mufin player for Windows

More intelligent than Genius?

mufin player is a music suggestion service for your Windows PC desktop.

The mufin player is another attempt at an alternative to iTunes. Its unique selling point is the similarity tool, which analyzes your library to create playlists of music that relate conceptually to one another.

The playlist creation on mufin player does seem much better than iTunes' Genius feature, as it actually looks at the music itself, not just the meta data. The downside of that is the initial scanning of your library can take quite a long time if you have a large music collection. Importing with mufin player also takes a little longer because of this.

mufin player's design is great, although if you don't like orange, there are no ways to customize the interface's colors. The controls in mufin player are chunky and look cool. The side bar is really clear, but there is nothing innovative about it.

Unfortunately, mufin player has no equalizer, and does seem a little heavy on resources compared to iTunes. It is also difficult to see which playlist you are currently viewing. mufin player will also recommend tracks from its online database, and you can listen to excerpts from these. However, sometimes a "there are currently no similar tracks for this piece" message will pop up, which isn't very helpful.

The playlist creation feature in mufin player is impressive, but overall don't expect iTunes to be losing any sleep (or users) over it yet.