After realising the limitations that are inherent in any music recommendation system, a refocusing of the project was needed. Why did I want to create a visual music recommendation system in the first place?
The simple answer was that I often got bored of my music or drew a blank when I opened Spotify, wanted to find new, exciting stuff to listen to and found that most of the things that are designed to help do this were pretty unhelpful.
They would often throw up some odd, tenuously linked artist to the one I had started out from. A case in point are the band Biffy Clyro who I have followed from their 2nd album in 2004. They have cited their influences as being from grunge and prog-rock and have been subject to comparisons to artists such as Nirvana, The Pixies, Rush and Fugazi who also used to be among their 'related artists' on Spotify. After their most recent and most popular album though, Nirvana etc have been supplanted by the artists that their new, bigger mainstream fanbase also listen to, so they are now supposedly 'related' to Florence and The Machine, Mumford and Sons and Plan B.
These comparisons say little about the music itself, they are determined by factors like how the band is marketed, which magazines and radio shows feature them and which type of listener takes ownership of them. Thus, unless you are the type of listener who conspicuously consumes music to identify yourself with the groups that are moulded by marketing, these features are not of much use.
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