Is "similar_artists" order significant?

[Igor Baltiyskiy]

Hello everyone,

the Echo Nest API documentation for /artist/similar, which is, as I presume, the documentation for that field in the MSD, does not state anything about the order of returned answers. Is the first entry in the returned list in any way more similar than the last?

With best regards,
Igor Baltiyskiy

[Thierry Bertin-Mahieux]

Hi Igor,
I believe it is the case (the first artist is "the most similar" according to The Echo Nest), and the artists were recorded in the MSD in the same order as they were returned by the EN API response.
But as you saw there's no good way to confirm that they come in any particular order.
You could email The Echo Nest directly to ask them or ask the question in their developer forum.
T.

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Thierry Bertin-Mahieux
Columbia University, NY
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[Igor Baltiyskiy]

Thanks for the quick response, Thierry!

Indeed, in this post they state that the results are ordered by similarity descending:  http://developer.echonest.com/forums/thread/346