A Prototype for Visualizing Music Artist Networks

This paper reports on a prototype providing a simple yet efficient interface to navigate through networks of music artists. Built upon data gathered from Last.fm, it provides two simultaneous layers of information: (i) a graph built from artist similarity data, and (ii) overlaid labels containing user-defined tags. Differing from existing artist network visualization tools, the proposed prototype emphasizes commonalities as well as main differences between artist categorizations, hence providing richer browsing to the user. The prototype can be accessed at http://pattie.fe.up.pt/rama Index Terms — Music, Visualization, User interfaces