I discovered only yesterday about Pandora (yes, I know, I’m late; it’s being talked about since 2005), a really neat website that is able to play songs similar to those you suggest.
You suggest a song (or an artist); it figures out the characteristics of it (tone, rhythm, instruments, style) and plays automatically more like it. Later, you can tune the selection by approving or rejecting suggestions. It works really quite well. Well, they apparently have an army of 50 people analysis every single song with hundreds of criteria (!). A bit reminiscent of the beginnings of Yahoo!, though I doubt they will make it as big.
Give it a try with songs in the style of Brian Eno.
