Frequently asked questions and stuff
Man, that map is ugly!
I know. :)
Why does the map keep telling me that [insert-your-favourite-artist-here] is not found in the database? Don't you know that [insert-your-favourite-artist-here] is the greatest musician ever?
Of course he/she is, but unfortunately there are several reasons why an artist could have been left out from my dataset. First, I decided to throw away all artists that do not have MusicBrainz IDs; this was a quick and efficient way to get rid of many mistyped artist names that I occasionally found in the database. Second, several artist names have alternative spellings, and I kept only the one that is considered official by Last.fm (or more precisely the one that was considered official at the time of the data collection). So in case you don't find what you are looking for, try to look it up on Last.fm and check the official spelling. E.g., searching for Rolling Stones will not work, you have to use The Rolling Stones instead. Third, I don't know how the database behaves when the name of the artist contains accents, as in Sigur Rós (a great Icelandic "slow-motion rock" band), Alvin és a mókusok (a Hungarian soft punk band) or Íon (an interesting side-project of ex-Anathema member Duncan Patterson).
[insert-your-favourite-artist-here] is coloured as rock, but I think it is rather a special kind of power-death-viking-avantgarde-metal with a blend of hip-hop and some reggae influences, can you change its colour appropriately?
No. More precisely: yes. Even more precisely: vertex colours are determined by a pretty dumb algorithm that is described in detail here. I do not want to maintain a huge exceptions list, so I can change the colour of that specific artist if and only if we can figure out how can I improve the algorithm with the least effort to give the correct results for your specific artist (and of course not to f.ck up others too much). Note that maybe your artist is not miscategorised at all, the reason why you see another colour on the map at the appropriate place is that the artist you were looking is hidden behind another one on the map.
I have a suggestion for a new category to be displayed on the map.
Yes, I know that the categorisation is a little bit crude; e.g., I grouped all indie, punk and rock bands together in a single rock group, I did not create separate groups for popular and not-so-popular electronic subgenres and so on. The reason is that I tried not to use too many colours on the map, and I can hardly conceive another colour that is easily distinguishable from the others. If you can suggest one and tell me which tags should be identified with this colour, mail me on Last.fm and I will consider it.
Can I put multiple markers on the map?
Yes, you can. Separate individual artist names by commas.
Can I put markers on the map based on my overall top artists?
Not yet, but this is feature I plan to add if there is substantial demand for it (more than two people). Send me a message on Last.fm.
I have a question that is not answered here.
Mail me on Last.fm. If you don't have a Last.fm account, please create one; I'm not too eager to disclose my e-mail address, spammers are lurking out there.
