Music Search

One Llama is a playlist maker, and allows search by artist or title. A Llama is a set of personalised playlists. The are very open about the technology they use to implement the service, which are collaborative filtering and audio similarity. They also give a description of their products.

There are two ways of doing a search on OneLlama, either 'create a playlist' or 'discover music'. Right, here's the usual query set. I used the query set on both interfaces, but can only provide links to generated playlists ('discover music' brings up a new interface, and you can't link to the results):

• David Bowie Low.


• David Bowie "Heroes".


• David Bowie lodger .


• Iggy Pop lust for life.


• David Bowie the man who sold the world.


• David Bowie hunky dory (search failed).


• David Bowie Aladdin Sane.


• David Bowie ziggy stardust.

The playlist search comes up with a list of similar songs, which might or might not be the same artist as you are searching for. I had problems with my 'pop up' blocking when trying to play this music from the generated lists, but others options include preview ('snippet'), find similar song, or buy the song. When typing in the query you are presented with a number of alternatives, which you can pick to replace your search (I did this above where it made sense). Only one search failed - hunky dory. The quality on the previews isn't that good.

The discover music search brings up a list, when you click on an item that items is displayed in a network with similar songs. You can play 'snippets' of the songs or add it to a playlist. Its a nice idea, but they've some work to on it e.g. I couldn't stop the music when it had started, and I found myself looking at a rather ugly picture at one stage with the visualisation and the search mixed in.

It says under the search box "COMING SOON: Audio similarity searching. Find songs that SOUND like each other". This could be fun.

Posts in the series are available here.