completely different part of the song. Since the branching is to a very similar sounding beat in the song, you (in theory) won’t notice the jump. This process of branching to similar sounding beats can continue forever, giving you an infinitely long version of the song.”
So, in theory, there are an infinite number of paths that any particular song can take and if you let it go, it will never stop. If you positively have to drive your favorite song straight into the ground, there’s never been a tool created that can accomplish that quite like the Infinite Jukebox.
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Not all songs will perform equally as well inside the Infinite Jukebox. Songs that are more repetitious, with multiple instance of the same beat are obviously going to sound smoother in their transitions. That’s why “Gangnam Style” or “Call Me Maybe” sound so perfect. Lamere cites Radiohead’s “Karma Police” as an example of a song that can get stuck and have some trouble staying infinite and varied.
You can head on over to the Infinite Jukebox and try it out today. There are currently dozens upon dozens of songs already uploaded, or you can upload your own MP3 and watch it do its magic.