Maps of Recommendations

FAQ for Recommendation Mapping

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What is going on here?

Recommendation mapping is a new way to find music recommendations that are relevant to your specific taste. To get started, all you have to do is enter in a (yours or someone else's) mystrands username. Choose a playlist to visualize, and click "Create this map...". The mapping process should take less than a minute, and when it is done the map will automatically load on the page. Once the map is generated, you can retrieve it much more quickly in the future.

When the map is created, you will see a selection of colored "nodes". The nodes are all songs. The orange songs all come from your playlist, while the green songs are recommendations for those songs. The closer the two given songs are, the better the recommendation quality they are for each other. The size of the node gives you an idea of how popular the song is (bigger nodes are more popular). Also, older recommended songs will become darker and darker (very old songs will be black).

You can interact with the map by pointing at each individual node. As you move your mouse over the nodes, they will try to arrange themselves so that they aren't on top of each other. You can make them move back to their original position by moving your cursor away.

You can also click on a node and bring up more information on the song, including album art. You can also listen to a brief preview of the song by clicking the blue play button.

As this is a beta test, there can be several issues with how the plot and interaction method behave. Here's a quick FAQ that should cover some of the common problems. If you're having problems that aren't listed here, please send us a note!

Question: I can't retrieve my new playlists, where are they?
Answer: It takes some time for a playlist to be accessible through the beta data service that the map uses. This will be solved in the near future.

Question: The "Create this map..." link is not responsive, is it broken?
Answer: The mapping process can take longer if there are a lot of people using it. Please be patient, and the map should show up.

Question: Ok, I was patient, and the map still isn't here. What's wrong?
Answer: In rare cases (such as song recognition problems, or with obviously empty playlists), the mapping process may fail. This is indicated by a "blank" map. We are working to resolve this issue.

Question: Ok, I see the map... what does this shape mean?
Answer: The shapes are generated by listening behavior, so it's hard to say what they will mean in advance. Speaking generally, they fall into several categories:

• If you see a "big blob" shape, this means the map is of "good quality". You can mouse around on the songs and see how the songs are arranged on the map. Filtering the songs (by genre) often helps you see some underlying trends at work on the map.
• If you see "long stringy" shapes, it means that we don't have a whole lot of information on the songs. The songs are on one or two playlists (probably yours!). We need more information for the songs on these strands. Send us more playlists!
• Sometimes, you'll see a single dense "clump" of songs that are seperated from the rest of the nodes and packed together very tightly. The songs in this clump are "guesses" that the recommender had to make. They're probably not good recommendations for the rest of the of the songs on your list, but you never know...

Question: There are some songs from my playlist that aren't on the map... what happened?
Answer: The mapping process will drop songs from the map if it can't recognize them. This is oftentimes the case with very new songs, or with international songs. In the future we will notify you if this has happened.

Question: How is this supposed to help me find cool music?
Answer: The map gives you an idea of which songs are good recommendations for which tracks on your playlist. Songs that are located between two or more tracks on your playlist are good recommendations for both of those tracks. The map is meant to encourage "exploration" through a collection of songs that are all good recommendations for the songs on your playlist.

Question: How do you calculate the maps?
Answer: There's not enough space here to explain that one completely! Check out some of the information in the labs research materials for more background on this.

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