Music Plasma: Visual Music Search Engine
January 20, 2004 1:10 PM   Subscribe

MusicPlasma
Search for music visually.
posted by fenriq (19 comments total)
 
I've always wanted to something like that with my family and friends... and everyone I've ever known.
posted by tomplus2 at 1:34 PM on January 20, 2004


awesome.
posted by mcsweetie at 1:44 PM on January 20, 2004


tomplus2, A dynamic family tree would be an excellent spinoff of the technology. With enough horsepower behind it there could be all kinds of cool addons like videos, pics, voice overs, etc.

What a great idea!
posted by fenriq at 1:55 PM on January 20, 2004


This is cool and all, but the phrasing of the -- instructions? -- has me a little creeped out.

"It types the name of the artist, then it puts the lotion in the f#@!ing basket!!"
posted by WolfDaddy at 1:58 PM on January 20, 2004


At first glance this is the best network visualization tool I've ever seen. Awesome. Thanks.

(For an example of one that shows unrealized potential, see Social Circles via Apophenia.
posted by alms at 2:38 PM on January 20, 2004


This is excellent. If you put in "Dream Theater" it pretty much nails all of the current "progressive/metal-ish" bands on the initial screen. I was impressed to see Pain of Salvation, Spock's Beard, Gordian Knot, Porcupine Tree, and the Flower Kings all on one screen, but there were also side projects such as Transatlantic and O.S.I. as well as obscurities such as Ark and Green Carnation. Even found some new artists to check out.

I did find that sometimes the links only go one way. "King's X" finds all the band members' side projects (Jughead, Poundhound, Platypus) but doesn't show Galactic Cowboys or Atomic Opera, who shared a producer and have a similar sound. But if you search for the latter two bands, they link back to King's X. You just can't get there from the other direction for some reason. That makes it much less useful than it should be for discovering new bands.

What's really interesting is when you put in "Peter Gabriel" it finds Joe Jackson nearby. That actually makes a twisted kind of sense, in that both men have done both extremely commercial and extremely non-commercial work and have a reputation for being serious artists. I have no idea how the engine made this connection (nor, again, why it doesn't work in reverse), but it's pretty cool. Of course, Joe Jackson also shows up in GYBE's neighborhood, which is pretty weird.
posted by kindall at 3:06 PM on January 20, 2004


Anyone know how Music Plasma is generating its relations?
posted by rudyfink at 3:16 PM on January 20, 2004


I entered Billy Stewart and found pretty much my entire old record collection. mucho cool.
posted by dabitch at 3:23 PM on January 20, 2004


No results for Lali Puna.

Next!
posted by divrsional at 3:26 PM on January 20, 2004


Not too bad, but way slow.

As far as web family trees go, you might want to check out PHPGedView. Been playing with it as part of a new site for a relative. It has some neat features allowing for the incorporation of multimedia elements, and it's open source to boot...
posted by Samizdata at 3:40 PM on January 20, 2004


I'm really curious where the raw data for this comes from.
posted by maciej at 3:41 PM on January 20, 2004


hmm. I did a search for pixies and it turned up two matches: Pixies and Pixies (Tribute). same for Lynyrd Skynyrd!
posted by mcsweetie at 3:45 PM on January 20, 2004


I'm pretty sure that it's just using the Amazon Web API. I tried some searches on Amazon and the other artists that you might like bit correlated pretty closely with Music Plasma. Still pretty neat tho.
posted by r1ch at 3:51 PM on January 20, 2004


Cool, but:

...the more the artist is famous or representative of a specific style, the more the halo around the artist will be large

So why the hell is Interpol's halo like 10 times the size of Kraftwerk's and bigger than even Led Zeppelin's?
posted by sklero at 5:33 PM on January 20, 2004


"no result for 'the offspring'"

Pfft.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:29 PM on January 20, 2004


If you enter just "Offspring" it works fine. Oddly, the Vines, the Hives, and the White Stripes all have their definite article.
posted by kindall at 8:04 PM on January 20, 2004


Great link.
posted by Ynoxas at 9:22 PM on January 20, 2004


Reminds me of gnod's musical relationship web.
(Click on "related bands" after entering your three favorites)
posted by dazed_one at 9:23 PM on January 20, 2004


this.is.good.thanks
posted by ruelle at 9:59 AM on January 21, 2004


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