Music Map from gnod

November 30, 2004 12:52 AM

Gnod's new music-map is a big improvement over the old UI. Looks like gnod was listening two years ago. The new UI still isn't as pretty as musicplasma's Flash design, or convey as much information, but it's pretty nifty to see the band names jitterbug around as mountains of historical user preference data is correlated. Anyway, I'm more interested in which site has better data. I'd guess the old gnoosic UI is being retired, as there's not even a link to the new URL there.
posted by JParker (10 comments total)

And on a related note, the Relatable Engine technology for digitally evaluating music (and the brainz behind MusicBrainz) looks really promising for this kind of application. I know they've teamed up with AMG's All Music Guide, but it looks like that's more content management related. Where, oh where, are my customized 99% accurate new music recommendations?!
posted by JParker at 1:02 AM on November 30, 2004

Gnod's thing is hella slow on my computer. Kinda wish there was a Flash version.

Genre-wise, there's also the venerable (but sadly a bit club-music-oriented) Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music.

(Musicplasma is pretty damn neat.)
posted by neckro23 at 2:06 AM on November 30, 2004

Interesting. I activated Dnop's plugin on iTunes several months ago, and uninstalled it a few weeks later. It doesn't seem like this should have been enough to significantly impact their results, but it certainly seems to have done so.

Consider:

Negativland is a personal favorite, and not commonly known, unless you're a music geek from the late 80s. "Escape From Noise" and "Dispepsi" come highly recommended, if you're anything like me. Which you're probably not.

Enter Negativland, and you see a couple of bands grouped with it: Evolution Control Committee and The Tape-beatles.

Now, ECC isn't really surprising. Hardly a household name, mind you, but they did the infamous "Whipped Cream" Herb Alpert/Public Enemy mashups in 1996 that arguably kicked off the genre -- and they've released music on Negativland's Seeland label. Okay, fine.

But The Tape-beatles? This is/was a VERY obscure group, whose 45 single of "From the tide or the wind" I discovered in a shoebox at WZRD-FM in the late 80s, and fell in love with. I'm not saying I'm the only one who's ever heard of them, but really, not your common everyday stuff.

So, not exactly common music. It is, however, music that I had just happened to have placed in my iTunes library around the same time I activated the Gnod plugin, and was listening to more or less exclusively for a few weeks.

So, either I'm one of very few (if any) people who ever listened to these bands with the Gnod plugin, or my musical tastes are not as unique as I thought. It leaves me wishing that Gnod's new interface somehow indicated sample size...I'd love to know if the grouping of these three bands was just because of little ol' me. Or maybe my old WZRD peeps are all running the same plugin. Or my buddy at 3hive took some of my musical advice, just this once.

[Note: in the linked WZRD-FM article, I am neither of the people mentioned, but we did coexist at the station in '90-'91. Whaddup, youse guyz?]
posted by davejay at 2:18 AM on November 30, 2004

@JParker

I've come across Gnod a while ago; I can't really see what's changed, apart from the Google ads at the side...
It's still a cool site, though.
It isn't obvious, but once you've centred on a band, if you click their name again, it opens a discussion forum type thing for that band, along with a discography, and links to buy from Amazon...

Musicplasma is a new one to me, but I don't think it's quite as easy to use; granted the discography information is interesting/useful. Looks pretty (-ish) but takes too long to redraw between band selections.

Can anyone explain this? I was under the recollection that he sang/whistled things like "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "Yellow Bird" (oh, and loads of other more mainstream ones; I was only young back then!)... and this is backed up by Amazon... so why is he linked to the likes of Filter, or the Murderdolls??

I'm also very disturbed by the bands that cluster themselves around "Vex Red" - nasty connotations!
posted by Chunder at 5:47 AM on November 30, 2004

Musicplasma just told me Mozart is related to Raffi.
posted by gimonca at 5:58 AM on November 30, 2004

Chunder,
Did you click the lead-in link? Gnod's been around for years, it's the interface at www.music-map.com that's new. Or at least new to me. I got this in my email last night, which prompted the visit to music-map.com, which prompted the FPP.

Hello Everyone,

It has been more then a year since the last major update to Gnod - the global network of dreams. Finally, a new feature that has been requested a lot is now online. A dedicated Music-Map: www.music-map.com

Best Regards,
Marek Gibney

As far as I know, until music-map.com came online, gnod only had gnoosic with its clunky text-box interface.
posted by JParker at 7:43 AM on November 30, 2004

Ack! No, sorry! (hangs head in shame)

I got completely drawn in by the music-map.com link, and didn't go anywhere near the other gnod link... sparkly and/or swirly things have that effect on me!

The mefi link you fpp'd was probably where I first found out about gnod anyway... oops!
posted by Chunder at 8:08 AM on November 30, 2004

Given where the music-map gets its info and the "guilt-by-association" implications makes this deeply disturbing.
posted by Human Stain at 10:03 AM on November 30, 2004

Charley Patton is not yet available.

Bobby Charles is not yet available.

Johnny Guitar Watson is not yet available.

Bo Carter is not yet available.

Don Redman is not yet available.

Holy Modal Rounders is not yet available.
posted by y2karl at 10:32 AM on November 30, 2004

Looks like musicplasma's been moving things around, and broke the link. You can still visit it, but now it's at http://www.musicplasma.levillage.org/.
posted by JParker at 12:15 AM on December 23, 2004