Feeling Green? ColorHits Gives Song Recommendations by Hue
New web application ColorHits wants to provide listeners with a visually richer approach to music discovery by letting them search for and discover interesting albums based on the chosen shade of their cover. A seemingly bizarre service, it offers the interactive equivalent of a color wheel for sound, allowing you to introduce yourself to new artists by records with related hues.
Currently accessible by invitation only, the service allows users who sign up at its website to browse from over 2 million albums by selecting a random color from predefined palettes or looking for specific artists and records. Based on selections and queries, albums featuring similar tints (the app uses a proprietary algorithm to compute and display the percentage of colors present within each cover) are then suggested. Providing an arbitrary snapshot of other musicians and records that you might enjoy, once possible candidates have been identified, songs can be previewed or purchased on Amazon and iTunes. Selections may also be shared via social media services like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, letting you give friends a snapshot of where both your aesthetic and acoustic tastes currently lie.
The usefulness of this service is debatable. However, as a novelty among the growing world of music discovery apps, ColorHits may offer occasional surprises to match your mood’s current tint. It hopes to expand features to include curated picks in coming months.