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jfs: http://sixdegrees.hu/last.fm/
It's a map of many (all but ~17000) of the artists indexed on last.fm, spread out in two dimensions* according to the similarity data that site has between each pair of artists. One of the cooler features here is the Interactive Map - you can look up any indexed artists and they mark them with flags. I generated the following map shown by entering a comma-delineated list** of my favorite artists and taking a screenshot.
* What would happen if it were three dimensions or more? I guess it's inconvenient to render...
** Names separated by commas. Example: Joni Mitchell, Tracy Chapman, XTC. If you enter the list of your favorite artists this way, it works - even if the names have commas, like Peter, Paul and Mary.
I assume some interpretation could be put to why my flags all fall on a line between Avril Lavinge and Muse, but I'm not going to.
jfs: http://sixdegrees.hu/last.fm/It's a map of many (all but ~17000) of the artists indexed on last.fm, spread out in two dimensions* according to the similarity data that site has between each pair of artists. One of the cooler features here is the Interactive Map - you can look up any indexed artists and they mark them with flags. I generated the following map shown by entering a comma-delineated list** of my favorite artists and taking a screenshot.
* What would happen if it were three dimensions or more? I guess it's inconvenient to render...
** Names separated by commas. Example: Joni Mitchell, Tracy Chapman, XTC. If you enter the list of your favorite artists this way, it works - even if the names have commas, like Peter, Paul and Mary.
I assume some interpretation could be put to why my flags all fall on a line between Avril Lavinge and Muse, but I'm not going to.
no subject
Some make sense, like brown for the country music spectrum. (Although The Pogues are included.) Blue is the rap/R&B spectrum: Eminem, MC Hammer, Kanye West and Timbaland.
Orange seems to be ... avant-garde? It's got Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Ros -- and Depeche Mode and Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Strange bedfellows unless you group by pretension.
But then there's red for ... mainstream rock? Which lumps together the Ramones and Sex Pistols with Pink Floyd and the Beatles, which makes no musical sense whatsoever. Buddy Holly, Yes, Mogwai, and is that Radiohead beneath your tags on the central spine? Radiohead is red but Thom Yorke is orange WTF? What the hell does red mean, "bands you've heard of"?
Green is no better, going from A-Ha and the Beach Boys to Nelly Furtado, Avril Lavigne, and Beyonce. Pop? Soul? "Other bands you've heard of"? I'm beginning to wonder what I need to smoke here to understand the map.
Refraining from comment on the rest of the spectrum because I can't see names well enough on the tiny or light-colored dots.
no subject
My main complaint is that it's a raw image, meaning you can't zoom in to see bubbles behind bubbles, etc. Bear in mind that this seems to just be an amateur, first-try project.