--> Nine tips for magic Mixes with Nokia Music !

 

Nokia Music comes with over 100 pre-made Mixes – curated music selections from particular themes, periods or genres. There’s something for every taste from
‘Wake up, it’s a beautiful morning’, through ‘Reggae Ska’ to ‘Classical violinists’. And they’re refreshed on a regular basis.

You aren’t just stuck with what other people have chosen, though. You can have extra free music fun with your own Mixes by choosing ‘create a mix’ and seeding the service with up to three different artists. This will bring you exactly the sort of music you want from the full pool of Nokia Music’s massive library.



But there’s a bit more to it than that, and applying a bit of forethought will improve the quality and accuracy of custom Mixes a lot.

Here are nine tips to help you get what you want:
Put in similar artists. Maybe you like all kinds of music. But if you create a Mix with JS Bach, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Gnarls Barkley, you’ll probably end up with a musical mess. Those artists have got nothing in common, so you aren’t giving the service enough clues about the style you want to listen to right now.
Make as many Mixes as you like. To continue the example above, Gnarls Barkley, Cee Lo Green and Danger Mouse would work a lot better as the seeds for a modern electric soul Mix. Then make separate Mixes to satisfy your love of Baroque and 70s rock.
You can keep a bunch of custom Mixes ready on your Start screen. To do this, create your Mix, start it playing, then bring up the menu from the bottom of the screen and choose ‘pin mix to start’.
In the same way, you can download custom Mixes for offline use, the same as with curated ones. Start your custom Mix then choose ‘make available offline’ from the menu. With the free version of Nokia Music, there’s a limit of four offline Mixes, but this restriction is removed with Nokia Music+.

Avoid artists whose musical style has changed a lot over time. The Rolling Stones are a fine band, but the group who recorded Beggars Banquet are quite a different act to the guys who created Voodoo Lounge – and the service can’t guess which Stones you want. The same goes for acts like Bob Dylan, David Bowie and Radiohead.
You don’t have to use all three slots. If you want to listen to music by and similar to Rihanna, then there’s no need to add Beyonce and Britney to fill up the slots. Go straight for what you want.
Find similar artists to the ones you like with tools like musicroamer, last.fm, tastekid and music-map. These are great if you have a bad memory or if you’re exploring a genre that you don’t know very well.
The pre-made Mixes are a great way of finding new acts, of course – just like normal radio! But you can also use them as the basis of something new. When a song comes along that you like, you can bring up the bottom menu and select ‘more by this artist’ to start a new custom Mix that features the chosen artist and more music that’s like it. From there, you can save or pin it, the same as normal.
Experiment and play! There are no charges or limits with Nokia Music. Make a Mix and try it out. If you don’t like it, you can try new combinations for as long as you like.

That’s everything we’ve learned about making better Mixes. Any tips you’d recommend to us, so we can make this list into a round ten? (image credit: Ralph-Thomson)

Source: conversations.nokia.com