Jason Freeman’s iTunes Signature Maker reads a user’s iTunes library and listening history, pulls out the n most frequently played tracks, mashes clips of them into a short piece of audio, and publishes it (to your desktop or a shared gallery) as a .wav file. I suspect it’s not horribly complicated software, but the result is, if nothing else, a neat diversion, and is definitely my favorite Findory meme of the day.
Part of the idea behind the iTunes Signature is that a compressed burst of your musical tastes will provide listeners a little insight into your personality. In practice, I found mine a bit jarring, yet somehow strangely soothing in its familiarity.
An interesting application of this software could be integrating it with something like last.fm’s superior knowledge base to generate signatures for a group of people, or for friends within a social network. The problem with using last.fm, of course, would be gaining access to clips of songs, although last.fm seems to manage to do this with its player in a way that’s never been clear to me.
Williamsburger iTunes Signature (24 January 2006)
I’d enjoy hearing others’ signatures, so please, do post in the comments if you find this of interest.
