Music Machinery

Last week we released Pyechonest, a Python library for the Echo Nest API.  Pyechonest gives the Python programmer access to the entire Echo Nest API including artist and track level methods.  Now after 9 years working at Sun Microsystems, I am a diehard Java programmer, but I must say that I really enjoy the nimbleness and expressiveness of Python.  It’s fun to write little Python programs that do the exact same thing as big Java programs.  For example, I wrote an artist radio program in Python that, given a seed artist, generates a playlist of tracks by wandering around the artists in the neighborhood of the seed artists and gathering audio tracks.   With Pyechonest, the core logic is 10 lines of code:

def wander(band, max=10):
   played = []
   while max:
     if band.audio():
         audio = random.choice(band.audio())
         if audio['url'] not in played:
             play(audio)
             played.append(audio['url'])
             max -= 1
     band = random.choice(band.similar())

(You can see/grab the full code with all the boiler plate in the SVN repository)

This method takes a seed artist (band) and selects a random track from set of audio that The Echo Nest has found on the web for that artist, and if we haven’t already played it, then do so. Then we select a near neighbor to the seed artist and do it all again until we’ve  played the desired number of songs.

For such a simple bit of code, the playlists generated are surprisingly good..Here are a few examples:

Seed Artist:  Led Zeppelin:

• You Shook Me by Led Zeppelin  via licorice-pizza
• Suicide by Thin Lizzy via dmg541
• I Ain’t The One by Lynyrd Skynrd via artdecade
• Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival via onesweetsong
• Susie-Q by Dale Hawkins via boogiewoogieflu

(I think the Dale Hawkins version of Susie-Q after  CCR’s Fortunate Son  is just brilliant)

Seed Artist: The Decemberists:

• The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid by The Decemberists via londononburgeoningmetropolis
• Amazing Grace by Sufjan Stevens via itallstarted
• Baby’s Romance by Chris Garneau via slowcoustic
• Saint Simon by The Shins via pastaprima
• Made Up Love Song #43 by Guillemots via merryswankster

(Note that audio for these examples is audio found on the web – and just like anything on the web the audio could go away at any time)

I think these artist-radio style playlists rival just about anything you can find on current Internet radio sites – which ain’t to0 bad for 10 lines of code.