Spotify's related artists

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Spotify have been in the news a lot this week. From founder Daniel E's news that Twitter is their biggest traffic source, to the announcement today about a newly rolled out related artist feature.

According to an article on Tech Crunch, Spotify have been working on a recommendation engine to let you discover new music while listening to your favourite acts. This would act as a replacement for the short, rather static list of related artists that appeared on the artist page. According to Tech Crunch, the recommendation engine is "powered by an algorithm that cross-references data collected over millions of user listening hours, not dissimilar it seems to Last.fm’s ’scrobbling’ of tracks".

Whether the feature will spur you to on to discover any amazing new finds is still up for debate. A quick perusal of the new system finds me on the Pet Shop Boys page contemplating listening to their related artist Brummie metal Gods "Judas Priest" (maybe it's the gay connection they're going for).

Clearly, though, there's still quite a bit of work to do before I'm actually discovering new RELEVANT music using this feature.

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