A long, long time ago I've discovered the site pandora.com and its Music Genome Project. Back then I've used to listen to VGM almost exclusively and the site was a great way to expand my musical views. After all, VGM isn't a real genre and listening to certain music only because it appears on specific medium is rather stupid. The only problem with the site then was the lack of quantity in actual VGM. In fact, 20020220 music from Final Fantasy was the only album I could find... Still, starting with Nobuo Uematsu I could discover great instrumental melodic music there, such as the works of Omar Akram and Tim Janis. Unfortunately, shortly after that, due to retarded copyright laws, the site was IP blocked outside of US. Messing with proxy servers was too much pain in the arse, and I gave up on it...

Recently, thanks to Hola Unblocker, I've again gained access to the site... Oh my, what a mess it has become! There are tonnes of VGM now, but it's way too hard to sort through it. Nobuo Uematsu is a pretty bad starting point now. I've tried typing his name and got bombed by all sorts of VGM, no matter if it's actually similar to his or not. The problem now is it's rather hard to discover "music that sounds like VGM, but actually isn't" i.e. music that's just catchy, melodic and instrumental.

So, I've tried creating a Black Mages radio now... I don't know why on earth they list Lindsey Stirling, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Yasunori Mitsuda as similar artists. At first, while filtering out 20020220 music from Final Fantasy, Lindsey Stirling and Moka's The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time: Re-Arranged Album, all I was getting was The Advantage, Minibosses and, if I'm lucky, an occasional Joe Satriani track. Only after hours of fine tuning I've started discovering new instrumental rock music that shares similarities to the Black Mages and has nothing to do with VGM. Warmen and Vinnie Moore are awesome! But it still tries to sneak in some Halo, Skyrim, Metal Gear Solid, Zelda and Castlevania in... What a mess.

Anyway, I believe Pandora is one of the best music sites around and highly recommend to try it. Anyone else wants to share their experiences there?

2002 was a long time ago?

11 years

My friends sometimes use this (you can see it on Facebook updates). I'm not a fan, it limits how much you can skip (why?) and the recommendations I get are dubious at best. I get Disturbed or Slipknot suggested to me if I ask for Iron Maiden. No thanks. I can't comment on how well it works for VGM, though your experience sounds about what I would expect.

I prefer the "artists similar to" on last.fm for mainstream stuff. Then I Youtube or download/buy the stuff I'm interested in. I think I've lit up gohastings.com for about 500+ CD's over the past year when they have their sales (most CD's around $2, then tack on a 30%-40% off sale).

Look up Mike Oldfield too. He does melodic, instrumental, proggy stuff (although he does a lot of songs with vocals too). Same for Eric Johnson. And Yngwie Malmsteen (neo-classical master). Satriani is rock solid overall and I dig Moore (only heard two albums) Tony McAlpine I believe is mostly instrumental (again, only heard a few albums...check out Maximum Security). Uematsu is also a big fan of Deep Purple, I don't find the two THAT similar but I really like the melodic sense that Purple has to their music. Probably Jon Lord's organ reminds me slightly of Uematsu's Black Mages stuff, but on a whole other level. Machine Head and Perfect Strangers are my main two Purple albums.

Mainly so you can't use it to actually select what to listen to by skipping a whole bunch of things quickly. That would defeat their licensing agreements.