http://www2.research.att.com/~yifanhu/M ... index.html
Cool map of music.
It dosen't go nearly as in depth as it should, but its a very interesting idea, and it has a much fore fleshed out metal section than i would have expected.

That map is actually pretty cool and is accurate for the most part.

That guy sure loves his pop-rock and nu-metal. Otherwise, it's quite lacking in a number of other genres and hardcore seems to be non-existent on the map.

I think this data is all pulled from Last.fm, making it a concept map of artist relations.

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Now playing: Celtic Frost - Circle of the Tyrants
via FoxyTunes

What the hell are Vader and HIM doing in the same country?

Yeah, I don't really get how this works. Martin Lopez played for both Opeth and Amon Amarth but, they are on opposite sides of the map.

It's where the goth metal tribes where invaded by the bordering alt/nu metal hordes.

The men where killed, the children enslaved, and the woman's rape kids put on eye liner, died their hair black and started singing gothic love ballads with a piano while a bored looking guy in the background plays muted power chords during the chorus.

I love how Burzum's all alone in the far northeast corner.

Took me about 5 minutes of blankly staring at this map to realize I could zoom in.
The concept for this is really cool though.

What the fuck kind of map has Clawfinger and not Celtic Frost?

It appears to be based on Last.fm data. Last.fm determines artist similarity by analyzing listening habits of users. If you listen to two artists back-to-back, they get counted as more similar. So similar artists are whatever artists get listened to back-to-back most often by users. At least that's my understanding of their system.

well put sir

I don't think the timing has anything to do with it. Instead, I think it's groups together artists as similar who have large numbers of people that have listened to both. For example, Iniquity have 14 000 odd listeners, and a large majority of those people have also listened to a certain number of Defeated Sanity tracks. Therefore, regardless of any actual musical similarities, Defeated Sanity are listed as the artist most similar to Iniquity.

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Now playing: Iniquity - Encysted And Dormant
via FoxyTunes

http://www.last.fm/help/faq?category=Artist+Pages

FAQ is vague about it anyway. Not sure where I heard the back-to-back thing. Maybe at one time they used that? Here's what I could find:

"the similarity algorithm is constantly changing" -staff
http://www.last.fm/forum/6666/_/410100

"They are calculated using an algorithm based on user behaviour, including tags, and common artists that your fans listen to."
"Please note that there is no set number of plays needed to calculate similar artist because cases vary widely"
http://musicmanager.last.fm/help/faq?ca ... d+the+Site

Yeah, I guess you're right. It can't just be plays, else Karl Sander's most similar artist would probably be Nile, where as it's Wardruna.
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Now playing: Grand Belial's Key - The Bearded Hustlers
via FoxyTunes

I prefer the map only with Rock - Metal bands