>If you’re an Amazon addict like myself you’re used to the recommendations offered at their site based on whatever product you’re looking at. Although this has only helped to feed one of my other addictions, music, a few times by giving me new artists to check out, I found this Music Plasma site that does the same sort of thing graphically with rings of bubbles containing artist names arranged in a sort of map. This map is created by entering the name of a group into a text box and hitting “Search.” It can be zoomed in and out of and sometimes offers new and related musicians. If for nothing else, it’s a really interesting concept and fun to play around with. The vast majority of artists that came up for my search of “Stereolab” are known to me with the exception of two. That’s two more artists I get to ‘discover’ for myself.

I suppose one could use it to settle arguments with friends when one side is controversially claiming the relatedness of two bands.