Music Map

I'm often asked how I discover new music.  The answer is research.  I scour charts and media articles featuring new artists.  I keep up with playlists of a collection of people in whose music taste I trust.

Now, there is a programmatic, much more efficient way.  music-map.

The principle is simple.  I enter an artist I really like.  For example, let's choose Josh Groban.

The music-map tool returns a grouping of artists in cloud form, answering the question in this case "What do people who like Josh Groban listen to?".  Your results will look like this:

See the result set for yourself here.

Artists close to each other have the greatest probability that you will like both of them.  You may see the names travelling around a bit as the "closeness" factor settles in.

Then, simply click any name in the cloud to move along.

Awesome, right?