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Wotja 26.1 and the pursuit of "small" - minified Wotja Mix Files

Way back in 2000 we (the founders of Intermorphic) developed a text-based approach used in SSEYO Koan that we called Koan Vector Audio. With file sizes of only 150 characters we described it at the time as "a powerful way of describing music and quality custom sounds in simple text format".

Koan Vector Audio of course had plenty of limitations, but the principle of working with text-based file formats and pursuit of "small" stayed with us. Those principles became part of Intermorphic's core DNA and we have been working with text-formatted URIs ever since Mixtikl 2 was released in 2009.

It should be no surprise therefore that Wotja Files have also been URI formatted ever since the first release of Wotja, that being Wotja 1 in 2014.

Ever since that release, and to this day, we've continued to extend Wotja and to try to make it easy to share your Wotja creations - something else that is important to us. We've added a multitude of parameters & capabilities and Wotja has become a deep & powerful platform for 'AI-free' generative music and MIDI. Wotja Mix Files have in turn, however, become larger and more complex thus making a solution for their easy sharing seem more distant.

Over the intervening years we have therefore experimented with many different URI techniques/approaches and even tried a brief (but short lived and limited) exploration of Wotja URLs. We were never able to find an approach that ticked all of the boxes that we needed ticked.

In the summer of 2025, however, we came up with what we hoped could finally be an all-encompassing "small" solution for sharing. It required using a novel combination of approaches that we hoped would allow us to 'minify' current generation Wotja Mix Files sufficiently such that all data required to generate that Mix could fit in a < 2000 character URL. That was to allow the social media message itself to become the storage media (in a distributed kind of fashion, and where no 3rd party link shortening service is required, either)! The Wotja App on a device is all that is needed to "reconstitute" (i.e. play) the Mix! The downside of all this, however, was that we knew it would involve a horrendous amount of work just to prove whether it might actually work or not.

But why such focus on a URL? The reason is that a URL can be shared in social media and can be tapped on as an active link. HOWEVER, to be truly viable any URL solution had to work for multi-cell, multi-track Mixes and contain all the data needed for it to play in Wotja and sound as the creator intended. A very, very tall order, but if it could be made to work then it would be the holy grail of solutions!

Well, we decided to press ahead with working on it. After 9 months of solid grind we finally got it working and Wotja now supports minification of Wotja Mix Files. Success after 12 years! Sure, there are still things we know we can do to improve it further, but it is a great start and it's frankly already pretty close to magic!

See What is a minified Wotja File (WJURL, WJURI)? and How does a minified Wotja File work?

A Wotja URL that can be shared via social media is generated in the Share Screen.

So as you know, a Wotja URL for a Wotja Mix can range in size from 63 characters to a maximum of 2000 characters. The actual size of the Wotja URL depends on a number of factors including mix complexity, customisation level, filename and included text etc. A Wotja URL containing only a link to a built-in Schema or Album is even smaller and can be as small as 43 characters!

A Wotja URI (also generated in the Share Screen) does not have the same maximum size limitation as a Wotja URL. Wotja URIs are primarily used as the means to easily embed Wotja content in a webpage, such as the small example below.

Tim Cole & Pete Cole, the Intermorphic Ltd. founders and brother team said:

“We hope you create something you like and then wish to share it as a Wotja URL or embed it in a webpage as a Wotja URI. To play the 309 character URI example below first Get Wotja if you don't aleady gave it installed (it is free) and then tap the play button or scan the QR code below (see also How do I play or import a Wotja URL or Wotja URI?). Both of the following include all the data needed to generate the music in Wotja. It's close to magic!” P.S. You can also see some examples of Wotja URIs being used with artworks, here.

NB: The term New Feature has special meaning. W26 files may not play as intended in earlier versions. See the full 26 Feature Set.