EchoSpot is a little web application that harnesses the power of the Echonest API to help you find new cool artists, playlists and songs. Technically the app can be used on its own for casual browsing, but its real power comes when hooked back into Spotify. Copy generated playlists to your clipboard with two clicks and import then directly into the desktop Spotify client. In addition, all listed artists and songs have a simple link back to the Spotify app.
EchoSpot has full mobile integration for on the go as well. Just open this site on a mobile device; the site layout is responsive. Clicks on spotify links here auto link into the Spotify mobile app. Note with touch there are a few small functional changes: taps on artist rows are treated the same as mouse hovers (more Spotify and Echonest related information is revealed). Taps on song rows auto open the song in Spotify.
After any search you'll get rows of results. An artist row has several references that appear on mouseover:
Song rows have their own information:
There are four types of static playlists Echonest can generate: artist radio, artist description, specific artists, and song radio. Select between these with the Playlist Type dropdown. Artist radio requires anywhere from one to five artists entered (under Artist(s)/Spotify URI(s)) as the base to generate a playlist of both these artists and related artists. A single artist can be a name description (e.g. 'Daft Punk') or a Spotify artist URI (format 'spotify:artist:XXXXXXXXX'). Specific artists is like artist radio, but it restricts the playlist naturally to just those artists. Song radio requires anywhere from one to five Spotify URIs (of the format 'spotify:track:XXXXXXX' in the Artist(s)/Spotify URI(s) field). Artist description requires anywhere from 1-5 terms, separated by commas (e.g. 80s, cold, funk) in the Descriptive terms field, and generates a playlist based on those terms.
So while every playlist requires either the Artist(s)/Spotify URI(s) or Descriptive terms fields filled there's a lot of other options to limit what comes back. Take a look at the Echonest documentation playlist for all the details.
As clarification: song hotness, energy, and danceability can be set to 'high', 'average' and 'low', or combinations of that (e.g. 'high + average'). High refers to a rating above 0.7, average between 0.3 and 0.7 while low refers to ratings below 0.3. Artist familiarity can be set to 'familiar', 'average' and 'obscure' or combinations of. Familiar has a rating above 0.7, average to between 0.3 and 0.7 and low below 0.3. Finally, artist variety can be set to 'very high', 'high', 'average' and 'low'. Very high sets variety to 1, the highest setting. High sets it to 0.6, average is the default setting of 0.3, and low sets it to 0.1.
Search for artists in two ways: either directly enter a single artist name (e.g. 'Daft Punk') in the Artist(s)/Spotify URI(s) field, or enter a term or series of terms (e.g. 'rock') separated by commas in the Descriptive terms field. Don't enter something in both fields or you will get an error. Though it generally isn't as successful here, you can also use the other filters to cut your search down further.
Search for songs in three ways: Enter in a single artist name (e.g. 'Daft Punk') in the Artist(s)/Spotify URI(s) field to get a series of songs by that artist. Alternatively, enter a song name (e.g. 'title') to hone in a single song title. Finally, you can also enter a combined artist and song name (e.g. 'radiohead karma police') to try and find a song more easily. Again, like with artists, you can use the other filters to cut down the final response, but again you may get mixed results.
At any time to get a quick reference of the top 40 hottest, buzzworthy artists according to Echonest, just click on Top artists at the top nav.
It's really easy to export a playlist of data into Spotify. A 'Copy playlist to clipboard' button appears at the top the after generating any playlist; just click on it to copy the playlist contents to your clipboard. If you're not running Flash the button won't work (or would prefer a manual plain text list of the Spotify links) click on the 'Playlist' option instead at the top of the navigation. You'll be taken to a screen with a big text area of Spotify links. Select all the contents in the text area and manually copy. With the Spotify playlist contents in your clipboard, just switch to the desktop Spotify client, select or create any playlist and directly paste (Edit > Paste or Cmd+V) the tracks in.
After generating any playlist, an additional 'CSV' option should appear. This appears as a reference to the right of Help in the navigation. If you've got a device that can support it you'll automatically download a csv file of the current results on screen.