2013…was a great year for music. Alter Bridge released a killer hard rock album Fortress, not to the delight of Scott Stapp, who is apparently "homeless" now. So did Queens of the Stone Age with ...Like Clokwork, a much needed rock album. I rocked out a pair of great metal albums from Soilwork with The Living Infinite (proving a band that moved towards alternative metal can go back to what made them great…can't say the same about In Flames) and Killswitch Engage with Disarm the Descent, while not as great as previous albums, it…

Liking a band is one thing…but if you want similar artists, will you be able to find some?

I've decided to investigate several bands/artists myself and determine whether what last.fm gives as similar artists work out or are off. Today, it's the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are classified as mainly alternative rock…though that genre is broad. Styles explored by the band include funk rock, pop rock, funk (specifically Freaky Styley, funk metal (earlier albums), and sometimes, rap rock (aka, rap-like vocals) and psychedelia influences, but rarely.

So, let's see what last.fm…

After skipping the 2013 show because well…nothing was interesting (and Mumford & Sons winning album of the year even though it did not with folk album of the year), the 2014 nominees came out. And once I heard Daft Punk was nominated for several awards including 2 of the top prizes that night, I was interested. Performances by Daft Punk, Queens of the Stone Age, Nine Inch Nails, and Metallica quickly grabbed my attention. I was going to watch the award show that had literally no credibility…just to see these guys perform.

And it was worth the…

It's that time again, the music industry's annual show where they crown what they believe is the greatest music ever which 99.9% of the population will literally disagree with. I could go more into the big mistake with the selected pop album up for Album of the Year and all, but I wanted to focus on a bigger issue.

Rock music.

Yes…Rock music….

Earlier this year, a certain Radioactive made noise across radio stations. My local rock station that once relied on playing a ton of modern rock like Disturbed, Three Days Grace, and Godsmack, decided to…

Hello world.

You really think so? Then take a look at these so-called similar artists found on each of the following artists among the first 50 artists listed:

Metallica - System of a Down, Slipknot, Godsmack, KoRn, Disturbed, Rammstein, The Offspring, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Children of Bodom, In Flames, Apocalyptica, Alice in Chains, Bullet For My Valentine, Lamb of God, Stone Sour, Nirvana, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, Deep Purple, Nightwish

–You really think nu metal like KoRn and Slipknot sound the same? When was Pink Floyd known for making headbashing tunes? I never knew Offspring was a…

Since I broke with rateyourmusic.com, this shall serve as my calendar of albums to look forward to for 2013.

January
22 - Bad Religion - True North

February
5 - Coheed and Cambria - The Afterman: Descension
27 - Soilwork - The Living Infinite

March
8 - David Bowie - The Next Day
15 - Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience
22 - Depeche Mode - Delta Machine

April
2 - Killswitch Engage - Disarm the Descent
9 - Stone Sour - House of Gold & Bones, Part 2
16 - Ghostface Killah - Twelve Reasons to Die

May
17…

The band is Rise Against. It was around the time of Appeal to Reason that I started getting into them. I also owe it to Guitar Hero and the inclusion of Prayer of the Refugee that got me into the band. Became only the 4th punk rock/pop punk in my collection aside from Green Day, The Offspring, and blink-182 (I now got stuff like The Clash, Bad Religion, Dropkick Murphys, Social Distortion, and Rancid in my library).

Rise Against plays a style of melodic hardcore and punk rock. There are…

I haven’t written a journal entry in a while. Had ideas of stuff to write, but was too lazy, doing other things…like chilling out to new releases by Linkin Park, Slash, and The Offspring while preparing for the AOTY by Nas.

But around May, something…got me going in the wrong direction. When these bands are ready to release new stuff, I usually prep myself by listening to all of their songs and watching their music videos online, especially on youtube. So, with Days Go By coming soon for the Offspring, I started popping through their hits on…

A month has passed since my last entry. Still working on the similar artists formula, but the program I'm running to test the formula has slowed down, so I'm gonna make some changes to the code and re-look at the formula. That will be discussed later. But let me discuss what is on my mind.

SUPER BOWL DEJA VU
Yeah, last week, was the Super Bowl…and another halftime guest that basically combined the flaws from the last 2 Super Bowls together (outdated The Who and the top 40-friendly Black Eyed Peas). It was Madonna, but to be honest,…

Last Saturday, I discussed the issues with the current similar artist formula…especially Metallica being top 10 in similarity with The Offspring (like what?).

Well, since then, I put my programming skills to work and well, I built a little program to test to see it would work with other artists. Results were noticed on several bands/artists as their similar artists over went a make over. However, it did lead to new problems as I tried testing it out super-mainstream acts including our favorite band…Radiohead.

Rage Against the Machine showed up as a similar artist.

…well, apparently. Radiohead's top…