mood

In movies, music is used intensively to set the stage for a dramatic appearance or a sad goodbye. Just imagine Pretty Woman without Roy Orbison, Wayne's World without Queen, Robin Hood without Bryan Adams, Men in Black without Will Smith, or Kill Bill without the entire soundtrack. These movies wouldn't be the same.

Music can be entertaining, bring back memories, trigger strong feelings, distract, and comfort. Music creates moods because it betrays your brain and you can use this little trick in your favor. Apply music for your mood, in order to promote or change it.

Here are the 5 best websites that play music matching your mood or the mood you desire.

AUPEO!

AUPEO! was launched just over a year ago in Berlin, Germany. This explains the funny language on great parts of the website. However, the mood categories are pinned down in English, so you're all set to go!

music for the mood

As you can probably guess by the screenshot, you can also play music you like by entering an artist you enjoy listening to. The stations are grouped by genre and are compiled by AUPEO!'s music experts. Within personal you can play your personal station, which is based on whatever you have previously listened to and requires that you sign up with AUPEO!.

MeeMix

MeeMix plays music you like. So it basically works like Last.fm or Pandora. You start a station by entering a song or artist, then you rate whatever MeeMix plays to you, and it will further refine its suggestions.

In addition to playing what you like, you can also push some sliders in the Mood Control on the bottom left to finetune the algorithm that picks the next song for you and plays music for your mood.

play music matching your mood
play music matching your mood

Moodstream

The start page of Moodstream has the following introduction:

Moodstream is a powerful brainstorming tool designed to help take you in an inspiring, unexpected direction. Whether you want images, footage or audio, or just need a stream of fresh ideas, tweak the Moodstream sliders to bring a whole new creative palette straight to you.

Moodstream is not only an audible, but also a visual experience. Getty Images has skillfully combined a clever interface with fantastic background pictures and animations. It's a pleasure and I bet you're ready for this!

You can select one of eight presets, including inspire, excite, refresh, intensify, simplify, or stabilize. You can also manually push the sliders to define your mood in various terms. Don't forget to refresh the stream to activate changes.

stream music

A little drag is that Moodstream doesn't play entire tunes, but only short snippets. However, you can add whatever you like to your Moodboard, save any combination of image/sound snippets, and play your board over and over again later.

Stereomood

Stereomood works on many different levels. You can use the inconspicuous search bar at the top and select music for your mood or activity. From the resulting playlist you can either play single songs or the entire list.

listen to music

You can also pick a tag from the cloud and get a playlist with all matching songs.

online music

A menu on the left reveals which songs with that tag are found in artist or mood categories. When you're logged in you'll see a like option and you can add songs to your library by clicking the plus icon. You can create custom playlists based on items you have added to your library.

Musicovery

Musicovery delivers the entire package. Pick genres, decade, and mood or dance-ability. The result is displayed in a visually inspiring cloud, which rapidly changes as you adjust your settings.

discover music

As a registered user you can like and ban songs. With a premium account you can also play any song you want from the playlist, play your favorite songs only, and all in hi-fi quality.

If you have a Mac, you can download a beta version of Musicovery and use it with your iTunes library. As a Mac user you might also want to try Moody. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, have a look at Moodagent.

What songs make you smile?

Image credits: 0GuaRDiaN0