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Entered CNET Catalog: 07/25/2002
SKU: CNETMOODLOGIC2
Manufacturer: MoodLogic, Inc.
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 07/25/2002
MoodLogic 2.0 bills itself as a music companion--an appropriately vague phrase since this service defies easy definition. (Download MoodLogic here.) It's an online music database, organizer, and playlist generator that catalogs music files; corrects ID3 tags, song titles, and album and artist names; organizes music; and lets you profile your own songs and contribute to the MoodLogic database. It's also a virtual DJ: you tell the program what music genre or tempo you're in the mood to hear, and MoodLogic serves up the tunes to match--from your own collection, of course. We love its organization and title-correction features, but we found that MoodLogic's database lacks depth. The service has some rough edges, and it's a bit pricey at $39.95, though it's currently on sale for $29.95. Wait for future releases, though, and give the free version a try--if only because there's nothing else like it.
MoodLogic 2.0 bills itself as a music companion--an appropriately vague phrase since this service defies easy definition. (Download MoodLogic here.) It's an online music database, organizer, and playlist generator that catalogs music files; corrects ID3 tags, song titles, and album and artist names; organizes music; and lets you profile your own songs and contribute to the MoodLogic database. It's also a virtual DJ: you tell the program what music genre or tempo you're in the mood to hear, and MoodLogic serves up the tunes to match--from your own collection, of course. We love its organization and title-correction features, but we found that MoodLogic's database lacks depth. The service has some rough edges, and it's a bit pricey at $39.95, though it's currently on sale for $29.95. Wait for future releases, though, and give the free version a try--if only because there's nothing else like it.
Smooth interface; slow start-up
Once you download and install MoodLogic's 2.7MB file--for PCs only, sorry, Mac users--the program automatically opens a View box on the left side of the interface that links to the Activation Center, My Active Music, Search, Preferences, and Help. The center window displays song lists. As soon as you launch MoodLogic the first time, it searches for all the music files on your computer--MP3, WAV, Real, and WMA. Click Activate Music, and it checks your tunes against its network in order to activate them. One caveat: You need a broadband connection for this service. Over CNET's internal LAN, MoodLogic spent about 90 minutes categorizing 500 songs. When we activated about 8,000 songs over DSL, MoodLogic ran in the background for more than 24 hours.
Active lifestyle
If your song is fully profiled in the MoodLogic database, it appears in the My Active Music window with a green dot; partially profiled songs (with only album, artist, and song name) show up in the Activation Center window with a yellow dot, and unavailable songs display a red dot. With your collection of active music, you can use MoodLogic to compile playlists on the fly that match your frame of mind simply by specifying a genre, a tempo, or a mood or by searching for songs in your collection that sound alike.
Database détente
Spotty player support
A work in progress
Still, our complaints are minor, and we love the MoodLogic concept. As of this writing, we can't recommend that you shell out the $29.95, but try the free version and sit tight--this is a service that can only improve.
So, what does it mean to "activate" your music? At your bidding, MoodLogic checks your song's waveforms against those in its database--a more accurate scan than reading metadata , ID3 tags, or filenames--which have been hand-ranked according to about 40 or 50 data points. Data points are such information as genre and subgenre, mood, instruments, energy level, emotion (such as sad, aggressive, uplifting, exciting), and type of lyrics (such as Love/Romance, Brooding/Cynicism, Sentimental, or Energy/Rebellion). The paid version activates 10,000 songs, but the free version limits you to just 25 activations, or so-called credits. However, with either version, you can profile songs yourself and earn more song credits.
Unfortunately, MoodLogic classifies songs only after many users have profiled them with the same criteria. This means that the profiling is accurate, but also that the network moves slowly. In our two months of testing, MoodLogic issued only one database update. Worse, we found the database incomplete and inconsistent. MoodLogic activated entire albums of relatively obscure artists but lacked any data on more mainstream selections, such as Moby. If you want an entirely active collection, you'll have to profile songs yourself or wait for more users to join the network and do more profiling.
MoodLogic supports only a few portable MP3 players: the Rio series players, the , and the (click here for the list). Unfortunately, we couldn't get MoodLogic to recognize our Nike PSA, which was running under Windows XP. E-mail tech support took more than a week to respond and did not solve the problem. MoodLogic also hosts forums, which often refer users back to the weak e-mail, and a not-very-technical FAQ.
For sheer innovation and promise, MoodLogic won us over, but it's not quite up to speed. Much of the time, some features, such as an Instant Mix button, either worked poorly or didn't function at all. We also wish that MoodLogic would store our manual song activations on a server or even a file on our hard drive. When we reinstalled our OS and MoodLogic, the 100 or so songs that we'd profiled by hand were totally lost.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
User Rating: 
1/10
It does not work and totally lack of support
Pros: Organizes your mp3 files
Cons: Terrible support: they do not answer
It seems not to be true.
I wrote them three times and I never got any answer.
I cannot suggest anyone to buy it, it is a waste of money!
User Rating: 1/10
They lie about refunds
Pros: Does what it says
Cons: No response from them over advertised refund
User Rating: 
9/10
Would be a 10 if it supported Mac
Pros: For those with a lot of music, this is a great way to create unique playlists. Despite some comments, I find it better if you rate the music yourself. Version 2.7 is far better than 2.0.
Cons: I just bought a Mac and found out that I can't use MoodLogic on the Mac.
User Rating: 
6/10
one-time use for 10,000 songs
Pros: It does a fairly decent job catogorizing. A good job with playlists.
Cons: Apparently the 10,000 song limit is one-time. If you re-do or build a new PC you have used all your credits and the info is gone.
User Rating: 
8/10
2.7 version is outstanding
Pros: Update fixes most of the issues addressed by negative reviews here (since 2.0). Moodlogic is an outstanding product that creates playlists according to your mood instead of the usual era or music type.
Cons: Not all songs rated
User Rating: 
3/10
Nice idea...Needs a lot of work
Pros: makes nice playlists according to your preferences..which can pleasantly surprise you
Cons: If you move your audio files it doubles up using your credits and they will not work with you to fix it. Database is not at all what they present it to be. I'm mostly top 40 and out of 8k songs they only identified about 2.5k.
User Rating: 8/10
Rediscover Your Music
Pros: Makes amazing playlists in seconds, something I can't do well.. If i'm having friends over it takes 2 seconds to make the perfect mix for what we want to listen to
Cons: I have an iRiver H120, and I can't get it to sync up with the software, all i get are a lot of error messages - and tech support has been nonresponsive to my emails. I just hope I or they can get this problem fixed, since that is the biggest reason I pur
User Rating: 3/10
Irrecoverable disaster
Pros: Neat concept, decent GUI, fun while it works
Cons: I ran this program with decent success until I moved my music to a new hard-drive. Then all my "credits" were suddenly locked up and no amount support calls or emails would help. They simply told me to buy more credits even though I have 10,000 that are c
User Rating: 
7/10
What!? 6 day trial!?
Pros: GREAT way to organize songs and it really does help you choose songs according to your mood.
Cons: -6 day trial -Not free afterwards
User Rating: 3/10
Slow; tiny window; limited
Pros: Fair job at copying the brushed-metal look of much of Mac OS X.
Cons: No sir, I don't like it. Slow. Tiny, non-resizable main window (I have 1600x1200). Recognizes only a tiny fraction of my thousands of songs. Can't give it a decent trial -- gotta pay to try anything reasonable. (I've already fixed most tags using the
User Rating: 
5/10
Ingenius way to have others do your work
Pros: Looks clean
Cons: Database is oblivious to anything that deviates from top 40. The users have to build the database while being led by the carrot/credit idea, and have to pay $29 on top of it. Whoever invented this is a marketing genius, but knows or cares nothing for musi
User Rating: 5/10
Great Promising Tool
Pros: It is great to finally have something to go through and organize my MP3s. i have close to 5000 and i just cant keep track of them all, with this i have rediscovered many of my MP3s.
Cons: It takes a long time to get everything set up.
User Rating: 
2/10
Wrong tags are worse than incomplete ones!
Pros: Cheap
Cons: Wrong! It mis-tagged hundreds of my mp3's -- now they're more of a mess than before!
User Rating: 7/10
Very innovative product, but still needs some work
Pros: I tried this product and I genuinely like it. For the most part, it does organize songs well. In the future, once they have a better database, this product will become very useful.
Cons:
User Rating: 9/10
Essential mp3 organizer
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User Rating: 
4/10
Tried the trial, didn't like it enough
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User Rating: 7/10
Version 2.5 much improved
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User Rating: 8/10
If you invest the time - incredibly useful
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User Rating: 5/10
Good Idea, Not Yet Ready
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User Rating: 5/10
Great program.. TERRIBLE support
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User Rating: 4/10
Someday this will be an invaluable utility (I hope)
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User Rating: 3/10
It could be good.
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User Rating: 6/10
Fantastic concept, limited realisation
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Keywords
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MoodLogic 2.0 specifications
