Trax: Better Mp3 Organizing Through Visualization

Mp3s are increasingly the dominant format for recorded music. However, the current organizational methods for mp3 collections are lacking. Thus I propose the Trax system, a visualization tool for organizing mp3s according to genre, and for creating playlists. Trax works on the assumption that most songs exist in multiple genres, and thus creates a graph representing these links between different genres. Trax provides many different ways of dealing with the complexity of the genre graph, allowing for viewing of details and overviews, and all the while supporting the creation of playlists. The results of the system are encouraging, in that it has met all initial design goals. However, Trax has also provoked several larger issue to do with musical genre, which is both a positive and negative aspect of the system.