Plex using sonic analysis for upgraded Plexamp music app with related tracks and mixes

Plex is out today with an upgrade for its Plexamp music app that brings an advanced neural network to sonically analyze your library to rich features like similar artists, albums, and tracks, custom mixes, and more.

Plex detailed the big Plexamp update (available for Plex Pass subscribers) on its blog today:

Today we’re announcing a massive server upgrade for Plex Pass subscribers who have discovered our awesome dedicated music app, Plexamp. We’ve added a sophisticated neural network which analyzes your music library, powering amazing new features and improving existing ones.

Here’s how the new Plexamp neural net works:

Once you enable Sonic analysis on a music library, all tracks, albums, and artists are processed in order to place them in a Musical Universe (math nerd? This musical universe consists of points in N-dimensional space). This allows us to see how “close” anything in your library is from anything else, where distance is based on a large number of sonic elements in the audio.

And here are the benefits of using sonic analysis:

The most obvious way the sonic data is useful is for showing similar artists, albums, and tracks. While we are already using metadata for similar artists (and albums as well, although tbh we didn’t get a lot of data for this), needing to rely on metadata has two big downsides: There is a lot of music out there without metadata (think obscure Bandcamp artists or your high school band). Secondly, doing sonic analysis ensures that the similarity reflects the actual music you have.

Along with this, Plexamp has a new “Related” tab, a new Track + Album Radio feature, as well as “Mixes For You” powered by the new neural net.

All the new capabilities are included with Plex Media Server 1.24.0 for Plex Pass subscribers. Check out all the details in Plex’s blog post here.