Music services that find related music?

January 12, 2004 6:03 AM

Are there any good online web services where you enter musical artists that you currently like, and it figures out what artists you would probably also like (based on what other people have entered)?
posted by oissubke to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

iRATE radio seems to work along these lines, although it's limited to music that's legally available online.
posted by staggernation at 6:13 AM on January 12, 2004

Gnoosic is a good start.
posted by yangwar at 6:16 AM on January 12, 2004

I've always found that the "people who bought this cd also bought..." box on amazon to be a great resource.

allmusic.com also has a "similar artist" feature.
posted by GeekAnimator at 6:19 AM on January 12, 2004

echocloud works pretty well, as does last.fm.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 6:30 AM on January 12, 2004

Also on Amazon, if you browse through some albums by artists you like, it will generate a "The Page You Made" page that can have some interesting suggestions. (Not sure whether you have to be logged in for this to work.) However, if you happen to have recently browsed albums by artists you don't like but were simply curious about, you can get some odd results.
posted by staggernation at 6:31 AM on January 12, 2004

I miss the Similarities Engine myself. sigh
posted by werty at 7:11 AM on January 12, 2004

Epitonic does that as well - search or start with any artist and the column on the far right lists 'similar artists' and 'other suggestions'. Some excellent mp3s to download, and you can stream albums.

Audioscrobbler used to have a very entertaining and almost addictive 'similar artist' feature, and it's now back online (finally) - check it out.
posted by iconomy at 7:13 AM on January 12, 2004

peoplesound.com has a facility like this, you type in the name of the artist and it returns a peoplesound artist of a similar ilk.
I would second Amazon as the best bet though.
posted by chill at 7:37 AM on January 12, 2004

Not quite the same, but my favorite online indie music store CDbaby has a "sounds like" search function where you enter a band you like and it returns music they feel you might enjoy (They also have some cool keyword-based search functions as well.)
posted by jalexei at 7:50 AM on January 12, 2004

Launch does a decent job of this. It allows you to rate all the songs/artists/albums that you hear. They have a pretty extensive collection of cds in their collection as well.
posted by trillion at 10:47 AM on January 12, 2004

Audio Scrobbler tracks the music you listen to and shows you the music that other people listen to who correlate well with your tastes.

Amazon has yet another (slightly time-consuming) technique that allows you to indicate what music you like/dislike, to help it refine its recommendations to you. I've spent some time training it, and its recommendations are uncanny. Assuming you have an account there:
Click on "we have recommendations for you".
Click on "music" (or whatever) on the left sidebar.
This gives you a bunch of reccos, plus a chance to rate them if you are already acquainted with them. iTunes-like interface--pretty clever.
posted by adamrice at 12:24 PM on January 12, 2004

I've just discovered Musicmobs, which looks great if you use iTunes.
posted by sixdifferentways at 11:47 AM on January 20, 2004