The Filter available in new Mac version, offers Facebook, MySpace support

Jonny Evans

Essential iTunes companion software The Filter is available in a new Mac version, the company announced just before company investor Peter Gabriel performed at last weekend’s Womad Festival.

The Filter is free software that helps iTunes users build well-targeted playlists of music based on the existing contents of their music library. It uses a cutting-edge recommendation engine that learns your musical tastes through your playing habits.

It works with music stored on a Mac or PC and some Nokia phones. Playlists can be stored in iTunes (or Windows Media) and then exported to an iPod for later listening on the go.

Users just choose one or more seed songs and The Filter quickly assembles a playlist based on those tracks. Its ability to find relationships between five million (and rising) pieces of music makes it an easy way to rediscover songs in a music library.

This version delivers a much-improved user interface: drop-down menus have been abandoned in favour of a much cleaner look, and controls are more obvious than before.

The company is also previewing a new feature that lets users build playlists based on the tastes of celebrities, as well as those of their friends.

The final build of The Filter’s Facebook application is available now. This allows music fans to share music profiles and listening habits with others on the social networking service. They can recommend music and offer music clips within their Facebook user profile. A MySpace version is also available.

As well as being a founder member of Genesis, a hitmaker in his own right and a tireless campaigner for human rights and musical diversity, Gabriel has a long-standing association with music and technology. He was an original investor in online music service, 3 OD2 (now acquired by Nokia).

As a musician himself, Gabriel wants to enable digital music services to help music fans discover new music.

The Filter can also recommend you new songs and artists based on what music you have in your library. Recommendations are ‘filtered’ to match your tastes and link to the iTunes Store so you can preview (and purchase) those songs it recommends.

In future, the company hopes to extend its service to cater for all forms of digital content, including video, podcasts and more.

The software uses Bayesian mathematics, a technology developed by frustrated music lover and physicist, Martin Hopkins, who was searching for an easy way to manage his growing digital music collection.

It was developed by UK software company Exabre,The Filter has won investment from a range of high profile investors, including Peter Gabriel’s Real World Group and Eden Ventures.

The Filter’s user base is growing at 25,000 a month and the software has been downloaded in 164 countries. The engine can identify five million songs, 4.5m of which have clips.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=18678

For those who don’t know, the header comes from “Love to be Loved”. And if you didn’t know that, shame on you!

My fellow Solsburians…

Eleven years ago, I went online for the first time and the first thing I did was try to find Peter Gabriel fan sites and newsgroups. Once I saw how fun and informative Gabeweb was, I decided to join in with my own fansite, Solsbury Hill.

To my surprise, it became somewhat popular, and over time, the site became my passion. This "hobby" of mine allowed me to meet some of the coolest people and do the most fun things.

I met up with this great family from Chicago and we spent a few days at the Grand Floridian and we held our own private Solsburian Convention at Disney World. I met a PG fan from the Netherlands…and we wound up vacationing together in each other’s countries. When PG went on tour, I went to three concerts in three cities. I had three groups of people who had never met me before let me stay at their houses so I can see these shows. One woman from New York let me crash with her to see a show, and later on, we saw three of PG’s summer tour shows together. And my favorite story of Solsburian comraderie, when I found out that PG was holding a press conference in New York and I snagged and invitation, I made a last minute plea to some New York fans for a place to stay so I could go, and someone who I barely knew came through for me, allowing me to have a special Gabriel Golden Moment.

And that’s just the live, in person stuff. There were also late night fan chats, early morning fan chats, and marathon-length e-mail exchanges. I received tons of rare and unusual PG recordings, articles and pictures, mostly from a really awesome Italian contact who wanted to share these gems. I talked some fans into dragging around a plush kitty around the UK for a few PG shows, and they annexed the actual Solsbury Hill in this site’s honor.

I had a lot of PG fans give me inspiration and feedback, and I even had occasional and interesting contact with some of Gabriel’s webteam. (For the curious, you can some of those stories here.) The Hill even got recognized by Peter Gabriel himself on occasion when a fan asked him about it in an online chat. I also got to stump Gabriel with a question about his cd rom called Eve during an online press conference Q&A. You bet I was walking on sunshine for a month…

I’ve had lots of help with the forums in the form of volunteer moderators and administrators, as well as frequent posting Solsburians who help answer PG related question and just make the forum interesting and entertaining to read.

All in all, this website has been a very fun, rewarding creative outlet for me.

However, over the years, I’ve gradually lost interest in writing for the site. Why? I’m really not sure. After experiencing all of the above, I feel guilty about the fact that my heart is no longer in it. I still love Peter Gabriel and his music, and I still have interest in the Gabeweb community. But while gabrielized has always done a great job at keeping up with blog posts, I feel that my lack of participation as the site owner is letting the Hill grow stagnant, and I don’t want that to happen. So I chose to hand solsburyhill.org to someone else in the hope that it will breathe new life into the Hill.

In the first years of solsburyhill.org, I’d get a lot of people writing me with the question, "What does the song ‘Solsbury Hill’ mean? What’s it about?" I admit, I’d get a little annoyed when I got asked this, because I knew what people were *really* asking: What does Peter Gabriel say that the song means?

The answer: It means whatever you think it means. If PG wanted everyone to parrot his thoughts, he wouldn’t write songs the way he does.

I now admit that Gabriel did say something about the song that seems particularly relevant right now. He said something along the lines of that “Solsbury Hill” is about letting go of who you are for what you might become. I don’t know if I’ll ever become anything other than what I am now because of this, but hey, I gotta take that chance.

I thought about thanking everyone by name, but that would be too many names, and this post would read like a telephone directory. But I’d really like to thank Ralf, for without him, this site would’ve died completely a long time ago, gabrielized, for being the number one writer for the blog, and my moderators, StacieDee and mrsratbag. And thanks to all of those who have participated in the Hill over the years. You know who you are.

I also wish the site’s new webmaster, Jakks, the best of luck in running the site. If anyone would like to help out in anyway, especially in writing for the blog, just send him a note and he’ll get back to ya.

So, I’m signing off! Live long and prosper!

You can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home…

Gabrielfully yours,

Mac Cat, Director of Coffee

There is no end of the work Peter does…. as evidenced here.

WE7 press room

DREAM TEAM LAUNCHES NEW AD-FUNDED MUSIC DOWNLOAD SERVICE

2007-04-29

Peter Gabriel, tech entrepreneur Steve Purdham and finance guru John Taysom announce We7

Today sees the launch of a new technology and music venture www.We7.com, a download service which offers free ad-funded music that people can share and play on any MP3 player.

Music legend Peter Gabriel has joined forces with technology entrepreneur Steve Purdham and financial authority John Taysom, to launch We7 which is currently in beta, with the dynamic download service launching at the beginning of June.

Advertising attached to the music will ensure that artists receive royalties for making their songs available, whilst consumers will receive and share DRM-free music legitimately.

We7 works by dynamically ‘grafting’ ads onto the front of music tracks and albums based on a consumer’s personal demographics such as age, location and gender and can be extended into personal preferences.

If consumers want a track with no ad, there’s an option to buy the track at normal price, however if they want a track that is free, legal and their favourite artist gets rewarded, then We7 add a short advert. Ads don’t remain attached to the tracks forever – after a period of time users will have the choice to have the track ad free.

The website will also offer new artists more access to fans and the chance to earn royalties for their music provided it is good enough. Only if enough members of We7’s TasteMaker community feel that a new band or artist deserves to be published will that artist ‘win’ the right to be downloaded thus ensuring the quality of music published.

Everybody who signs up to We7 can join the site’s TasteMaker community and decide what’s good and what’s not. Bands will also be able to perform peer review of other bands.

Peter Gabriel, Musician and Founder Investor We7, comments: "We7 provides artists – even across the more experimental or minority genres – with the opportunity to build a new source of income from their music. Ad funded downloads are the way to provide free music to the consumer without depriving musicians of their livelihood."

Steve Purdham, Founder Investor & CEO We7 adds: "In the can’t pay won’t pay digital world where consumers expect ‘free’ content, the idea of WE7 is simple: artists get paid, music fans get free downloads and advertisers get heard. Also under the battle cry of ‘Don’t Steal it – We7 It’, the We7 model removes a key driver of music piracy: cost."

He continues: “Paid for free’ content allows us to offer customers tracks free from DRM, something we believe presents a barrier to evolving the digital market. Our goal is to create an organic, digital music community where our users can share music and are placed in complete control of the content they see and hear, but at the same time rewarding the music rights owners and therefore driving the digital music industry forward.”

Gabriel has a proven track record with music technology projects, after funding and launching OD2, the digital service provider, in 1999 OD2 was sold Loudeye which in turn was bought by Nokia last year.

Purdham has founded and built global technology companies, such as SurfControl plc which was worth £1bn at its peak valuation.

Taysom founded the Reuters Greenhouse Fund in California and his investment track record also includes a number of successful technology ventures including Yahoo!, Verisign, and Advertising.com.

Line-Up: Peter Gabriel: Keyboards, Vocals; Tony Levin: Bass; David Rhodes: Guitars; further musicians to be announced soon

+ = Festival-Gig

Source: Genesis-News