To create a Boil The Frog playlist, just type in the names of two artists and a playlist will be generated that takes you gradually, step by step, from the first artist to the second artist. You can click on any song to hear the song.
I have spent way too much time playing with this already.
"Sorry, Can't make a path from NWA to Skrewdriver."
I've been trying to see how short I can get a playlist. Joy Division to Interpol in four is the current champ.
Oh come on, that's easy: Tori Amos to Kate Bush.
What's hard is the longest path.
Skrillex to Mozart in 18.
Whoa...
Found a path from The Sisters of Mercy to Skrillex in 25 songs.
Damn, I thought Big Bopper to Testament in 20 was good.
Titus Andronicus to 2 Chainz (my first try!) took 25.
I saw a jump from Weekend to The Weekend at some point. Those two bands are similar in name only. That kinda seemed like cheating.
Tom Petty to Lady Gaga in 27.
X-Rx to Nat King Cole in 30
AndI just beat myself with X-Rx to the Ink Spots in 31...
X-Rx to Bob Crosby in 33 (who knew the fallout 3 soundtrack would be useful? :)
I've got a tie. Brahms to Napalm Death in 33. I'd also like to submit The Albion Dance Band to The Vandals in 8 as the most likely frog to notice it's being boiled.
Pachelbel to Rush in 35, whee!
Prince to Pachelbel in 37. Out of which I've never heard of ... 34. That would be 35 if it were not for a bug causing Prince to appear twice. This appears to be a
-related bug.
"Slaves" to "Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber" in 39, and I haven't heard of ANY of them.
So I wrote a script:
http://pastebin.com/kRCCHjkh
There's probably a better algorithm, and it's a very rude robot. I just keep track of the longest path found so far, and explore paths with similar artists (from last.fm) of anything nearly as long (longest_length - 1). You get different results depending where you start.
Deviation to Maison Blanche in 40 steps.
Deviation to Spiral 25 in 41.
Because I wrote a script.
in 42 Varathon to Les Brown & his band of renown because I wrote a script and I have a secret super power.
Ah ... something ate my url ... let's try that again:
in 42 Varathon to Les Brown & his band of renown because I wrote a script and I have a secret super power.
Mines longer, thicker and has big veins, but it's a magical secret.
Seriously, do you want to talk about algorithms? As I mentioned before, the user provides a starting path A-B, the script finds neighbors of end B using last.fm, and check the path lengths from A to the neighbours.
Slayer to Skrillex in 29
The best I've done so far is Carcass to Don Omar for 29.
"Found a path from The Glitch Mob to Richard Thompson in 16 songs."
27: Fats Waller to Judas Priest
Because the graph traversal favours artists with similar popularity, and there are far more unpopular artists than popular ones, I'd guess that the longest paths will be found between pairs of artists that are both dissimilar and similarly unpopular.
Depending on the similarity metric, it might be fun to provide a service that takes a set of artists and finds the artist that is collectively most similar to them. Which leads to the question of what artist is most similar to every other artist in the graph? And does it/do they taste like chicken?
The "tastes like chicken" of music is either Celine Dion or White Stripes.
Found a path from Chris Brown to X-Ray Spex in 23 songs.
I am not proud.
Tom Waits to IAMX in 15. I feel dirty.
Apparently, The Shaggs are a dead end. Sad.
Ditto the Gits. I am disappoint.
The path from Mozart to Moonsorrow includes a recording of a thunderstorm 8-) (and doesn't actually start with Mozart, but close enough).
Are you supposed to be able to listen to these songs? Clicking the prominent play buttons does nothing for me.
I just attempted Led Zeppelin to Ladytron -- this takes 16 steps but I'm a little concerned because the Led Zeppelin track is an Audio Documentary and "The Necromancer" from Caress of Steel by Rush is in there.
My first attempt had Creed in the middle. I give up forever.
how can it not get from nwa to skrewdriver? copkiller is the obvious bridging song there, to consolidated.
Skrewdriver isn't in there at all, I think. Which is probably just fine.
This has caused me to learn that Skrewdriver had a Peel session. NWA to Shabazz Palaces is 17. There must be more subgenres of that stuff than I thought if it only takes 13 to get from NWA to Macklemore.
This is addictive. Longest path between people who've worked together? So far I'm at 20 for Current 93 and Andrew WK.
I think the best use of this service is to definitively prove Ace of Base's entire back catalogue consists of remixes of the hamster dance.
"Sorry, Can't make a path from Dire Straits to Animaniacs".
But I'm pretty sure GJay did that for me once....
I've found it useful for finding new artists. pick two similar artists that are in similar, but in different subcultures. Com Truise -> Shpongle
An amusing one was "Miami Nights 1984" -> "Jan Hammer". It's starting with a band that makes music like you'd hear on Miami vice, eventually some acid house, then somehow leaps to Walt Disney himself singing with The Sherman Brothers, then Roger Rabbit and Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack before landing on the guy who wrote the Miami Vice soundtrack.
JS Bach to Madness in 23. Not bad, though I'm sure I could have chosen something more obscure.
Led Zeppelin to Clapton starts with an audio documentary...
Mussolini Headkick takes you some weird places. Somehow, Mussolini Headkick to Van Halen goes through Aztec Camera, Nik Kershaw, and ABC.
http://static.echonest.com/frog/?src=Mussolini%20Headkick&dest=Van%20Halen
WAT?
Apparently Oingo Boingo to Mogwai involves passing through Sammy Hagar and Ted Nugent. Who knew?
Huh. I'd have assumed it took a shortcut through Aztec Camera's version of "Jump" (come for the mopey British folk-pop, stay for the hilarious piss-take on an Eddie Van guitar solo), but it picks something entirely else from their catalog.
"Found a path from Fairport Convention to Nurse With Wound in 13 songs."
Oh come now:
Sorry, Can't make a path from Jascha Heifetz to Three Mustaphas Three
I originally read this as "The Perfect Mixtape Constrictor." That may be more appropriate.
Dear internet...
From Brahms to Dimmu Borgir via the Nyan Cat.
http://static.echonest.com/frog/?src=Brahms&dest=Dimmu%20Borgir
Found a path from The Faint to Bajofondo in 11 songs.
Oh.
"Sorry, Can't make a path from Boil the Frog to Lady Gaga."