Also, I have been loving their ‘Radio’ function. I have found it amazingly useful to listen to music that is within the same mood or genre that I want. For example, listening to the ‘piano rock’ station gives me artists like Ben Folds Five, The Fray and Jack’s Mannequin among many other lesser known bands.   This level of control is amazing as I regularly go through times where I am tired of the radio because they have relatively limited playlists, which results in repetition. Being able to control your listening experience to get a station that matches exactly how I am feeling/thinking at the time is incredibly powerful.

It’s an excellent way to get introduced to new music, and is well worth $3 a month.  I will post an update on last.fm after I have used it a bit more.

What I particularly enjoy are the one liner descriptions that explain why the recommendation was made which allow you to understand the thought process behind the pick. This is in sharp contrast to other recommendation sites where you have no idea WHY the site picked the film was picked for you and exactly HOW the calculations were made.  For example, a match for The Departed is Serpico which is described as a gritter drama. Or a more offbeat match for Clerks is Slacker.   In addition to these straight up matches, there is also a feature called ‘Supermatch’ where you are able to adjust sliders to get the perfect match. For example if you want a movie that has more character depth, and less suspense than Mystic River,  Clerkdogs recommends Good Will Hunting and The Woodsman among others.

Overall, the recommendations are excellent, I have 2 small issues with the site:

1. It over-recommends films that share the same director.  To me, that seems like a very obvious place to start for looking for your next film to watch, especially for the big name directors. I  would like to see more of the deeper, well thought out recommendations for these films. For example the page for Bottle Rocket lists 4 other Wes Anderson films. The same issue has it me recently looking at films from directors like Kevin Smith and Martin Scorsese.
2. It tends to be rather slowly updated with new films. I realize that that is a byproduct of the manpower involved, but I have become some reliant on Clerkdog’s recommendations that I am often disappointed when I check the site when I get home from the theatre only to find nada.

Clerkdogs is an incredible site to find new and interesting films by picking out the best qualities of your favourite film. The site is still in beta and I look forward to the new features and additions they make to the site.