HABU was created for people who'd rather spend their time discovering new music than creating custom playlists. With the average user listening to 17 to 19 hours of music per week, we saw the need to design and develop a music app that could surface highly targeted playlists and music recommendations.
HABU does the heavy lifting for music lovers, giving them a way to easily manage their ever-growing music collections. Rather than hitting the shuffle button and skipping the songs they don't want to listen to, or spending time creating custom playlists, HABU creates one touch playlists to match their mood. Whether a user is feeling Peaceful or Wild/Rowdy, HABU knows their music and serves it up to them with the tap of a finger.
HABU is setup to interface with a user's own content as much as it is to discover new artists and tracks via song recommendation and mood-based discovery. When they find something they like, users can listen to song previews in HABU and make purchases via iTunes (iOS).
In the near term, we'll be launching HABU iOS worldwide with support for 10 languages and are also planning a release on Android handsets. Longer term, In addition to mood categorization, HABU will be able to identify the genre, origin, era, artist type and tempo for any song and pivot across these data points to create personalized channels that match your music tastes, e.g. Ska Punk by Male Vocalists from the 90s. We're also aiming to take HABU and introduce a way for it to handle external data (think time, GPS data, speed of movement, event information, and the like).
HABU is designed with the ability to match music with a user's mood. Powered by Gracenote's sonic attribute technology, which has "mood profiles" for more than 30 million global music tracks, HABU extracts track attributes to categorize the songs in their music library.
Identifying and categorizing all of the songs in a user's music library is dependent on the song titles and artists names being matched to moods in our database. If a user's music library contains songs with inaccurate or mislabeled song info, HABU may not be able to successfully match those songs to a mood category.
Other factors why HABU may be unable to successfully match all of the songs in a user's music library to mood categories include: songs that are extremely rare, songs that are lesser known internationally and songs that are not published or available through regular distribution channels (for instance, a song that a user created).
We're working on updates to the analysis process to improve match rates for use cases like these. So, please keep your eye out for updates.
Yes. HABU will continue analyzing up to 10 minutes while the app is in the background or the screen is locked. If the user has a music library that is very large, they may need to continue analyzing their music when they return to the app.
HABU only analyzes music on a user's device with the exception of iOS users with iTunes Match enabled. For those user's we also analyze their music stored on iCloud.
On average, HABU will analyze approximately 3 songs per second on iOS (e.g. 5.7 minutes for 1,000 songs). For Android, HABU analyzes at a pace of less than 1 song per second (e.g. 27.1 minutes for 1,000 songs).
Each user's music is mapped to 100 unique mood based coordinates and visualized prominently within HABU's display. As HABU analyzes a user's music collection, colorful circles grow and shrink on-screen to represent songs that fit a particular mood. When more music is mapped to a mood a larger, brighter circle is drawn. When less music exists, a smaller, darker circle is drawn. After the analysis is complete, HABU users can see the types of mood that their songs map to.
There are 25 grouped moods and 100 granular moods available in HABU. Moods are mapped from Positive to Dark on one axis and Calm to Energetic on the other. Moods that are more Calm include Sentimental, Tender and Light Melancholy in contrast to moods that are more Dark and Energetic like Aggressive and Chaotic/Intense.
Users can change the number of moods displayed for their mood map via the Settings.
As users slide their finger around their mood map, HABU instantly plays music that fits the selected mood. Need to get pumped up for the gym? Just tap "Euphoric/Energy" to play music to get the blood going.
iOS users can shuffle songs within a mood queue by pulling down on the list to refresh. There is not an option to repeat. Neither of these features is supported for the current Android version.
Currently there is not a way to hide or remove music from a playlist.
Users can slide their finger around the Discover mood map to find music from the cloud to preview and purchase songs from. When a user taps a mood, HABU queries the Gracenote database for songs that fit that mood. Tapping a song in a Discover playlist will playback a preview.
Users can tap the double-circle icon to the right of a song title to seed the music database to return songs that have similar mood attributes to the song they like.
iOS users can tap on the double-circle icon to the right of the song title to Buy on iTunes. Android users can tap on the double-circle icon to purchase from 7digital.
Yes, in addition to playing music stored on a user's iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, HABU was developed to analyze and playback your music from iCloud when iTunes Match is enabled.
HABU does not currently support analysis or playback of music from either Amazon or Google at this time.
Users can edit playlists by adding, deleting, or moving tracks. From the mood playlist screen, tap on the Options button and then Edit. Add tracks by tapping the "+" button and selecting the desired tracks. Delete tracks by selecting the "-" button. Move a track by pressing the three-bar icon to the left of the album art image.
Users can share playlists with their Facebook Friends. From the mood playlist screen, tap on the Options button and then Share. If desired, users can enter in a new title for the playlist and edit the post's message in the text box.
Your Facebook Friends will see the post on your News Feed. When they click on the post, a webpage will open showing the tracks in your playlist with links to stream or purchase each track. Some tracks may not be available for streaming or purchase.
HABU no longer supports this feature.
Shared playlists are posted to your Facebook timeline and will be visible to all your Facebook friends. When your friends click on the post, a webpage will open listing the songs in your playlist with links to preview, stream, and purchase (not available for all songs). This webpage cannot be deleted.
Users can share their mood map created with HABU to show their friends what moods their music maps to. Future versions will be more tightly integrated with their friends to enable more ways to compare moods and discover music.
While the current version only lets users share their mood maps on Facebook, we're planning to support these features for both Facebook and Twitter.
HABU was developed with both Android and iOS in mind. The Android release is a Beta supporting Tablets with HoneyComb. The iOS version is a universal App supporting iOS 4.3.3 and above for iPhone 3GS and above, iPod Touch 4th Generation and above and all iPads.
We will be releasing Internationally to all countries by the end of August 2012. Stay tuned!
Yes. HABU on Android Tablets is available via Google Play in the following countries: US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain.
HABU iOS v1.0 supports English only; however, the International release at the end of August will support the following languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese-Simplified and Chinese Traditional. HABU on Android currently supports: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Greek Chinese-Simplified and Chinese Traditional.