Comments on: Music Plasma: Visual Music Search Engine

Music Plasma: Visual Music Search Engine

fenriq — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:10:55 -0800

MusicPlasma
Search for music visually.

By: tomplus2

tomplus2 — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:34:47 -0800

I've always wanted to something like that with my family and friends... and everyone I've ever known.

By: mcsweetie

mcsweetie — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:44:24 -0800

awesome.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:55:39 -0800

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!

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:58:07 -0800

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!!"

By: alms

alms — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 14:38:23 -0800

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.

By: kindall

kindall — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:06:00 -0800

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.

By: rudyfink

rudyfink — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:16:05 -0800

Anyone know how Music Plasma is generating its relations?

By: dabitch

dabitch — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:23:58 -0800

I entered Billy Stewart and found pretty much my entire old record collection. mucho cool.

By: divrsional

divrsional — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:26:26 -0800

No results for Lali Puna. Next!

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:40:01 -0800

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...

By: maciej

maciej — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:41:45 -0800

I'm really curious where the raw data for this comes from.

By: mcsweetie

mcsweetie — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:45:33 -0800

hmm. I did a search for pixies and it turned up two matches: Pixies and Pixies (Tribute). same for Lynyrd Skynyrd!

By: r1ch

r1ch — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:51:12 -0800

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.

By: sklero

sklero — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 17:33:23 -0800

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?

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 19:29:09 -0800

"no result for 'the offspring'" Pfft.

By: kindall

kindall — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 20:04:28 -0800

If you enter just "Offspring" it works fine. Oddly, the Vines, the Hives, and the White Stripes all have their definite article.

By: Ynoxas

Ynoxas — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 21:22:16 -0800

Great link.

By: dazed_one

dazed_one — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 21:23:58 -0800

Reminds me of gnod's musical relationship web. (Click on "related bands" after entering your three favorites)

By: ruelle

ruelle — Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:59:49 -0800

this.is.good.thanks