The Filter: auto-playlists you like for Mac, Windows, Nokia phones

Hi, my name is Kevin and I'm a digital music addict. All day long I swim between my Zune Pass subscription, XM Radio online and Pandora. When I just want to hear music I enjoy and not worry about playlists, Pandora's my best bet. That may change now that I saw a bit of freeware called The Filter. It works for iTunes, Windows Media Player and Nokia S60 phone devices.

After you install The Filter and register an account, you pick up to three seed songs from your digital music library. The Filter then uses those songs to query its central database to find similar songs in your library that other users of The Filter like. Like Pandora, The Filter continuously monitors your listening preferences, providing more weight to songs that you listen through to the end and lowering the "I like it" factor when you skip out of a song.

It's not quite looking at the music's "DNA" like Pandora, but it's a good second option. The fact that it works across Windows, Mac and Nokia devices expands the user database all the more. If you don't have a large digital music collection and do have connectivity, Pandora might be the better option. For those with gigs of audio, you might want to give The Filter a try, although it was beta-like and wee bit buggy for me. I did get it working on my UMPC with my Zune content through WMP, but my computer slowed up considerably. I wonder how much of a coincidence it is that The Filter's interface looks a bunch like Pandora's? ;)