Facial recognition technology is currently a hot potato in all kinds of sectors, music included. So the idea of a music app that monitors the listener’s facial expression to provide recommendations may spook a fair few people.
It’s interesting to see what’s possible though, and a new app called MMP is using machine learning technology to “detect your mood based off your facial expression and pick a perfect song for you”.
Released as a free Android app (with in-app purchases) by developer Carl Duncan, it claims to recognise seven separate moods from facial expressions: happy, sad, neutral, surprised, disgusted, angry and scared. The facial analysis isn’t constant: users press a camera button when they want to be scanned.
There are some obvious questions around this: is it really quicker than just giving someone a screen of the seven moods and getting them to tap one?
We’re also not sure at the time of writing where the music comes from: the Google Play Store screenshots show music by The Weeknd, Lil Wayne and Trey Songz, so (hopefully!) a licensed source.
Anyway, it’s perhaps an early glimpse at what might be possible for bigger streaming services in the future, although we can only imagine the headlines if, say, Spotify or YouTube’s app started scanning people’s faces.
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