Sweet, Mother-of-Jesus Mary: MusicMap

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