Tangerine!, See Your Playlists

excellent
key review info
application features
  • Create Intense Workout Playlists
  • (3 more, see all...)

When it comes to large collections of music, playlists are definitely the way to go. Sure, you can always listen to a particular album or song, and when you're not looking for anything in particular you can always use the shuffle function, but there are disadvantages. With large libraries it becomes easy to forget certain tracks and albums, if you actively seek out certain ones, similarly the shuffle is too random and will often play songs that don't go well one after the other or don't suit your current mood. Playlists themselves, while the ideal compromise, take quite a while to set up and need constant upkeep if you want to have them up to date with any new songs you add to the library. One solution to all of this is to simply use programs that generate playlists, such as Tangerine!.

What it does Tangerine! is an application that lets you create playlists of or relaxing or upbeat music with just the click of a button. It analyzes the songs in your library and looks at the BPM and beat intensity of the track in order to determine what it is like, and then uses this information to quickly create playlists. Fast, easy to use and very customisable, it takes all the work out of managing playlists.

Working with it Before you can make use of Tangerine!, you need to analyze your library to determine the BPM and beat intensity of every track. This operation can take a while, but it only needs to be done once. After the initial analysis, Tangerine! will automatically look for tracks that have been recently added and not analyzed and will take care of it silently. Even in the case of the initial analysis, you can tell the program to prioritize certain tracks so that you can start using it even faster.

Once tracks are analyzed you are ready to create a playlist. Doing so is quite simple. First you need to specify the duration of the playlist. Then, using sliders, you select the BPM and beat intensity range of tracks that you want in the playlist. Last but not least, you select the 'shape' of the playlist. This shape is like a graph and gives you a visual representation of the playlist, being one of the most important aspects of how the playlist will 'feel' when you listen to it. At this point, you can further customize the selection of tracks that go into the playlist using the two checkboxes at the bottom of the window as well as smart playlist-like rules. Once everything is done you can save the specifications of the playlist as a preset.

When you have generated your playlist, you can start enjoying it directly in Tangerine! or you can save it so that it will be exported to iTunes. This is a very practical way to listen to something on the fly without actually having to full up your playlists with lots of temporary entries.

See your playlists After a playlist is generated, it will automatically be shown in the bottom of the main Tangerine! window. You will notice that it looks remarkably similar to the shape that you chose during generation. Each track will be given a box that has the album art, if present. Furthermore, each box will be scaled horizontally according to the track duration and vertically according to the BPM of the song. It is an amazing way to see how the playlist will sound.

Just by looking at this playlist display, you can easily see how the transitions between songs will be like and the overall feel of the playlist. You can further tweak your playlist at this point by adding new tracks wherever you see fit, dragging songs around to reorder them, or deleting them from the playlist altogether. It is a very different and very efficient way of working with music in a visual way.

The new and the old After seeing Tangerine!'s playlist shape display, the first thing that crossed my mind was that it is a perfect way to tweak any existing playlists to get more out of them. This is also easily done, and Tangerine! can be used not only to generate new playlist but also tweak existing ones.

Using the drop down menu at the bottom left of the screen you can select which playlist you want loaded into Tangerine!. Obviously, the program can only work with normal playlists, since the contents of smart playlists are theoretically constantly changing. Though Tangerine! will not let you edit smart playlists themselves, it will let you access their contents so that you may use them as a basis for creating regular playlists.

The Good Easily creates playlists based on the nature of the tracks as well as the feel of the playlist itself. View and edit new and existing playlists in a great new way.

The Bad The only thing that is really missing in Tangerine! is the option to generate a smart playlist that updates every time you launch the program. At the moment, you would have to save a preset and generate a playlist every time, but this could be done automatically by the program.

The Truth Tangerine! gives you a new way of enjoying music. Both the generation of playlists and the way it displays them are simply great and will make you wonder how you managed without this program.

Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:

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user interface 5
features 5
ease of use 5
pricing / value 3


final rating 5
Editor's review
excellent
 
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