Island of Music from Last.FM's Playground. Visualization of listing habits based on tags

I just stumbled upon this great visualization on Last.fm Playground site. It maps listing habits based on tags as Islands. It’s not beautiful as such, but very informative and good at communicating a lot of data to viewers. Go and have a try with the interactive image.

Last.fm describes it as:

The islands of music playground demonstration is something like a tag cloud where similar tags are located close to each together. The map was created using clustering algorithms.

These algorithms group similar music on islands. Similar islands are placed close to each other. For example, various flavours of metal are located close to each other in the upper right of the map. The map also suggests several more or less continuous transitions. For example, there is a path from folk to doom metal (via psychedelic, progressive rock, and progressive metal).

I particularly like the visualization of the paths between the different tags; “… there is a path from folk to doom metal…”. The big genres or “heavily used tags” and are placed at the edges of the map. Those genres that most people would normally use as an answer to the question, “What kind of music do you listen to?”. Musical clusters, if you like. And I might be miss- or over-interpreting here, but  the smaller islands in the middle seems like commonly used bridges between these clusters (e.g. jazz, new age, soundtrack/instrumental, classical/instrumental). For-example if you listen to hip-hop and psychedelic the chances of you also listing to jazz is quite high.

There is of course a lot of noise in the data (mistagged artist, irish, comedy) like they also point out, but none the less I really like it.

I find movie soundtracks a great way to discover new music. Others have taken the time to digg crates, music libraries and own collections. Using their skills and expertise they have handpicked music, that otherwise would have remained unknown to me. All I have to do is lean back, listen and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

On that note, The Narrows is a great movie (go watch it, seriously!) and features some great songs. But I was unable to find the song listing anywhere online, so I copied it out.

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Song listing for The Narrows (2008)

“Have Mercy On Me”
Written by Junior Kimbrough
Preformed by The Black Keys
Courtesy of Fat Possum Records

“T.R.B”
Written by Ryan Moys
Preformed by Autopoilot
Courtesy of INgrooves

“The Lengths”
Written by Daniel Auerbach and Patrick Carney
Preformed by The Black Keys
Courtesy of  Fat Possum Records

“Home Is Where Hatred Is”
Written by Gill Scott-Herson
Preformed by Esther Phillips
Courtesy ofColumbia Records
By arrangement with SONY/BMG and King Record Co., Ltd.

“Busted”
Written by Daniel Auerbach and Patrick Carney
Preformed by The Black Keys
Courtesy of Fat Possum Records

“Adore”
Written by Nicolas Chaix
Preformed by I:Cube
Courtesy of Versatile Records

“Girl Is On My Mind”
Written by Daniel Auerbach and Patrick Carney
Preformed by The Black Keys
Courtesy of Fat Possum Records

“Woman”
Written by Neneh Cherry, Cameron McVey and Jonnathan Sharp
Preformed by Neneh Cherry
Courtesy of Virgin Records Ltd.
Under license from EMI Film & Television Music

“Big Lake” & “Tenderness Games”
Written by Rob Simonsen
Courtesy of KAP Music, LLC

“The Desperate Man”
Written by Daniel Auerbach and Patrick Carney
Preformed by The Black Keys
Courtesy of Fat Possum Records

“Delta Blue”
Written and preformed by Brian Tarquin-Browne
Courtesy of MasterSource

“Am I Black Enough”
Written by David Hadland, Scoot Schoot and Victor Williams
Preformed by Turntable Bay
Courtesy of Lazy Bones Recordings

“Don’t Look”
Written by Ryan Poulson
Courtesy of KAP Music, LLC

“Scene Of The Crime”
Written by Gleen Morrissette
Courtesy of KAP Music, LLC

“The Reunion” & “Creepy Guitar Build”
Written by Jonathan D. Krupp
Courtesy of KAP Music, LLC

“Meet Me In the City”
Written by Junior Kimbrough
Preformed by The Black Keys
Courtesy of Fat Possum Records

“Hayksad”
Written by Andrea Centazzo
Courtesy of KAP Music, LLC

“Two Paychecks From The Street”
Written by John Reed Kekar
Preformed by Steve Parrish
Courtesy of MasterScouce

“Hidden Path”
Written by Dana DiAnda
Courtesy of KAP Music, LLC

“Life In Reverse”
Written by Russ Horward III
Courtesy of KAP Music, LLC

“Blue Over You”
Written by Marc Ferrari, Michael Muholand & Danny Gill
Preformed by Medicine Wheel
Courtesy of MasterSource

“She Has No Time”
Written by Tim Rice-Owley, Tom Chapcaim, Richard Hughes And James Sanger
Preformed by Keane
Courtesy of Island Records Limited
Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

“Poor Leno”
Written by Svein Berge, Torbjørn Brundtland, Erlend Øye
Preformed by Röyksopp
Courtesy of EMI Music France / Astralwerks
Under license from EMI Film & Television Music

“All Hands Against His Own”
Written by Daniel Auerbach and Patrick Carney
Preformed by The Black Keys
Courtesy of Fat Possum Records