APP Mentor.FM, Your Personal DJ for Smartphones

A radio that knows your musical taste and suggests only songs that excite you, at the right time and without ever boring you. This, in summary, is the challenge it aims to win.Mentor.FM a 100% made in Italy application ready to revolutionize the way we listen to music, from PC andfrom today also for iOS and Android smartphones. For now active in over 170 countries in thewebversion, Mentor.FM functions as a ‘personal DJ’ that knows your taste andonly suggests the music you love, when you’re at the beach or in the mountains, but also while doing sports.

Mentor.FM works exactly like a radio, but the music flow is personalized and unique because it’s based on the user’s Facebook, Deezer, Last.FM profiles – but will soon also include Spotify, Twitter, and iTunes library – and on the feedback (like, dislike, skip) for each individual song suggested, which the user can indicate through simple gestures. For its catalog, the application draws from Deezer’s library, Mentor.FM’s streaming partner. Therefore, to fully enjoy the radio on a smartphone, a Deezer Premium account is necessary. The Android app also works with a Free account and allows you to hear 30 seconds of each song, but it allows you to obtain a30-day free trial.

How did Mentor.FM come about?

“There are moments – declares Eugenio Tacchini, professor of Information Systems at the Catholic University of Piacenza, expert in music recommendation, and creator of Mentor.FM –when we want to listen to a particular artist or song, and other times, instead, we just want to turn on the radio and let someone choose for us: Mentor.FM addresses this second need and we are committed to taking care of every detail.

How does Mentor.FM work?

Mentor.FM creates a personalized radio channel, in line with the user’s musical tastes, based on information from the Facebook profile (automatically imported during registration) and possibly also from Deezer and Last.FM profiles.

This means, in other words, that Mentor.FM never suggests monotonous playlists and avoids boring repetitions of artists or songs. But there’s more: the order of the songs is not random (just like it isn’t when a ‘real’ DJ creates a playlist) andMentor.FM tries to adapt in real-time to the user’s mood: if it’s suggestingindie rockand the user responds with a series of ‘skips’ on the songs offered, Mentor.FM interprets the signal as ‘now is not the right time forindie rock’ and tries to adjust by suggesting something else. As it’s used, the applicationlearnsthe user’s taste based on the feedback received. There’s also the ‘SURPRISE ME!’ ’ function, designed for users who want to discover new musical worlds and broaden their horizons.

“I like to think – continues Eugenio Tacchini –to have created a personal DJ who knows every user and knows what to play at a specific moment, but also a Mentor who, instead, knows how to introduce them to new songs and artists. It is clear that the richer users’ social profiles are, the easier it will be for Mentor.FM to suggest the first songs”.

And with Mentor TSB you can get to know other people with your same musical tastes

After also arriving on the Android system, the app has recently activated the Mentor TSB service in a free beta version, which allows users to meet people with similar musical tastes, send messages, dedications, and invitations to concerts. “The new service was created to once again put users’ musical taste at the center, but this time the focus is on sociality and interaction. Music, as we know, unites people, which is why with Mentor TSB we would like to create unexpected elective connections between our users”.

The creator of Mentor.FM

Mentor.FM was born from the intuition of Eugenio Tacchini, a great expert in music recommendation, currently a professor of Information Systems at the Catholic University of Piacenza and formerly a visiting researcher at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona) and the University of California, Berkeley. After a degree in Economics (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Piacenza) and one in Computer Science (University of Milan), Eugenio Tacchini completed a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Milan, focusing precisely on music recommendation.

In 2001, he created DaDaBIK, a software that allows the development of simple web applications without writing programming code and which over the years has been used by companies and organizations worldwide, including the University of Cambridge and Yale University.