MusicIP FAQ
General
What music file types does MusicIP Mixer support?Is there a limitation on the number of songs the Basic version of MusicIP Mixer will allow in a library?
In the List Duplicates feature, why does MusicIP Mixer fail to list as duplicates two identical songs, OR list as duplicates two different songs?
How do I remove songs from my MusicIP Mixer library?
I'm behind a firewall - how can I access the MusicIP server?
What gets uploaded to the central server?
How do I get the language pack to work?
Analysis
What does it mean when MusicIP Mixer is validating my digital music collection?How long does it usually take?
How long should the analysis take?
How can I speed up the analysis process?
What is the meaning of red, green, or black songs?
How can I get MusicIP Mixer to turn more songs green?
How can I tell it's working or what it's doing?
The songs which were listed as Unanalyzable all seem to be from the same genre.
Why wouldn't they be analyzable?
If I've already analyzed my music collection with MusicIP Mixer on one computer, how do I move my music collection to another computer without having to repeat analysis?
I don't have an internet connection; can MusicIP Mixer still analyze my music collection?
Can you analyze songs that have been downloaded from the iTunes music store?
What is the name of the file I need to backup the MusicIP analysis information for my music library?
Premium Registration
What is the difference between the Basic version of MusicIP Mixer and MusicIP Mixer Premium?I just purchased the Premium version of MusicIP Mixer; where do I enter my registration key?
Do I need to reinstall anything? My registration key isn't working, what do I do?
My registration key is working, but some of the Premium Features still don't seem to be working, like Power Tools. How can I enable them?
Do I need a different registration key at work and home? How many machines can have the same key?
(NOTE: Dont ask me about Registration Keys MusicIP is not my product! It does seem that old keys will still validate but as far as I know its not possible to buy a new key anymore)
Playlists
For some reason, the music player is not playing the whole playlist, but instead plays the first song and then stops. How do I fix this?How do I remove or add a specific song to a playlist after it has been created?
How do I make sure my seed songs always show up in the playlists I create with MusicIP Mixer?
General
What music file types does MusicIP Mixer support?
MusicIP Mixer supports: Windows - .m4a, .m4p, .mp3, .wma, .ogg, .flac and .wav filesMac - .m4a, .m4p, .mp3, .ogg, .flac and .wav files
Linux - .mp3, .ogg, .flac and .wav files
Is there a limitation on the number of songs the basic version of MusicIP Mixer will allow in a library?
There are no library size limitations in the basic or premium versions of the Mixer. If you have a large collection that is being analyzed and you're finding that the processing has slowed down, try exiting the application and restarting. If this does not help, check to make sure that the connection to the MusicIP network is still working by going to the File Menu, then Preferences, selecting Server and hitting the Test Connection button. Under the File Menu go to your Preferences and select Exclusions to check if any of the default exclusions would be causing files you want analyzed to be excluded from the analysis process. Remove any exclusions you do not want enabled.In the List Duplicates feature, why does MusicIP Mixer fail to list as duplicates two identical songs, OR list as duplicates two different songs?
MusicIP Mixer uses a proprietary fingerprinting technology which is part of MusicIP. Although it's rare that you will get anything other than the expected answer, there is still a bit of an art to the process of fingerprinting. For instance, if you have song A and song B which are copies of the same recording, but song B was significantly remastered, these songs might be considered different, as they will have different attributes describing them. If you have song A and song B which are different recordings (perhaps even different artists) of the same song, but they sound quite similar, these may be identified as duplicates.For MusicIP Mixer, the key issue is that any songs sharing the same fingerprint must also share the same analysis data. Another rare possibility is that since the fingerprints only look at the first two minutes of each song, if the songs differ only after the first two minutes, these will always be considered the same. Different language versions of the same song will also generally be considered duplicates, as will remixes with only trivial changes.
How do I remove songs from my MusicIP Mixer library?
Removing songs from your MusicIP Mixer library is easy - select the song you would like to remove and press Ctrl-D (Windows) or Cmd-D (Mac). If you want the song removed from your MusicIP Mixer library and deleted from your computer, select the Delete From Disk option when it appears. If you use the delete key, the song or songs selected will just be removed from the current list.I'm behind a firewall - how can I access the MusicIP server?
If you are using the Windows version of MusicIP Mixer, choose File/Customize Options from the menu, and go to the Library Options tab. Select "Use proxy", and enter the name of your proxy server (i.e. proxy.domain.com) and the associated port. Additionally, if your proxy server requires a user name and password, you can enter them here. If you merely need to access the server via port 80, you can use music.predixis.com as a host, and 80 as a port. If you do not yet have a registration key, you will need to start the MusicIP Mixer with additional command line arguments to establish the initial connection. You can do this with the -proxy option, setting the host and port as appropriate: MusicIPMixer -proxy music.predixis.com 80 If your proxy requires authentication: MusicIPMixer -proxy music.predixis.com 80 -auth username password Note: The only authentication scheme currently supported is basic authentication. If your proxy requires an alternate authentication scheme, you may use a different computer, or contact us about the availability of alternate schemes.What gets uploaded to the central server?
Only information related to songs is stored on the server for the purpose of verifying analysis data. Specifically, each song may send one or more of: Song title Artist name (including Composer, Conductor, Lyricist, Orchestra) Album name Track number Genre name Song duration Song fingerprint Song analysis Analysis of lyrics SHA1 hash Additionally, recommendations may be retrieved from our servers based on selected or playing songs. Such queries may contain the id or metadata of the seed song, and acoustic information about your collection which can be used to retrieve the recommendations. This information is stored only with anonymous information so your privacy is ensured.How do I get the language pack to work?
Currently, the downloadable language pack is Windows only. Linux already has the language pack built in with no need to install additional software. A Mac version of the downloadable language pack may become available in a future release. Once you have downloaded the language pack and successfully installed it onto your computer, open up MusicIP Mixer and go to Help, where there should be the option to Choose Language. Find the language you are looking for and select OK. Languages can be modified on-the-fly without exiting MusicIP Mixer. If you have installed a language which matches your default Windows locale, the correct language should be loaded automatically when you start MusicIP Mixer. Regrettably, we can only provide support in English at the current time. Included languages: French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, SwedishAnalysis
What does it mean when MusicIP Mixer is validating my digital music collection? How long does it usually take?
Validation checks to see if our server already has info on that particular song. If the song has been analyzed before, it can be validated. If the song has never been analyzed, then analysis is sent to the server. Validation speed depends on your processor speed and the overlap between your personal music library and our master database. If the song is a part of our master database, it will only need to be fingerprinted, which should take approximately 2-3 seconds per song. If the song is not a part of our master database, it will need to be fully analyzed, which is more like 80% of the song's length.How long should the analysis take?
All answers depend on available CPU and memory, but in general, fingerprinting will take between 5 and 10 seconds per song, and analysis will take approximately 80% of the song's playing time. Note: If the central server already has an analysis stored for your songs, you only have to wait for the fingerprinting. Similarly, any analysis performed by your machine will be uploaded to the central server for others to use.How can I speed up the analysis process?
Sometimes with large collections that hold a lot of music MusicIP has never seen before, analysis can take a while. With new songs, analysis can take up to 80% of the song's length to complete. But there are ways to speed up the process. One of the easiest ways to complete analysis quickly is to leave your computer on and MusicIP Mixer running over night. You can also increase the amount of computer energy that gets dedicated to analysis.For Windows, under File, then Preferences, go to the General tab. There you will find a dropdown menu for Analysis Priority. We recommend that when you are using your computer this option should be on Low, but if you're computer is left on and MusicIP Mixer is all that is running overnight, you could increase the analysis priority to Normal. Just make sure you change this option back to Low in the morning, otherwise the rest of your computer applications will be running far slower than usual. Unfortunately, this option is not available for Mac.
What is the meaning of red, green, or black songs?
Songs which are not ready also fall into two categories:[1] Songs which have not yet been analyzed
[2] Songs which are unanalyzable
Songs in the first category will appear in red. Songs in the second category will be black. Unanalyzable songs are songs which are either less than 10 seconds long, or which have irregularities in the file format (most often with MP3's). The number of songs to process is the total of [1] and [2] - this lets you know how much more work remains for MusicIP Mixer.
Note: many MP3 players can play songs which do not adhere correctly to the MP3 standard - such songs may not be analyzable using MusicIP Mixer.
How can I get MusicIP Mixer to turn more songs green?
How can I tell it's working or what it's doing? MusicIP Mixer will automatically begin analyzing songs whenever you add new music. You can tell analysis is going on whenever the word "Analyzing" appears on the status bar. You can start or stop analysis from the Library menu. To see what the analysis is doing, you will need to edit the file log.txt in the installation directory.This will show an entry for each fingerprint and analysis performed, along with when it happened, and how long it took.
This file can be found in the following places depending on the operating system you are working on:
Windows: The installation folder
Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MusicMagic
Linux: ~/.MusicMagic
Sometimes, getting more songs to turn green is as simple as checking to see if that song has been added to the MusicIP database. We're constantly getting introduced to new music, so even if MusicIP Mixer has been unable to analyze a song in your library, we might be able to recognize the track based on the artist and song information. Some software updates may also contain fixes which allow a previously unanalyzable file to be analyzed. In order to do this, you must reset status on the unanalyzable songs in your music library.
First, go to Library/List Unanalyzable.
Select all by clicking Ctrl-A and right click on the songs.
Select Reset Name Lookups, then right click again and select Reset Status.
The songs will turn red while MusicIP Mixer checks to see if it recognizes the song/artist information. Any of the songs that turn green will now be analyzed and mixable. The songs which were listed as Unanalyzable all seem to be from the same genre.
Why wouldn't they be analyzable?
In order to help speed up the analysis process, we created a feature called Exclusions, which will keep certain files from being analyzed. One example is music files where the genre field contains "book", "spoken" or "podcast". But for some collections, this can cause songs that the user may want to be analyzed to be overlooked.If I've already analyzed my music collection with MusicIP Mixer on one computer, how do I move my music collection to another computer without having to repeat analysis?
The easiest way to make sure analysis moves with the files is to store the analysis in the files - to do this, select whichever files you want, right-click on the songs you have selected and click Archive Analysis. This will write the analysis as custom tags next to your other metadata; then your music can move between computers and be MusicIP Mixer ready, without the need to repeat analysis.I don't have an internet connection; can MusicIP Mixer still analyze my music collection?
While possible, it will be a slow and will take a long time. The best option is to analyze your songs on a computer that does have an Internet connection, then once analysis is complete, archive analysis into all of your music files by selecting all the songs in your collection at once, right clicking, and selecting Archive Analysis. Now all of your songs will have the analysis stored directly on in each file, which means that you can now move them back over to your computer without the internet connection and have a fully analyzed digital music collection ready to go for MusicIP Mixer.Can you analyze songs that have been downloaded from the iTunes music store?
iTunes sells AAC music downloads, which are protected with Digital Rights Management (DRM). Since we are not allowed to decode them, MusicIP cannot analyze them. But, it is possible MusicIP Mixer will recognize them by the names of the song, artist, and album. You can go to the Library menu and select List Unanalyzable, then select them all and Ctrl-Click, right click and select Reset Name Lookups. When you start analysis, it will attempt another name lookup, and it's possible more songs will be successfully processed (and turn green). However, anything that cannot be recognized by name will stay unanalyzable. If you use iTunes to rip your music CDs, they are also turned into AAC files. As long as you do not use DRM to encrypt these files, MusicIP Mixer will be able to analyze them, unlike iTunes music store downloads.What is the name of the file I need to backup the MusicIP analysis information for my music library?
You may want to back up this file from time to time, in case of hard disk failure or other problems. MusicIP Mixer stores information about your tracks in a file called a cache file. This includes information about which tracks are in your collection, the associated metadata, acoustic analysis, custom tags, ratings, and so forth.The default cache file is called default.m3lib, and lives in the following location:
Windows: The installation folder
Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MusicMagic
Linux: ~/.MusicMagic
If you want to use a different location for the file, simply pass the name of the file on the command line when you start MusicIP. On Windows, you can double-click on any .m3lib file to start MusicIP using that cache file - if the file is not called "default.m3lib", then the name of the cache file (without the extension) will be listed in the Filters & Playlists window.