I'm having a hard time collecting music I'm interested in through genre. Do I have any options to look for similar music based on a recording / song name?
For example, when browsing a video tagged Music on Youtube, Youtube presents a "Youtube mix":
But there does not seem to be any known service for this.
I reproduce some instructive quotes from Reddit. To ameliorate readability, I eschew blockquotes ``.
hassh 2 points 2 months ago:
http://www.spotalike.com/
http://www.similarsong.com (site down 05/2017)
http://moretrackslikethis.com/
lvav68 1 point 2 months ago
I don't feel Pandora is that well [good] for me it can get random. Try last.fm, I tried it once and worked well [...]
[...] Failing that, I look up the artist on a bunch of different sites to try and pin down the genre. If you can figure out the genre, it makes it a lot easier to find similar artists. Try
last.fm
[...] Let's apply this process to the song you posted. First, I checked last.fm. Nothing. Discogs and Musicbrainz also don't turn anything up, so now we move on to Google. Aha! Found Gavin's reverbnation page! He lists himself as "Other / Film Music / Cinematic Instrumental", so we'll search last.fm for stuff people have tagged as "cinematic". Bam. There's some similar artists.
Now, if you're already reasonably educated about genres and their sounds, you can always take a stab in the dark at similar artists. When I first heard the song you linked, I thought it sounded distinctly New Age. So if you check the last.fm tags for "New Age", you'll probably find some more similar artists. Hell, the description is "New Age music is music intended to create “sonic spaces,” conducive of artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management or to create a peaceful atmosphere in their home or other environments"—doesn't that sound exactly like what you were looking for?
Take a look at Pandora. I know they have an app for the iPhone, I would imagine they have one for other smartphones as well. I've found a few good bands that way, by plugging in a particular genre or even band that I like, and they will start spitting out a bunch of tracks in the same vein. That's how I discovered a little indie band called Hanzel Und Gretyl; I put in Ramstein and it just started playing all this German Industrial stuff.
It's free, which is always a good selling point for downloading an app. :) You just have to put up with a commercial every couple of songs or so.
I've had good experience using music-map.com. It's straightforward to use: just enter the name of an artist/band you like, and you get a "map" of suggestions. Your selection is at the center, and the closer the suggestion to your selection, the more people also like that artist/band.
I typically use Rate Your Music. When you search for a band or album, they will list the genres the band or album is associated with (example). Every genre on RYM features a chronological list (example) of all releases within the genre, and a listing of the best rated releases within the genre (example). The best rated list can be further filtered by various criteria.
What makes RYM a good database for finding related music is their very extensive genre list (metal, for example has 59 subgenres on RYM).
Even though RYM is very good for music in general, there are websites that specialize in a certain genre. They are typically more extensive, and have a more knowledgeable userbase that will give better recommendations for related music. My favorite example of this is the Metal Archives. They have collectively documented nearly 130,000 metal bands! Every band also features a "related bands" section, that is voted on by users.
