Sascha Kohlmann

Music is a much-needed constant for many people who use it as a backbone for a variety of different moods and activities.

When searching for new music, there are many ways to discover new artists, albums, and songs that may end up becoming some of your favorites. Some of these methods include utilizing websites that aim to tailor recommendations to some aspect of your music taste, whether that be other artists or even your favorite color. I tested a few and ranked them from most helpful to least useful.

Dubolt

Dubolt is a site that creates a customized playlist based on your favorite artist. The site allows you to connect with your Spotify account if you want to save the playlist and listen to it there. The customization includes sliders that control the level of popularity, energy, vocals, tempo, danceability, mood, and acoustics of the recommended tracks, as well as the number of songs included in the list. I tested the site by using Conan Gray as the reference artist. The resulting list of tracks included songs by artists like girl in red, The Neighbourhood, Bruno Major, Taylor Swift, and Phoebe Bridgers with general energy levels and moods very similar to Gray’s work.

Boil the Frog

Boil the Frog cultivates playlists for its users by creating blends between two artists. I chose artists with different styles, Taylor Swift and The Faim, to test the effectiveness of these blends. The resulting mix consisted of 17 tracks, beginning with Swift (“End Game”) and concluding with The Faim (“Saints of the Sinners”). Between them were other artists including Demi Lovato, Britney Spears, Every Avenue, Makeout, and more. The site is powered by Spotify and allows users to save the playlists to their account.

Predominantly

Predominantly allows you to discover albums based on their predominant color. The site displays a large color gradient from which its users can select any color. From there, the albums of the selected color will be suggested. I chose to search for albums of a light pink shade and the site created a list of 10 tracks–one from each of the top 10 albums matching the color I selected. While the songs did have album colors I liked, I didn’t get to pick the genre or mood of the songs, and therefore the playlist was one I may never listen to.

Music Map

Music Map allows users to discover new artists based on ones they already like. I used Anarbor as a test subject, and the site created a map of names of different artists. The closer a name appeared to “Anarbor”, the more similar it was to the band. The results included artists with similar styles, like With Confidence, The Cab, All Time Low, A Rocket to the Moon, A Simple Plan, and more. The results were helpful for discovering new artists, but unlike the other programs, Music Map lacked the function of creating a playlist.

Gnoosic

Gnoosic begins by asking its users to name three artists they enjoy. I chose Cemetery Sun, Sundressed, and Palaye Royale. From there, it continued recommending different artists, prompting me to give my opinion of them as I tried them out. I tried five rotations of this, and four of the artists were ones I ended up enjoying while one seemed more out of place and, in my opinion, unenjoyable. Like Music Map, Gnoosic doesn’t create playlists, but simply recommends artists.

After testing the music sites, here is my final ranking of how helpful they were:

1. Dubolt: Dubolt’s ability to fine-tune the playlist preferences allowed for incredibly personalized playlists that seemed to be better than the other results.
2. Gnoosic: Though Gnoosic doesn’t create playlists, the constant feedback of the artists allows for the tailoring to get even more customized as it goes on, and I enjoyed a lot of the artists it continued recommending.
3. Music Map: Again, Music Map didn’t create playlists, but showing a visual of how the artists sounded in relation to my chosen artist was incredibly helpful.
4. Boil the Frog: The concept of Boil the Frog was certainly interesting, but realistically, I’m not sure I would ever seriously listen to the blends it creates other than simply being curious what it comes up with.
5. Predominantly: Again, I thought the concept of Predominantly was a unique idea, but the moods of the tracks were all vastly different due to the fact that their binding feature was simply the color of the album, which I find to be mostly irrelevant in terms of listening.