While I’ve tooled around with several music recommendation services (like last.fm and pandora.com, none of them hold my interest for very long. It’s hard to get excited about artists in a cloud view.

MusicMap allows you to start with one album. I picked on of my favorites: Arcade Fire’s “Funeral.” A little bubble with the album art popped up, I moused over, and clicked “Expand.” Schwam. Five albums flew out, four of which I already own. So far so good. I start expanding more of the bubbles until I have a nice web going. Things start to get interesting when you start to get towards the edges of your web. In a minute or two, you’ll have a suprisingly comprehensive map of your music.

MusicMap isn’t the be-all-end-all of music recommendation services. As far as I can tell, its using Amazon.com’s music recommendation system, which is pretty accurate, but not “nuts on.”

Also, when you expand an album, it only gives you five recommendations. It’d be nice to be able to toggle this number somehow.

Criticisms aside, the tool is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I’ve already discovered a few new bands I like. There’s something so much more intuitive about visualizing similar albums that makes discovering new ones fun.

Check it out: MusicMap

Because classical songs are so old, many of them are in public domain. (Okay, I don’t think that’s true, but go with me here.) And because classical music makes you a smarter person and potentially makes the child in your stomach smarter, you should always listen to classical music.

I’ve always heard friends complaining that they would be smarter if they knew where to get some good classical. You can’t really ourTunes the network for classical music. Thankfully, Wikipedia has an excellent compilation of music in the public domain.

Give your hears some bliss and get better grades: Wikipedia:Sound/list

(Photo from the KEXP blog.)

Holy hell.

Yesterday, God decided to smile upon a thousand-or-so people near the Seattle Center, and he saw that it was oh-so-good. Ghostland Observatory rocked the KEXP summer BBQ so hard most of us didn’t know what to do with ourselves.

I heartily recommend seeing this two-piece from Austin, Texas if one ever becomes so lucky. I have never seen dance moves so crazy or heard beats so divine.