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The Echo Nest has released their new recommendation API. The API will give you recommendations based upon a single artist or a set of recommended artists. Echo Nest is one of the few commercial recommenders that doesn't rely on collaborative filtering for recommendations. Instead, the Echo Nest combines information from "online cultural data, text analysis, audio analysis and user activity". The API is very easy to use. You make queries like this to lookup artist IDs:

http://api.echonest.com/lookup?api_key=MY_KEY&names=the+beatles

Once you get an artist ID you can get recommendations with this request:

http://api.echonest.com/recommendations?api_key=MY_KEY&ids=AR6XZ861187FB4CECD

Some recommendations using the new Echo Nest Recommendation API Seed Artist of Jimi Hendrix:

• Cream,
• HendriX
• Stevie Ray Vaughan
• Jeff Beck
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience
• Eric Clapton
• Funkadelic
• Buddy Miles
• Michael Hill
• Doyle Bramhall II

Seed artist of Led Zeppelin:

• LED
• Deep Purple
• Bonham
• Page and Plant
• Black Sabbath
• Aerosmith
• The Who
• Bad Company
• AC/DC
• Cream

Seed artist of Miles Davis:

• Miles David and John Coltrane
• Miles Davis Sextet
• Miles Davis Quintet
• John Coltrane
• Charlie Parker
• Kenny Dorham
• Wayne Shorter
• Wynton Marsalis
• Bill Evans
• Thelonious Monk

Seed artist of the Beatles

• Badfinger
• George Harrison
• The Hollies
• The Animals
• John Lennon and Paul McCartney
• Paul McCartney
• The Beau Brummels
• The fourmost
• Peter and Gordon
• George Martin

Seed artist of Emerson Lake and Palmer

• Rick Wakeman
• Emerson, Lake & Palmer
• Patrick Moraz
• Yes
• Gentle Giant
• Steve Hackett
• King Crimson
• Colosseum
• Tony Banks
• Graham Bond

The recommendations, for the most part look pretty good. There's less popularity bias than you'd typically see with a collaborative filtering algorithm. Still, there are some funny bits. If you like Miles Davis, there are 3 other types of Miles Davis that you might like (but I bet you could have figured that out without a fancy recommender). Also, cover and tribute bands seem to feature prominently.

There were a few little glitches with the web services. The returned XML was not always well formed ('&' characters were not properly turned into entities), some artist searches failed for no apparent reason (I couldn't find 'the beatles' or 'weezer' with the 'suggest' call).

I'm not sure if these recommendations would pass the recommender Turing test. Not too many people would offer a recommendation of Lennon and McCartney for Beatles fans - it is too obvious. Same with Jimi Hendrix and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. However, the Graham Bond recommendation for Emerson Lake and Palmer is brilliant and one that I've never seen made by any other recommender (human or machine).

The Echo Nest gives these recommendations for free (for up to a certain amount per day). If you want to make many requests, you can buy a license from the nest. Also, the Echo Nest is offering free unlimited recommendations to the first 100 small music sites that register for the API. You can't beat free, so sign up quick!

I'm really pleased to see the Echo Nest releasing these services. This is just the type of service that the next generation web companies that are trying new ways to deliver music really need.