Do you have an eclectic taste in music?

Apparently my musical tastes are relatively eclectic. This handy little script analyses the tracks I have listened to recently using Last.FM, rates their eclecticism and then provides me with a list of recommendations.

How does it work?

The script takes my top 20 artists and then for each of these artists, the top 5 similar artists. Clearly if your musical tastes are limited then there will be a lot of overlap. The more UNIQUE recommendations it comes up with, the more eclectic your tastes are.

My eclectic score is 83/100. The 83 related artists for my profile are:

50 Foot Wave, Arctic Monkeys (2), Audioslave, Beck, Belle and Sebastian, Belly, Bloc Party (2), Broken Social Scene (2), Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine (2), Cat Power, Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, Dirty Pretty Things, Duran Duran, Editors (2), Eurythmics, Faithless, Foo Fighters, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Franz Ferdinand, Good Shoes, Half Man Half Biscuit, INXS, Incubus, Inspiral Carpets (2), Interpol (3), James, Jesus Jones, John Lennon, Joy Division, Kaiser Chiefs (2), Kristin Hersh, Larrikin Love, Led Zeppelin, Leftfield, Maximo Park, Maxïmo Park, Modest Mouse (3), Morrissey, Muse, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Neutral Milk Hotel, Orbital, Pavement, Pixies, Queen, Radiohead (3), Razorlight, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Regina Spektor, Stars, Sufjan Stevens, Sugar, System of a Down, Tanya Donelly, Tears for Fears, Teenage Fanclub, The Arcade Fire (2), The Automatic, The Breeders, The Chemical Brothers, The Cribs, The Cure, The Decemberists, The Flaming Lips, The Futureheads, The Go-Betweens, The Holloways, The House of Love, The Killers (2), The Pigeon Detectives, The Prodigy, The Rakes, The Rolling Stones, The Shins (3), The Smashing Pumpkins, The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Who, The Wonder Stuff, The Zutons, Weezer, Yo La Tengo

That's not a bad definition of the stuff I like to listen to - especially considering that Last.FM only gets a narrow slice of my listening behaviour. The overlaps appear to be predictably on the dour side of indie (Radiohead, Editors, Interpol, Modest Mouse etc.) No surprises there then!

There's an interesting analysis of the impact of the viral spread of this script on Last.FM's site here.

(HT Iain)