The Infinite Jukebox

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is this? - For when your favorite song just isn't long enough. This web app lets you upload a favorite MP3 and will then generate a never-ending and ever changing version of the song. It does what Infinite Gangnam Style did but for any song.
• Where did the upload button go? - See this
• How does it work? - We use the Echo Nest analyzer to break the song into beats. We play the song beat by beat, but at every beat there's a chance that we will jump to a different part of song that happens to sound very similar to the current beat. For beat similarity we look at pitch, timbre, loudness, duration and the position of the beat within a bar. There's a nifty visualization that shows all the possible transitions that can occur at any beat.
• Are there any ways to control the song? Yes - here are some keys:
  • [space] - Start and stop playing the song
  • [left arrow] - Decrement the current play velocity by one
  • [right arrow] - Increment the current play velocity by one
  • [Down arrow] - Sets the current play velocity to zero
  • [control] - freeze on the current beat
  • [shift] - bounce between the current beat and all of the similar sounding beats. These are the branch points.
  • 'h' - Bring it on home - toggles infinite mode off/on.
• What do the colored blocks represent? Each block represents a beat in the song. The colors are related to the timbre of the music for that beat.
• How can I tune the Jukebox? For detailed tuning instructions see Tuning the Infinite Jukebox on Music Machinery. This is an experimental feature. You can tune by clicking the tune button. Adjust the slider to the left for higher audio quality, and adjust the slider to the right for more branch points. You can also delete any edge by clicking on it to select it (when selected the edge turns red). Delete the edge by pressing the [del] key. The Infinite Jukebox will try hard to maximize the amount of the song that is played when in infinite mode. This behavior can be turned off by de-selecting the 'Loop Extension Optimization' checkbox. You can throw away all of your tunings by pressing the 'reset' button. You can share your tuned songs, all your edits are encoded in the URL.
• How come this doesn't work in my browser? The app requires the web audio APIs which are currently best supported in Chrome and Safari. You can read more details about this issue in this blog post: Why does the Infinite Jukebox work only in Chrome and Safari.
• How come the Infinite Jukebox stops when I put the tab in the background? Infinite Jukebox wants your full attention! Also, Chrome lowers the priority of Javascript when it is not in the foreground making it impossible to do time-sensitive processing that is required for the Infinite Jukebox. However, you can open the jukebox in its own window and minimize it without any of the stuttering problems.
• How come I can't hear anything? There is an issue with some audio files that don't seem to play in Chrome or Safari. When these files are re-encoded using ffmpeg, they play fine.
• I have an awesome infinite track that I'd like everyone to hear. What do I do? You can tweet it with the tags #infinitejukebox and #halloffame, or you can submit it to the InfiniteJukebox subreddit.
• Can you remove my copyrighted music from this?. Sure, if you are the copyright holder of a song and for some reason want it removed send me an email at paul @ echonest.com
• Who made the cool logo? The logo was contributed by Jasper Allijn.
• Who made this? Paul Lamere at Music Hack Day Boston on November 11, 2012. More info at Music Machinery Follow @plamere
• Do you have any pictures of cats? Why yes, yes I do!: