 Moody music with a techy twist from Batanga ·Jan 29, 12:16 PM If music is the universal language, the computer age has ushered in a close second: “emoticons”. Those mood-capturing symbols don’t get lost in translation — a ;) is a wink the world over. The popular Latin music-centric webcaster Batanga has launched a new way to listen that uses those clever key stroke combinations to let users navigate channels emotionally, called “RadioByMood”. Floating emoticons populate a catchy box in the middle of the screen, and users can move the cursor Unless you’re particularly well versed in emoticons, you’ll need Batanga’s help in decoding the characters (that one, for example, stands for “borracho” or “drunk” in Spanish). Launch “Borracho”, and a new player window opens. The Batanga/RadioByMood branding sits at the top, and users get cover art and artist information boldly displayed above a running list of recently played songs. If the song playing doesn’t fit your concept of a “drunk” music channel, there’s a way to tell the player what channel you think it would fit The other moody channels work the same way (“Angry”, “Betrayed”, “Cool”, “Caliente”, etc.) and at first listen, they do a good job of aggregating applicable tunes into categories that Latin music lovers should identify with right away. It’s a novel approach, and with the categories which are half in English and half in Spanish, probably hit squarely in the middle of their native language demos of their listeners. Crossover appeal, particularly with the flashy design and universality of emoticons, should also be high. Even when the novelty wears off, Batanga’s “RadioByMood”is still made a clever twist on personalized radio that sounds good. And that’s nothing to get :( about. share: del.icio.us.  Reddit  Digg  Yahoo  Wink  Windows  Google  Newsvine 
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over the symbols of their choice to find out exactly what (
more appropriately in. Whether or not Batanga trusts your drunk music judgment, though, is probably a different story.
