Which website will give me accurate suggestions for music I will like based on other bands that I love?

Last.fm is good at that. Search for a band, find their page, and then click the “Similar artists” tab. For example, here are some similar artists for Dream Theater. You could also search by tags, e.g. Progressive, to find bands you may like given a certain genre. You can also create a profile, and have it scrobble (keep track of) the music you listen to, and it can give you personal recommendations, as well as find “neighbors” (Whose profiles you can look at, for other suggestions that you may like).
I’ve been using Last.fm since 2005 .

I thought iTunes recently started a service to copy this idea too?
and I think Grooveshark has some features similar to that, but I’m not familiar with the platform at all.

Thanks @Sarcasm. I’ve always used Hype Machine which I love & is easy to use. I’ve also used Grooveshark before. I’ve tried last.fm before and could never figure it out – it only plays clips of songs for me and I never had the patience to figure out why – maybe I’ll try it again though. It seems last.fm is the answer (although I’m sad to abandon hype machine because it’s always been good to me).

My favorite sites for new music is probably hypem and thesixtyone, but that’s not exactly what you’re looking for. That’s more like tag searching. You might like it though so check it out.

For sites similar to Pandora’s setup, definitely check out Songza and StumbleAudio. They’re pretty great.

I’m also interested to know if there is a website where you can type in your favourite bands and actual people will answer (since they would be alot more accurate than a computer).

@ftp901 Yeah, unfortunately last.fm isn’t a place to get free music (generally. they actually do have some free full-sized tracks, based on the artist), but it’s a good place to find out some bands to check out.

@Sarcasm so to clarify, you actually can’t play full songs on last.fm?? even if you have an account?? Every time I tried it that seemed to be the case (which is why I never stuck around). Isn’t it like listening to a radio station that only plays partial songs?? That seems frustrating.

@Sarcasm

Yeah, I don’t think any site can match lastfm’s similar artist list. The player is a pain though. Lastfm is better, I think, when you’ve got an account set up and you’ve got a month’s work of history on it and it matches you up with people who like your music. That’s where you find the good stuff.

okay, thanks everyone for the suggestions. Never heard of thesixtyone before which looks good.

@ftp901 There is a radio station feature too. But it works just like Pandora’s radio station really, put in an artist and it’ll start playing songs, all the control you have is “stop” and “next”. It’s not like you can pick and choose to listen to specific songs.

I have come across a lot of music I wouldn’t have otherwise by searching specific songs on youtube.

I subscribe to emusic and it has gotten a lot better over the years. They just added a lot of new artists to the mix. There’s a feature where people can make playlists with whatever theme they like. These lists pop up at the bottom of the screen when you are previewing tracks. (you only get a 30 second clip , not the whole song as in Napster. So that kind of sucks) If I find someone with the same musical tastes as I have I bookmark them as a friend. You don’t need to ask them and they don’t know you’re bookmarking their list. I find this works better than the “neighbor” feature where they give you some peoples names who have downloaded similar songs.

If you just leave the last.fm radio player on it will play you full song after full song all day long. It only plays clips when you search for bands and click on individual clips. Its primary function is as a radio station rather than as a jukebox, which is more the spotify and grooveshark model.

Have you checked out bandcamp?

For those of us who live in northern Europe, Spotify is king. Over 10 million tracks and counting.

http://www.spotify.com/int/about/features/related-artists/

Should be in the U.S. soon I imagine. It has a great “related artists” feature. Keep an eye out for it.

when i used pandora i did find some new music. Spotify has to do alot of work to get close to that.

Have you tried Fine Tune. They’ve changed their format since last I used it but I’ve found some interesting stuff by listening to the playlist of other users with tastes similar to mine.

Unlike Pandora which does not allow you to play specific songs, Fine Tune allows the creation of self created playlists with some limitations imposed.

They also have playlists of similar artists or bands put together by them. Check them out. You may fond that you like it.

ilike.com

I’ve also discovered a lot of bands through Yahoo Music.