Musicplasma – visual search service for music

By Lars Våge

A search service for rock and pop music called Musicplasma has silently surfaced, with a graphic interface.

(July 31 2004) It uses Flash technology and like the metasearch service Kartoo the search results are displayed as names with a halo around it on a sort of map image.

Below find a screenshot of search results for a query for the Norwegian electronica project Røyksopp.

The name you searched for will appear in the middle of the map with related artists/bands around. The larger the ring around the name, the more popular or important the band is in its category. But what does it mean that Neil Young gets a bigger halo than Simon and Garfunkel, even as big as The Beatles?

In a box on the left hand side of the screen you will find discographies for some of the artists, but they are incomplete and the links all take you to Amazon.

In the left box you can also click on Links, Frames, Color and Halos to adjust the appearance of your map. I do not understand, though, what the lines between the halos mean. The help texts are unfortunately minimal and you won’t find much information about the search service or who is behind the web site.

The funniest part is maybe moving from the center of the map by clicking elsewhere and seeing it all rearranged with a new focus. In this way you can find related bands or artists that you might have overlooked. You can revisit your searches by clicking on Last maps in the left hand box.

Musicplasma’s interface is easy to use, but I wish there were more bands and artists in the index and that real discographies and biographies were available. It would be very interesting to see this interface applied to the by far larger index of All Music Guide, who by the way changed their look this summer.

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