Moody is to music what Shufflesome is to the Shuffle. Two ways to attach emotions. This comparison holds, when considering that the purpose of both a sticker and a color mood tag is to express thoughts. Thoughts are made from images. Images are linked to affect.

I am particularly excited about this beautiful little app, because my thesis, which i recently completed, deals with emotions and the measurement of them. So the multidimensional approach to capturing emotions is quiet vivid before my eyes. Moody lets you define a feeling as a combination of arousal (from calm to intense) and valence/pleasure (from sad to happy).

In scientific circles the distinction between positive/negative affect is unquestioned and often the basis for more sophisticated models of emotion-specific appraisal processes. Two dimensions however could easily miss to capture subtly different emotions. There is quiet some agreement that using three dimensions - dominance in addition to valence and arousal, gives you a framework wherein to locate any human emotion (google self assessment manikin for details)

Fear and anger for example score high in valence and arousal, but differ in dominance. A fearful person usually feels powerless or subjugated, whereas an angry person may feel influential. Dominance is the degree to which you feel in control or the degree to which something is brought about through your own involvement versus the situation.

Within your iTunes library, you could have two songs that are intense and positive, but differ in the degree to which they empower you or the degree to which you feel distant to that energy. In that sense I feel closer to Beautiful Day by U2 than to Give it Away by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Are two dimensions enough to mood tag songs in iTunes? I actually feel that Moody’s 4 x 4 grid is challenging enough and that reducing it to a 3 x 3 grid (which you can do) is finetuned enough to get the gist out of your songs.