Cool Waste Of Time - MusicPlasma: The Center Of Your Music World

by , 9:00 AM EDT, May 28th, 2004

So, you're cruising iTunes Music Store, checking out what's new. You get annoyed with the 30 second snippets of music that passes for a tune preview, and you wonder how can you possibly discover new music in 30 second increments? Wouldn't it be nice it there was a clean, easy way to discover which artists are more like the ones you currently know and like? Grouping artists in genre categories can help, but many artists straddle genres, making them tough to categorize, which could be why you like them in the first place.

What to do?

Lucky for you, TMO's staff keeps our eyes peeled for coolness that can be found on the Web, and it just so happens that we've found something that's right up your alley.

Accordingly, we present to you, MusicPlasma in this installment of A Cool Waste of Time.

Checking out the Soul of Maze (Click to see a larger image)

MusicPlasma is an idea whose time has come. Enter the name of a music group or artist, and MusicPlasma displays other artists whose music shares certain qualities, and so, may interest you. It's all done graphically, so the links between artists can be seen and followed. As you click on others artists that orbit your original entry, new artists appear and you can actually see the connection between the artists you like and your general taste in music.

Not all artists are shown, unfortunately, but there's enough to at least get you thinking about whose music you might want to listen to next.

With MusicPlasma and an iTMS account, you will be economically poor, but culturally rich.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Wouldn't it be wild if Apple bought this technology and linked it tightly with iTunes and ITMS?

As it is, MusicPlasma is the coolest tool we've seen for discovering new music, and is a must for every iPod owner or iTMS user.

One last note: MusicPlasma reminds us a lot of TextArc, the amazingly cool technology that can graphically explore the relationship between words in any written body of work. Check out our full coverage of TextArc from December of 2002 for more information.

Do you have a Cool Waste of Time you found on the Internet? Tell Vern Seward all about it, and he's pass it around...