New MusicVISTA Tool: Click for Music Videos

MusicVISTA continues to provide more information at your fingertips.

Goal: Be able to double-check the audio of your researched songs. How long is the song? What versions exist? What are the lyrics? What else is there to learn?

The most reliable source for these things is also the best source for any video versions of the song: YouTube.

So now you’ll find a new VIDEO button to the Song Detail screen.

When you push the new VIDEO button, we send an inquiry to the YouTube servers and receive back a special feed they have set up for video searches. We grab the (according to Google) best 5 matches to the song. Then, if I can find one of them with a copyright symbol in the notes, I promote that to first position, since it is the most likely to be an “official” video. Failing that, we look for the word “official” in the title. Of course, people do lie, so it isn’t perfect. Then, the other 4 video titles are loaded into a list. The second video is the one with the most views (unless the “official” and “most viewed” are the same). Then the others are listed below.

As you scroll through the list of videos, the comments for each are displayed to the right. Often, you’ll find lyrics or production notes about the video. In some cases this is pretty interesting stuff.

The first video is automatically launched. You can maximize the window, put the video into full screen mode, or increase the video quality to HD. I could have made HD automatic, but a lot of Internet connections are just too slow.

Obviously, this is a very quick way to experience the song’s audio and refresh your memory. It is also fascinating, sometimes, to learn about special intros done only for the video, or alternate versions, or high quality live performances. For special programming these might be useful in some cases. It could be interesting if once, and only once in a several month period, the station aired a live version of a Madonna hit from a Paris concert rather than the standard version. Just a little treat for the true fans.

MusicVISTA has long provided music test analysis that defines the cutting edge. Now we’ve added another in a growing set of tools that make implementing your AMT as easy and precise as possible.

Much more to come!