Arrested Development Radio Is Here With Bluthify.me
By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.
If you were to build an online radio station that could channel characters from Arrested Development, what would you call it?
Clearly, “Bluthify.”
A free Arrested Development-themed web app, Bluthify.me lets you tune into radio stations “created” by all the main characters on the show. Yes, every single amazing, mind-altering Bluth character is represented in all of his or her glory: Buster, George Sr., Lucille, G.O.B., Lindsey Bluth Fünke, Michael, George Michael, Tobias Fünke, and Maebe Fünke. To hear them, click their character and a Spotify playlist will semi-magically appear.
The playlists are convincing. Lindsey’s station is all Ke$ha and Britney Spears, while George Sr.’s jams tends towards smoother, old-school rock: Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, and The Big Bopper. Each character’s playlist differs each time you load it, so if you want to listen to G.O.B. radio all day, or even all week — you can.
Bluthify was built during a single weekend at Philly Music Hack Day at Drexel University’s Excite Center, while the rest of us were watching baseball, riding bicycles, and so on. Jason Steinbach (engineer for The Echo Nest, which publishes Evolver.fm) built models of each character’s personality in an Echo Nest Taste Profile, using intimate knowledge of the show gathered from himself and a group of other Arrested Development fans at the hackathon.
He also added some special tweaks, like how every single G.O.B. playlist ends with “The Final Countdown.” Once the taste profiles are built, he adds a few rules (like G.O.B.’s predilection for “The Final Countdown”) plugs them into all the music on Spotify to generate the playlists on Spotify’s web interface. You can hear all of the full songs, for free, if you have Spotify for desktop.
Overall, it’s a carefully-crafted insight to each character, the perfect accompaniment to your freakout about how every single episode from the new season will be available on Netflix starting May 26 without requiring a silly old television subscription.
