Here is a list that I've compiled containing all the music discovery tools out there on the internet. I've also included the clustering method, the pros, and the cons of each website.
| Website | Clustering | Purpose | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Every Noise at Once | Genre | One page full of genres organized by color and proximity, which play samples when you click on one | Great site finding new genres | Coloring scheme is a little disorienting |
| Furzr | Genre | Shows a visual representation of bands and their proximity, but is also interactive | Interactivity helps to easily explore tree | Clustering is a bit off, as bands seem to cluster together based on how new they are rather than genre/style |
| IndieShuffle | Genre | Pulls the best new SoundCloud songs | Newest songs are available to stream in playlists | Must choose by Genre and cannot search by artist similarity |
| Last.fm | Genre | Get artist information including top tracks, bios, and similar artists | Easy to stream similar sounding artists | Similar artists tend to be more popular |
| LivePlasma | Genre | Shows a tree linking to similar bands | Very pretty to look at | Clustering includes mostly popular bands |
| Music map | Genre | Enter a band name to see a visual map of similar bands, with their distance approximating their similarity | Shows a lot of bands in a single tree | Not a huge variety of indie bands so the same ones will show up often, no streaming. |
| Musicroamer | Genre | Generate a visual tree with top tracks for streaming | Easy to get a good sample of top tracks | Trees tend to be very small and lots of clicking required to generate playlists |
| Music Suggestions Ninja | Genre | Retrieve a streamable playlist of 7 to 10 bands based off a single band | Huge database of bands containing many lesser known | Solo artists and their bands often cluster together |
| Tubalr | Mood/Genre | Generates playlists based on mood to stream automatically | Easy to stream and search | It is user based so the mood and genres are all over the place |
| Spotify Artist Explorer | Popularity/Genre | Shows a tree based on a band or genre | Can stream automatically and has nice visuals | Shows mostly popular music, and does not show hard to find or new bands |
| Gnoosic | User network | Enter a favorite band name to get similar music from people that share your band as a favorite | Can give good unexpected results | Can also give predictable results — i.e. everyone that likes Beethoven also likes Schubert, Wagner, Chopin |
| TasteKiD | User network | Recommends similar bands from a large repertoire and gives bio and samples | Good tool for learning bios and getting a sample | User based so bands have to have some popularity to appear as recommendation |
| What the f*** should I listen to right now | User network | Enter a band name and get another one that is related | Has good unexpected results | Only shows one band at a time and requires clicking |
| RetroJam | Release date | Retrieve songs from any month/day/year | Easy to use and unique idea | Not a huge range of time and not too many bands (mostly popular) |
| Songza | Mood | Searchable playlists for any daily activity | Includes many activities and curated playlists | Not a huge selection of playlists and bands |
| StereoMood | Mood | Generates playlists based on mood | Lots of moods available to choose from and streamble from site | Playlists are short |
Posted: Monday 25 May 2015 Share
