The Eternal Jukebox

December 8, 2023 12:52 PM

This web app lets you search a song on Spotify and will then generate a never-ending and ever changing version of the song.

Previously, infinite but not eternal

posted by chavenet (72 comments total)

I have been playing with this all morning, and have decided it works best with songs you sorta-know, but that you don't know in a deep, deep detailed way--songs where it's okay for it to skip around, without causing you to look up at your computer wondering where the chorus went. And it's probably better without words--Avril 14th works okay, for instance, although the jumps are all really in two parts of the song, but most of the songs with lyrics I've run through it have caught me off-guard when they're in the wrong spot.
posted by mittens at 1:02 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

https://jukebox.davi.gq/api/site/expand/bGojYEgHAA/redirect

This is terrif(ic/ying).
posted by freelanceastro at 1:05 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I have literally listened to hours of “I Will Survive” by CAKE on the Infinite version after cortex introduced me to it — christamighty 11 years ago. I've ported that bookmark at least three times, although I guess it's now defunct.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:11 PM on December 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

We're On A Coletrane To Nowhere:

Giant . . . Steps?
posted by The Bellman at 1:24 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Glad the front page highlights the version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles song as recorded by the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
posted by HeroZero at 1:40 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Same as it ever was.
posted by HeroZero at 1:46 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

It works well on songs that are very consistent all the way through—third verse, same as the first—but songs with subtle differences between the repetitions can sound pretty messy. For example, try "The Mayor of Simpleton" by XTC, which has a surprising amount of structure for a pop song and a lot of small variations between the sections. And it makes a pretty big mess out of Rush's "YYZ".

Now I want a version that lets me do things like only following the "strongest" links, or never skipping during vocals.

Just the visualization is a great tool for learning a song, though. "Find the beat and calculate the high-level structure."
posted by The Tensor at 1:53 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Neverevereverending Story by Limahlimahlimahlimahl
posted by Hairy Lobster at 1:54 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Bat Macumba" by Os Mutantes occasionally just goes into full freakout mode with an endless noodly psychedelic guitar solo, without ever losing the repeating bass/tambourine line, and it's amazing.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:59 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

ooooOOOO we're going to the mooooOOOOOnnnnn
posted by Wobbuffet at 2:05 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Help I fed it some Merzbow and I think I broke it and it may actually be conjuring demons.

On the other hand I'm not sure if I can even tell because: Merzbow.
posted by loquacious at 2:11 PM on December 8, 2023 [8 favorites]

My buddy had an old Marc Almond CD with a track that had a lock groove which seamlessly looped back into the middle of the bridge. Took us forever to figure it out. We were high.
posted by ovvl at 2:18 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Can't Stop Can't Stop
posted by milnak at 2:20 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's Christmastime, we just discussed the worst Christmas songs ever, and cortex' genius Endless Jingling is offline. I'll start off the endless caroling party: Jingle Bells is a natural as is Gloria in Excelsis Deo. Feliz Navidad sounds the same only endless. The Little Drummer Boy ends up like a movie version of a Native American war song.

(BTW click the "tune" button for some interesting tweaking parameters. I appreciate that the chance of taking a branch varies over time.)
posted by Nelson at 2:23 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Ok, more seriously: A lot of the music I want to try on this isn't even on Spotify and I wish I could feed it stuff like a 60 minute dub techno DJ set or 1-4 hour generative modular synth jam,

But I did find The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds and... it's mildly ok? I guess?

The problem is that it's very clear it's kind of just vaguely identifying some song structures and repeat patterns and then looping/jumping around those segments but it's also totally breaking the flow and structure of the original song in some very particular ways that make me cranky as a DJ because the loops/jumps aren't very clean.

By this I mean that a lot of the beats and jumps are just a little off of tempo making it sound like bad DJ mixingand a bit of a trainwreck now and then, and some of the cuts and loops are not in the pocket and just don't make sense because they're in the middle of a bar or loop instead of following DJ brain rules about phrasing and patterns that just aren't as groovy or musical.

Some of it is remarkably fine and smooth but the jarring jumps are really jumpy.

It probably doesn't help that I know every millisecond of that song and it just sounds not right when it makes a bad jump cut.
posted by loquacious at 2:29 PM on December 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

Rush E becomes pretty confusing, and Bach fugues, well, let's just say I'm entirely too sober for those.
posted by aramaic at 2:32 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Lou Bega Mambo No. 5, you cowards.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:38 PM on December 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

This is fun to play with. I started with La Femme d'Argent by Air, and it had a pretty complicated connection map, and seemed like it was going to get caught in an infinite loop around 3 minutes in. I then tried Bohemian Rhapsody, which had a pretty sparse map, and then Another One Bites the Dust, which is so repetitive I thought the connection map would be extremely dense, but it wasn't—it was even more sparse.
posted by adamrice at 2:39 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

And as an experiment I just tried loading the Little Fluffly Clouds link twice in two tabs and tried to get them to sync up with each other with phrasing/tempo by clicking around the wheel on one of them until it was close enough, and, yeah, the tempo shifts and errors between segments is large enough that it basically instantly starts trainwrecking and unable to keep an accurate tempo that works and not drift.

Which confirms why it's bugging my autistically nerdy tempo-sensitive DJ ears with even one version playing because while it's somewhat close the clock and tempo is wrong like a scratched up CD or something.

I'm curious about this because something like this could be part of the future of DJing where you load modules or algorithms instead of a pre-recorded linear track and instead of mixing two linear tracks manually you could tune parameters and loops and stuff as well as mix it or loop it, but this isn't it, yet.

Granted this is why people already build generative modular synth rigs or do live PAs with hardware or DAWs and FX like beat slicers and repeaters and chained/conditional trigger events and stuff because that's basically the same concept.

And the current state of the art for DJ hardware and software does already include some AI tools like ripping tracks to real/virtual stems and doing stuff like isolating vocals or rhythm sections from a single track but still leaves the flow and mixing in human hands.

Oh, and automatic DJing/beatmixing has already been a thing for a number of years now. Like you can just load a bunch of tracks in a playlist and hit play and it does mixing and transitions for you, but it's not super great and it's mainly just a slightly smarter "fade between two tracks but with beat detection and sync" kind of function.
posted by loquacious at 2:47 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's interesting to compare the visualizer results for, e.g., Orbital vs. Daniel Avery.
posted by aramaic at 2:56 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Prisencolinensinainciusolinensinaincolinensinainciusolinensinaincol…
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:57 PM on December 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

Kinda tempted to look for part of Drumming by Steve Reich, but Scooter and Jinx by Sonic Youth "works" pretty well, although it stopped after 5 minutes (5x the actual "song" length).
posted by LionIndex at 3:29 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Hello again, old friend. I did the first thing that occurred to me, which is queue up some 100 gecs and turn up a bunch of dials, because it's a song I could listen to forever anyway and nothing fits messy grungy hyperpop punk better than getting fucky and Burroughsian with it, and I'm not regretting my decision.

and cortex' genius Endless Jingling is offline

It shouldn't be! What we you running into?
posted by cortex at 3:34 PM on December 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

ski-ba-bop-ba-bop-ba-bop-ba-bop-ba-bop-dop-bop
posted by Aleyn at 3:36 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Now if you're really in for the long haul and for thematically-appropriate compositions, why not listen to a mutating version of track 1 of Eno's 'Music for Airports' literally forever.
posted by cortex at 3:39 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Speaking of Orbital, Halcyon On and On worked surprisingly well.
posted by mittens at 3:43 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've been jamming to the most epic remix of Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat) by The Immortals that I've ever heard.
posted by starscream at 3:59 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fed it some Classical Gas which was a mess, and then Climbatize which I could almost not even tell it was remixing
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:03 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Seems like "My Girls" by Animal Collective was made for this.
posted by vverse23 at 4:05 PM on December 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer sounds like this guy has actually had one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:11 PM on December 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

Drumming Part IV - instruments enter and establish themselves slowly, so the links are sparse for the first half of the original, then all over the place on the second. Seems like it fits the original author intent.
posted by LionIndex at 4:31 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Da Da Da" by Trio eternalizes nicely and chaotically, alternating between the two strange attractors of the verse and the chorus.
posted by The Tensor at 4:47 PM on December 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

Shocking nobody, All Star works surprisingly well.
posted by grnsmilie at 4:52 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Paralyzed by The Legendary Stardust Cowboy might make more sense this way?
posted by LionIndex at 4:57 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

magic reelism
posted by flabdablet at 5:12 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Car Bomb (broken! it falls into a tight 2-second locked loop when the playback hits a particular moment within one of the explosion sfx)
Christianity Is Stupid
Come Out
In C (sadly, tempo stutters too much)
The Side of Man and Womankind (from Outside the Dream Syndicate) (works perfectly)
Hallogallo
Health and Efficiency
posted by at by at 5:56 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

One hour of Maggot Brain actually gave me brain maggots...
posted by Hairy Lobster at 6:07 PM on December 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

Indigo girls
posted by logicpunk at 7:46 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

it's clever how no matter which nickelback song you select it calculates paths that eventually take you to all nickelback songs
posted by logicpunk at 7:48 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

It works really well for instrumental trance music
posted by Jacqueline at 8:39 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was in the room one of the first times (maybe the very first time) the author of this code played its output for anyone. He just put it on the stereo in our little one-room startup office with no preamble, and we were 20 minutes into a single play of "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" when his co-founder stood up and said "What is. What. What is this. What. I have to go. Call me when it-- call me afterward. I have to leave." and walked out.
posted by a_mandible at 9:19 PM on December 8, 2023 [11 favorites]

This one is not as locked-in / “in the pocket” as the previous infinite jukebox
posted by sixswitch at 9:48 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

It shouldn't be! What we you running into?

We get signal! Main screen turn on!!
posted by loquacious at 9:57 PM on December 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

My understanding is that Artists get paid via Spotify based on number of plays of a song.

What percentage of a song being listened to constitutes a 'listen/play' which can be monetized is not - as far as I can tell - public information, so I was just wondering could this boost or undermine an artists ' listened to' stats?
posted by Faintdreams at 5:43 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

It tried it on Daft Punk song: Around the World because I thought it would be tailor made for this kind of 'seemless loop' beats experiment, but the micro timing was off *just enough* (to my ear) to make the entire effect very hitchy.

The sections of smoothness punctuated by (seemingly random) beat hiccups was very off-putting, also the selections of 'sections' was arbitrary enough to destroy the musicality of the song.

It's hard to put into words exactly but it felt less like a constructed song and more like a jumble of sections - which it is.

Closest analogy I can currently imagine is the difference between a finished intricate Lego building, and that same Lego building presented as all the individual bricks just jumbled up in a bucket
posted by Faintdreams at 5:50 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Years ago someone (A DJ on a Los Angeles radio station, most likely) made a version of Norwegian Wood by the Beatles, swapping all the verses. Because the underlying music repeats seamlessly, the fact that the verses were out-of-order was really neat to listen to.

I tried loading Norwegian Wood into this thing to see if it would create something similar, but no luck. It wouldn't load the ones it found, nor the flac or mp3 I uploaded. In fact, uploading songs doesn't appear to work at all - there is no way to signal the app that you want to play the track once it's ingested, no Enter, Submit, Play, etc.

I tried several other things, both picking from the app-supplied list and supplying YouTube links with no luck.

The only thing I was able to make work was "Clint Eastwood" by the Gorillaz.

Pretty cool.
posted by mmrtnt at 7:58 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Groove is in the Heart" by Deee-Lite is excellent!
posted by mmrtnt at 8:00 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]

Harder better faster longer

Apart from some initial glitchiness, this seems spot-on.
posted by adamrice at 9:10 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Dumb question here: I can't get it to work. Do you have to have spotify? I don't. This app generates an interesting list for my input, but I can't get to play.
posted by charlesminus at 10:04 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

I get "Audio could not be retrieved, provide a youtube link or file on the tune settings", in Chrome, Friefox, Safari and Edge. I try to add an mp3, but it doesn't do anything. There's a bunch of errors in the console.
posted by signal at 11:09 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

You don't need Spotify. Adding new songs can be hit or miss; I was getting odd 524 errors from the site. I think I was mostly able to follow links or retrace other people's steps, though.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:42 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Pretty sure Kiss from a Rose was made specifically for this, or vice versa.
posted by omgwtfpmr at 4:54 PM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

I’m not surprised, given how well Kiss from a Rose works for An Infinity of Seal
posted by aubilenon at 5:56 PM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

I got a bunch of errors, so I unfortunately can't report back on Circle, the Boredoms, Acid Mothers Temple's La Novia, Skullflower's Exquisite Fucking Boredom, anything by Earth or Sunn O))), Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets, Oneohtrix Point Never, Six Organs of Admittance, Om...

There are some possibly unsurprising failures - the drenched-in-feedback bits of Mogwai Fear Satan really break the pattern-matching and result in a lot of abrupt jumps, while the dynamic shifts make some regions of the song almost mutually exclusive. Roygbiv by Boards of Canada worked better than I expected for such a short track, but the fadeout is an issue.

> It probably doesn't help that I know every millisecond of [Little Fluffy Clouds] and it just sounds not right when it makes a bad jump cut.

Yeah, beyond the "I know this song too well" bit, I also think the reason that a few of the examples - Neu!'s Hallogallo upthread, and the Caretaker's "It's Just A Burning Memory" - work a little better is the number of branchpoints, and the fact that the branchpoints are relatively evenly distributed. Tracks like "Little Fluffy Clouds" have longer uninterrupted segments and so the cuts end up more jarring. (Relatively even volume and relatively high density of instrumentation both help, too.) But that all's consistent with uneven jump cuts, just ones that end up standing out a little less.

Although, look, I'm a simple person and I admit that "What if Hallogallo but... more" is always gonna be a compelling pitch to me.
posted by ASF Tod und Schwerkraft at 6:39 PM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

A few fun ones:

Legion (VNV Nation): This works quite well; maybe it's electronic music has enough self-similarlity of sound from part to part that you can jump around without noticing too much.

Cipater (Autechre): This one... just has a lot of jumps at the beginning and then none at the end.

Prelude in C-sharp minor: Ok, this is clearly a terrible choice but funny nonetheless.

Some of these are almost stressful to watch when it keeps getting stuck in the same part of the song. You want it to move forwards and... it jumps back again.
posted by vernondalhart at 3:14 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's working for me now. I always thought Chaeri by Magdalena Bay was too short.
posted by signal at 4:21 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Billie Jean" was seamless when I gave it a try.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:42 AM on December 10, 2023

this was anything but
posted by flabdablet at 7:09 AM on December 10, 2023

Primus sucks. I think we've established that.
posted by flabdablet at 7:19 AM on December 10, 2023

SAY BABY

I recommend starting this in at least three tabs at the same time.
posted by flabdablet at 7:47 AM on December 10, 2023

Never get bored.
posted by snofoam at 10:15 AM on December 10, 2023

Still listening to this?
posted by snofoam at 10:26 AM on December 10, 2023

Okay, this is actually pretty glorious.
posted by snofoam at 10:38 AM on December 10, 2023

Tom's 24 Hour Diner
posted by flabdablet at 11:09 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

> We get signal! Main screen turn on!!

(cough)
posted by Pronoiac at 2:42 AM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Ask not for whom the Vengabus is coming, it is coming for thee.
posted by Pronoiac at 2:47 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

please go stand by the stairs
posted by flabdablet at 9:02 AM on December 11, 2023

Did anybody do We Didn't Start the Fire
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:17 PM on December 11, 2023

no no no no don't let billy near the jukebox
posted by flabdablet at 9:08 PM on December 11, 2023

cheese spread
posted by flabdablet at 9:16 PM on December 11, 2023

pablo picasso
posted by flabdablet at 9:26 PM on December 11, 2023

> Did anybody do We Didn't Start the Fire

I'll see that and raise you Space Monkey Mafia Space Monkey Mafia Space Monkey Mafia

(I got it to use YouTube, a bit.)
posted by Pronoiac at 12:13 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]