Is there a website that categorizes songs by mood or subject?
April 8, 2008 7:54 PM   Subscribe

Is there a website that categorizes songs by mood or subject? Searching iTunes for title words and hoping the title then corresponds to the lyrics/mood doesn't always give the best results.

For work, I often have to find weird or unusual songs that have to do with a certain topic (and the songs have to be PG or G.)

For example, in the past three weeks, I've needed songs dealing with Botox, brains, and basketball.

I searched on iTunes for Botox; nothing relevant pops up. We ended up using a song called "Tighten Up," but it was only because one of my coworkers thought of it. I had never heard of this song before he mentioned it, but thought "Hmm. There has to be a thesaurus or database of song topics, moods, etc."

Is there a database or search engine to facilitate this song-searching process? I need to be able to say "Find songs about brains" and have relevant ones about heads and skulls and brains and foreheads pop up. Song titles are a good place to start, but unless I know every single keyword dealing with a subject, all of them won't pop up.

(Caveat: I hate going to lyrics websites because they often contain popups and embedded things that destroy my work computer. Also, I find these songs under a pretty tight deadline, so a mixtapes site or using Ask Mefi would take too long.)
posted by melodykramer to Media & Arts (5 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
For certain topics, other people have done the work for you, but it's so subjective that we're probably a ways off from the sort of taxonomy you want.

Last.fm has Keyword tagging, but so far the results are not very promising. But for some things it might be better than those lyrics websites.
posted by kidbritish at 8:09 PM on April 8, 2008


allmusic.com has genre, mood and style information for most of its content. The moods are browsable (as are the other tags...
posted by benzo8 at 10:59 PM on April 8, 2008 [1 favorite]


I believe you're looking for Musicovery.
posted by comiddle at 1:01 AM on April 9, 2008 [1 favorite]


CDbaby.com also categorizes by mood and activity.
posted by COD at 5:32 AM on April 9, 2008 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Wow...Musicovery looks very promising...but can you search it by keyword?
posted by melodykramer at 5:57 AM on April 9, 2008


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