There are now a lot of music sites out there like Pandora.com and Last.fm that gather information about people’s taste in music. And they do not simply log what kid of bands or songs people search for, but how often each song is listened to and favorited and even which other songs and bands that are popular with people that like a certain artist or song. This way these sites can recommend music with a high degree of accuracy. But their search engines are not always great. Here are 3 great music recommendation engines, each with an innovative functionality and interface.

Tastekid

Tastekid is a music recommendation engine with a social dimension. It provides music, movies, shows, books and authors recommendations, based on your existing preferences.

You choose the Music tab and enter your query and Tastekid brings up a list of related bands. Click on the search result of your choice and a pop-up window displays a short introductory text to the band in question along with a video that plays right in the window and links to the Wikipedia article and a Google search.

There are options to like, dislike or save an artist (and even a Meh button if you aren’t certain ). The same box contains tabs that let you share your find on Twitter and Facebook or find it on Amazon and iTunes store. It works even for little known bands.

Tastekid is my favorite way to find new artists.

Flokoon

Flokkoon is a visual search engine that applies its technology on data from YouTube, Fotolia and Last.fm. You click on radio buttons to choose to search for an artist (default) or a tag. When you do your search, a kind of map or web appears: The band you searched for is presented in the middle, surrounded by related bands.

To expand the web, click on the artist of your choice among the search results. Related artists appear and in this way you can continue to explore a genre, artist by artist. There is an x in the top right corner of each item that lets you remove items from your search as well.

You can learn more about the suggested artists or bands by pointing your mouse to an item. Three options pop up: More Details, Popular Tags and Top Fans. More details brings up bio and a list of albums, though this doesn’t work for more obscure bands. In this box, you can also click “Add to my discoveries” to save your find in a tab at the bottom left of the screen.

The option Popular Tags lets you explore tags associated with the artist in question while Top Fans shows Last.fm users that like the artist. There is no way to listen, though, so you have to have iTunes store or a similar source of music available.

Flokoon is an innovative search engine and I like it a lot!

Xiggy

Xyggy provides several kinds of search in addition to music recommendation and calls its approach item-based. You enter a query (band or artist names work better than song titles) and click the search button. The results that return do not contain info on the band you searched for or the usual 10 items of a text snippet and a link. In stead you are presented with a list of 11 band or artist names (and links to lots more). As you point your mouse to one of them, a short text appears, accompanied with an image.

But the search continues. Drag the results you like to the search box to refine your search. Each time you add an item, Xyggy changes the search results accordingly. The data are provided by Last.fm, so when you click on the search results, you arrive on the relevant Last.fm page, where you canlisten to music and dig into a wealth of information including images, biography and discography.

Photo with Attribution licence by nzgabriel from Flickr.com.

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