How To: Turn Your Facebook Friends into Your Own Personal Music Station

I get advice from my friends on a lot of things in life—cool video games, movie reviews, and feedback on my choices in women. Friends can be very helpful in filtering out some of the excess noise and are more likely to give you suggestions you can relate to.

So, when it comes to finding new music, friends can be one of the best sources. I mean, I never would have thought this Taylor Swift song would be in my iTunes, but after hearing it at a friend's house, I had to have it.

Tay Swift may not have a good feel on guys, but her music is definitely on the money.

Music applications like Spotify understand the importance of social influence, and have used Facebook to help bolster their user base and provide information on the songs your friends are listening to. EQuala, a new app, looks to take this "friend thing" a step further.

Instead of just being able to see your friends' music choices, you can actually create personalized stations based on their music listening habits.

EQuala takes its name from the equalizer, and works in the same vein. You can use EQuala by adding your friends to the equalizer menu and sliding each friend higher or lower depending on how much of their music you want to influence your station.

So, using the the Music DNA feature, you can figure out which of your friends is the closest match to you. Then you can move that friend's slider to the right, causing EQuala to give that friend more influence on the station.

This is a very cool concept that takes advantage of our social networks and makes it extremely easy to find shared interests and good music.

There are some privacy issues that should be noted when using EQuala, though. EQuala works by taking the information available from any Facebook-connected music application. When you and your friends listen to Spotify, EQuala will use that information for its own data.

If you do not want EQuala or any other music app to get their hands on your music listening habits, you must choose the option to privately listen. That way, Spotify will not publish any information that EQuala could possible use.

EQuala is free and available for Android and iOS, and will work even if your friends do not have the app themselves.

Do you use EQuala? Let us know what you think in the comments below.