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Discovering New Music?
captainclever asks: "As an avid music fan, I'm keen on discovering new artists that I will like. I have discovered a few by listening to internet radio, and writing down the names of songs that take my fancy. I had a play with The Digital Music Network, but it was very intrusive, full of adverts and only worked in Windows. I found it quite a hard topic to google for as there is so much stuff about music. Has anyone come accoss a decent system that can suggest some good artists to me based on my existing listening habbits?" Word of mouth, of course, is the tried and true method of promoting a new group. Are there weblogs that allow users to discuss music much like Slashdot discusses "news"?
Go to amazon and see what other people have bought based on a music selection. I've used this before and found some great new music.
Hey that's a great idea. Don't know if one exists either but then again... why don't you start one??
... shall I say it... SLASH?
You could even use
launch.yahoo.com
Used to be launch.com, but they got taken over by Yahoo. You need to go through a hoop or two to set it up well, but then you can get similar or 'recommended' songs.
It's not bad, there are a few ads, and the player is proprietary (and I can't vouch for Mac support), but it's been pretty good to me.
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
on SomaFM. Donate as it's 100% non-profit.
sulli
RTFJ.
www.shoutcast.com a project of Nullsoft lists many many internet radio stations you can listen to using either Winamp, Itunes, or XMMS. Basically anything that supports streaming mp3s. I have used this system to write down the names of many great artists, and for Winamp there is even a plugin to capture the stream if you like it. Although, that is probably illegal.
im a hippie
Best bet is to hit the clubs and try to talk to the DJs...I've been able to talk w/ Mixin Marc (chicago DJ for those who don't have a clue)..also ministryofsound.com also has good info if ur into that type of music...
...and was, of course, slaughtered by Big Audio. The mix of mp3 browsing by group coupled with a mini-forum on the same page was a great way to get word-of-mouth suggestions.
I often run across blogs that discuss music, but most of them are specialized (lots of metal). And even from what I find, I've found it increasingly difficult to read about what others think about a particular song. I mean, writing about music is like dancing to a book.
Sex - Find It
It may not be the answer you were looking for, but Tool covers just about everything I look for in music.
Of course if you were looking for other stuff that doesn't come from a record company then this place has a pretty decent search feature of downloadable mp3s.
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
If you want to discover new music, why do you want something to give you suggestions based on stuff you already know?
Ask your friends what they like... download random songs, etc. One of my favorite ways is to browse other users' files on file sharing programs. Who knows, you might find something completely new and unexpected.
That's how I discovered Apocalyptica - rock'n'roll on cellos - and Our Lady Peace.
DI is a great site with a variaty of music styles. I have found a number of "new to me" artists and DJs here.
The web site has comment sections for discussing the current play list. The streamed mp3 format works great in Windows, Solaris, Linux, and Mac.
I have discovered many good new artists using my favorite P2P software. In fact, 5 of the 7 CDs in my last order were artists I discovered that way. You just search for stuff you like, and then look through the collections of the people that have the music you like.
Of course, I bet this works a lot better for smaller artists than the huge ones, so YMMV
Some clever of interfacing with freecddb and possibly p2p and possibly a commercial entity (shop) would be very interesting.
So you select piano, and then go into artists etc.
Does anything like this exist?
No matter what city I go to, there's usually a college radio station.
I'm actually in college, and I volunteer at one, so I'm probably a little biased, but college radio is by far the most progressive of all radio.
Warp Records
Morr Music
12k | LINE
jack's bicycle is music to my ears
If you can stomach newswires being read by teenagers who barely have any grasp of proper English or public speaking skills, college radio is a great way to find stuff off the mainstream, particularly if it's a station with a good-sized audience, like WSOU from Seton Hall. For those outside the central-NJ area, they do web-cast.
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
CD Baby
I like their feature where you can search for artists similiar to popular artists you may like.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
Soulseek has done me well on the finding new music department. It's windows chiefly with some kind of broken mac and linux ports, but on the windows side, at least, allows you to browse users files and there's also a section in the userinfo for your favorite artists. Search for your favorite albums and browse the folders and download random crap.
Taste isn't a science, you can't break it down. Just experiment.
You should try this. Go to a site for a band you like, and see if their discussion boards have non-specific music forums.
For REM you have my site, murmurs.com which has a HUGE non-REM music section with very diverse tastes.
U2 has interference.com
Radiohead used to have greenplastic.com for boards, but I think ateaseweb is the best.
Most big fansites have something similar. You'd be surprised what you find.
Ethan
...radio?
It leans toward the indie-rock scene, but pitchfork media is a good source for up-and-coming music that tends to be rather good (imho).
> "I found it quite a hard topic to google for"
That's a trademark buddy. Even if you're referring to the Googleplex Star Thinker the word still deserves a capital G.
www.kexp.org
It's a station from the University of Washington and supported by the Experienced Music Project (Paul Allen's thing) that broadcasts on the internet (they stream in mp3 and a cd quality stream). They play every damn thing you can imagine. They archive all their shows and have live playlists so you can see who is being played at anytime. This station has introduced countless new bands and genre's of music to me.
You really will find new stuff listening here.
SBC Yahoo DSL told me that I might like salsa music. My wife didn't even know that I liked salsa music.
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
http://www.cdbaby.com
It's a small independent web-based distributor with a cool way for people to get hold of great music. They have lots samples and the money gets pretty darn directly to the artists (as opposed to those recording with the RIAA).
you should probably be shot.
I find the Internet is great for finding music that I already like, but nothing beats going out the bars, clubs, concerts or whatever venues you dig to discover something new.
Getting word of mouth from the live crowds, bands, and promotors certainly any systems you'll find online.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Try allmusic.com . Type in an artist you like and it will have other similiar artists and grouped by styles etc. It also has other info about their albums and bio.
I always found cdnow to be great at this. You tell it what albums you own, and it recommends other albums/bands that you might like. I have bought and loved many new CD's with this feature.
However now that CDNOW is part of Amazon some of this functionality is no loger there. I have not found the option to tell Amazon what CD's I already own. But just by viewing a bunch of CD's I have, Amazon was able to recommend new stuff to me.
http://artists.iuma.com/ and for an example here is a page where you can download the songs, etc. here
Amazon does a decent job of recommneding stuff that you might like based on other people's purchasing habits. One method that I've found useful is to create a wishlist of albums that you want or like (or even own). Amazon wil provide a list of other artists requested or purchased by people who requested or purchased the same thing you just did. Plus using the wishlist is an easy-to-access way to keep track of the stuff you want, but it is also pretty easy to get carried away. I have something like 250 books, music, and dvds on my list...
Also check out interviews with band members and check their homepages. They often talk about other bands they like or people who have influenced them. Depending on the music you like, certain members may play in a few different bands, or may sit in on concert sets of other bands. I listen to a lot of live music and many of the artists I like to collect I discovered by grabbing shows that an artist I already knew about sat in on.
Message boards and fan sites probably make decent ways to hear about people, as well as topical magazines (ie, GuitarPlayer, BassPlayer, maybe ComputerMusic, etc.).
Don't forget to ask other people at the shows you see what they listen to. CHeck out the local listings of bands in the area. Take the plunge and go see a show of an unknown that plays in a club that often hosts music you like.
Etc, etc, ad nauseam, and so on.
Etc, etc, ad nauseam, and so on and so forth.
meanwhile.songfight.net
Check out the archives and the discussion board.
Well, while looking for info about Massive Attack , I came upon this.. not sure if it really works, try it and see - gnod.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
back when audiogalaxy was around, they would take your shared library then match it with others and offer suggestions...
it was the best ever.
for jtechno i listen to www.gwm.com (mp3)
and i love mc chris... www.mcchris.com (mp3)
Of course, it's been a while since I used it, so your experience may vary.
--Mike--
If you want to find out the names of new artists, try gnoosic.com. Based on artists you enter, it will give you lists of artists you might like.
http://www.live365.com
Lots of theme-based radio stations, search engine and best of all: they pay the RIAA tax^H^H^Hfee. Those stations won't be shut down by the Evil Powers that Be.
I've discovered quite some bands I happened to like.
http://baptisi.com/artists/tbr/
I think the music just speaks for itself, duuuude
The All Music Guide is definitely a good start to find new music. Even the most obscure releases are usually reviewed if they're somewhat interesting. They also show the hilights songs for almost every albums, allowing users to easily retrieve a few good songs from p2p application in order to find out if the cd is worth buying.
:).
But their most useful feature is the way you can easily find similar artists, genre, and easily browse through them.
A must have site for your bookmark
At the Borders near me they have a setup with a pair of headphones and an infrared bar code scanner. You can pick any CD off the shelf, scan it, and can then listen to a minute or so of any track. I believe the system imposes a very faint intermittent beep over the audio, too, for obvious reasons--I couldn't hear it on all tracks.
It made for a very pleasant and educational half hour of music browsing for me (annoying, though, that about 2/3 of the stations were mal/nonfunctioning).
It's gnod.
From the page:
Gnod is a self-adapting system that learns about the outer world by asking its visitors what they like and what they don't like. In this instance of gnod all is about music. Gnod is kind of a search engine for music you don't know about. It will ask you what music you like and then think about what you might like too. When I set gnod online its database was completely empty. Now it contains thousands of bands and quite some knowledge about who likes what. And gnod learns more every day. Enjoy :o)
allmusic.com
reviews, guides, discographies, 'sounds similar to', etc etc
rivaled only by amazon.com
I hear that there are these things called clubs. From what I understand lots of local performer play music there. If you live in a big town, they probably clubs that play just one type of music, even one type that you maybe interested in. Some of the people even sell cds of their work or let you record it for FREE.
:(
But I have only heard of these things cause I am chained to this computer
Discovering New Music?? More like CELDA!
you make new music!
or...er...
This doesn't help you at all but I've always wished that people would fill out the "description" field of mp3's they trade on p2p services like KaZaA with suggestions of similiar artists. After all, there's not much need for a description field for an mp3 file anyhow -- it's just free space to write something. I'd personally love it if people would take the time to write something along the lines of "Very similiar in style to Band1, Band2 and Band3" or Song1, Song2, etc.
What I've resorted to is using Amazon.com to look at what other bands could be similiar and then search KaZaA and seeing for myself. You know how Amazon lists "people who bought this item also bought albums by Artist1, Artist2, etc.", right? Of course, this method wouldn't work for artists so obscure that amazon doesn't feature them.
I'm interested to see what other suggestions people come up with here. But I think filling out those description fields for mp3s on p2p services would really help a lot.
GMD
watch this
Gnoosic http://www.gnoosic.com offers a service where you input three of your favorite artists and it then refers you to a new artist whom you then state whether you like or dislike. Using your input and the input of others before you it will give you a bunch of new artists to check out...
Thanks for reminding me that iuma.com got sold out. Before napster, mp3, and all that crap, Internet Underground Music Archive was the ultimate resource for finding independent music online.
But that was so long ago that, at that time, ubl.com was actually useful too.
Scott
I find a lot of music on IUMA and the Synthesis. Neither have an abundance of adverts. As for a system of reccomendation or news/discussion I can't be of much help. Maybe you should start something like that!
My site has an artist of the month section but we just started it a few months ago so there isn't much there yet.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
There are quite a few online "labels" that just release in mp3 format. Often times, the anarchist side of corporate folk.
:> Deathbomb Arc
I recommend:
Subverseco
Illmatic Vibes
and strangely enough, my own...
Have fun, all thsoe sites have links galore to more music.
we're just marketing. marketing our bad attitudes.
As /. readers familiar with the writings of Ronald Barthes will know, that whenever we read a book, or watch a movie, or listen to some music we are engaging in a discourse. Sometimes this process is obvious, for example when watching a didactic or political TV program.
At other times it is more insidious such as the subtle brainwashing and psychological manipulation of 'calming' elevator music. As we consume the media, we interpret it and make our own mark upon it, in much the same way as an animal marks its territory by means of urination.
In this post, I will be discussing the signifiers and iconography of 'Spinning Around' by the diminutive pop diva Kylie Minouge, and explaining how a seemingly innocuous piece of music can carry a deeper meaning which is perhaps far less paletable than the happy-go-lucky music would suggest. One which is quite frankly sickening and disgusting.
Kylie Minogue.
Although few unsophistcated American music fans have heard of her, Australia's most famous export to date has been in the limelight now for over ten years. Her story is one of continual re-invention, of highs and lows. From fresh-faced tomboy in a highly respected tv drama, to bubblegum pop princess, to raunchy sex-symbol to gay icon, Kylie changes her image more often that some people change their underwear, and it seems that her fans simply cannot get enough of her
The thing about Kylie is that her seemingly innocent 'bad-but-not-too-bad girl' image appears to cover a covert agenda.
That agenda is the liberalist one of 'normalizing' heterosexual anal sex. I won't go into the details of why the liberals want to promote buggery. Their fixation with making sodomy acceptable and their reasons for doing so are well documented elsewhere. I will simply provide some uncontrovertable semiotic evidence to show that Kylie is (either wittingly or unwittingly) contributing to this highly controversial and questionable cause.
Spinning Around - Kylie Minogue
I'm spinning around
Move outta my way
I know you're feeling me
'Cos you like it like this
The signs here are very clear. "Spinning around" refers to the act of turning over onto all fours, the conventional position for reciving an act of anal stimulation. "Move out of my way" - She does not care about disapproval from the community at large in effect this is a big 'mind your own business' comment. "you like it like this" - like what exactly ? Kylie does not spell it out explicitly, but the semiotic intent is clear. "like this" referrs to 'anal' rather than vaginal. So we can see from the chorus, this song is heavily promoting an "analist" agenda.
I'm breaking it down
I'm not the same
I know you're feeling me
'Cos you like it like this
"breaking it down" - this refers to the breaking of taboos. In this case the taboo of anal sex. Kylie is breaking down the taboo in order to promote an analist outlook on life. "I'm not the same" - well obviously she is 'not the same' as the large percentage of the population who find the act of anal sex perverse, disgusting and dangerously depraved. This line almost revels in the perversion, its almost as if Kylie is saying a big 'fuck you' to the vast majority of normal people who would find this behaviour extremely distasteful.
Traded in some sorrow
For some joy that I borrowed
From back in the day
Threw away my old clothes
Got myself a better wardrobe
I got something to say
I'm through with the past
Ain't no point in looking back
The future will be
And did I forget to mention
That I found a new direction
And it leads back to me, yeah
Some more signs here "joy that I borrowed". Kylie has borrowed her sexual technique from the gay community amongst whom she enjoys a large following . "found a new direction" - well that is another way of saying that conventional heterosexual vaginal intercourse is no longer enough, the new direction Kylie appears to have found is an anal one.
I'm spinning around
Move outta my way
I know you're feeling me
'Cos you like it like this
I'm breaking it down
I'm not the same
I know you're feeling me
'Cos you like it like this
The mistakes I've made
Have given me the strength
To really believe
That no matter how I take it
There's no way I'm gonna fake it
'Cos it's gotta be real
I've got nothing left to hide
No reason left to fight
'Cos the truth's given me
A new freedom inside
Getting rid of my desire
Do you like what you see
"no matter how I take it" - anally or vaginally. "no way I'm gonna fake it" - The symbolism here is not even very well hidden. The song describes how the singer is not going to fake an orgasm, presumably this means that if she cannot obtain satisfaction from conventional clitoral stimulation, then she will have to resort to unnatural anal activities in order to reach a climax. A clear validation of the liberal-analist agenda.
"Do you like what you see" - well clearly we do. Kylie's attraction is one of her key selling points. Indeed many people would probably not have heard of Kylie were it not for her provocative videos in which she prances around waving her backside in our faces as if to say "look, here is my back door, please make tender passionate love to me through it".
I won't bother with the rest of the song, its all pretty much the same, with thinly veiled references to sodomy all over the place, set to a pulsating and thumping disco beat.
The problem seems to be endemic in pop music. We have songs encouraging promiscuity, masturbation, fornication and all perversions known to man played continuously on radio and TV. Anything goes it would seem, except normal heterosexual intercourse between two married partners in the missionary position.
Our children are being indoctrinated with the liberal-analist mindset as part of the growing battle to undermine family values, indeed research has shown that by the time a child is 16 he/she will have heard over 70000 veiled references to the act of anal copulation, from pop music alone.
It is not clear what can be done about this, if anything. The very nature of the sneaky techniques of the liberals is that by the time we normal people realise what the true meaning of the song is, our children are running around happily singing about adult topics which are best saved for the marital bed.
This song by Kylie is but one example of this creeping phenomenon. I am sure that any of you out there who regularly listen to 'Top40' radio stations could give hundreds of others.
Kylie is a very talented singer and songwriter as witnessed by her best album yet, recorded with the help of James Dean Bradfield of the Manic Street Preachers. However if she continues to promote anal sex in this subversive and secretive way, she will soon be added to my ever-growing list of 'artists to be avoided' along with the likes of the thong-twanging Sisqo the extra-marital-affair promoting Shaggy and the simply annoying beyond belief So Solid Crew.
Did you say "Outside"? Another heretic!! Burn him!!!
True warriors use the Klingon Google
'habbits' Teach the slashdotters to spell. Famine, war, boy bands... all of them are bearable... I beg you Lord!
KEXP in Seattle has a great webcast, in various formats including MP3 and a great website with playlists that update constantly as the songs play plus you can get them emailed to you. www.kexp.org
www.allmusic.com
duh
Given some of the crap tastes my friends have, that's not always a good method though. For every great band a friend has introduced me too, they've tried to get into a crap one.
I'm currently getting into Japanese music, and that's REALLY hard to find decent recommendations for.
I've got a 25 GB MP3 collection, all ripped from my own CDs. Still, even with that much music, I get bored. I've fallen in love with Live365. Has a downloadable Windows streaming client, or works seamlessly with any number of MP3 players (including XMMS). For research, AMG is top freaking notch. I've got a loooong wish list from that site. No one has every detail about every artist who ever was, but these guys have information on some of the most obscure artists I could think of and things about your favorite artists that you may not have known.
Allmusic.com
They have many reviews, essays and maps of how a style of music came to be. I enjoy being able to look up a song and hunt down what album it was on. They seem to be a one stop answer for most question on music.
They also have sister sites that are for Games and Movies.
Plus I like to support a company in home state.
CaptAngryPants aka Eric
http://rustmedia.tv
Lots of independent record labels have websites like mine http://www.sonictrout.com/bands
CD Baby is a site that sells independent music. They have a "Sounds Like" search that you can put a famous artist into and it will come up with artists that you might like.
Actually, before AudioGalaxy got sued into ashes, they had a great feature in their search mechanism that when you searched for an artist or title, it would show what other people who searched for that title had also search for.
I really like the drum n bass duo Lamb and thanks to this feature at audio galaxy I was introduced to the Sneaker Pimps and Hooverphonic.
Err, I mean I rushed right out to my local national chain music store and purchased the CDs.
You kind of get this when you browse through Amazon.com's "other people purchased" links.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
on Google for web radio stations and college radio stations. If you want new music: that's where it's at.
A crap load of new music everyday...
http://www.besonic.com/ does this
besonic is a site mostly populated by obscure artists, a heap of them electronic music makers, too. if you sign up for a listening account with them, they'll email you once a week (or something?) with tracks and artists they think you'll like based on how many tracks in different genres you've listened to. it's not a very intelligent system, but it kind of fits what is being asked about.
of course, sites like besonic (and the original big one, mp3.com) are dying off. the most promising new one is electronicscene.com. any electronic musician can sign up to have their tracks on electronicscene. there are ample links between genre pages and artist pages so that if you find one artist or genre you like, you can easily find another similar one... or lists of the artists and genres that influenced them. provided you like electronic music, it's an excellent place for finding new stuff.
just check it out, i need not say more.
www.allmusic.com
There used to be a site that let you enter a list of groups you like, and it listed more spiraling out (inner being most like your sound) - and in one direction was music more in the mainstream but with similar sound, and the other direction spiraled out list of bands not so well known.
I think it was called Firefly. unfortunatly, the site is no longer.
However, here is a very comprehensive site that has a similar feature (but only for one particular band at a time):
http://www.allmusic.com/
Find a band, then check the "Similar/Related" tab.
their website is http://www.thewire.co.uk/
it might be somewhat like this one:
www.staticbeats.com
If you want to hear some unique sounds, check out Overclocked Remix. This is a growing community of enthusiasts who remix original game soundtracks, sometimes creating stuff far better then the original. They have many varieties of remixes that would fall under the categories of techno, industrial, and jazz. Tons of talent there, definately worth checking out.
like this. it's a really cool engine somebody built that takes information on what you like and suggests other bands. definitely click the "related bands" link under the suggested band it pops out. i realize that this is probably dooming somebody's server to a firey death, but maybe go back in a week or so. ;-) take what it suggests and pop over to shoutcast to look for stations streaming those (sorts of) bands. if you like what you hear, go to your local independent CD shop and buy it, making sure to tell them "yeah, I heard this music online from an mp3 station and now i want to buy it from you". most of the record store owners I know think that mp3s are satan incarnate, helping them see the benefits of fluid, low/no-barrier music preview and discovery would be a good thing long term...
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
There's no such thing as an open community with taste. Too many people are idiots. If you've got a group of people with taste, but they're out in the open on the internet, you're guaranteed to attract a million morons with no capacity for critical thought whatsoever. This is why Amazon saw that I ordered Tangent 2002 - Disco Nouveau, and recommended Moby. People are dumb.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
alt.music.whateveryouwant
Try google's groups.
-Berj
As a music writer, I find the All Music Guide to be indispensable. Ignore the "similar/related" albums section (on pages about albums, not about bands); it appears to be randomly generated. However, a lot of artist pages (the better known ones at least) have a "related artists" section and those are often at least in the ballpark. Search for someone you like at AMG, get yourself a good p2p client, and then download a song by each of the "related artists" from your AMG search.
If you're into obscure stuff and have a hard time finding it on a p2p, try to figure out what label they're on and then check the label's site... a lot of labels have sample mp3s by their artists these days. There are also scads of mailing lists out there devoted to specific genres. Oh, and Pitchfork is another good music site.
Two years ago, I just knew about Steely Dan. By browing this site's "similar artists" and "worked with" links for them, I found out about a lot of jazz/fusion acts out there!
Nothing is so smiple that it can't get screwed up.
They have so many genres to explore. Give it a try, and it sounds PERFECT. The record companies should be paying these guys for all the free advertising shoutcast streamers are doing. I buy so many CDs from hearing songs I like on there.
spinner.com has a pretty amazing variety of music. I would go there first. Also, participate on messageboards for your favourite artists, other fans will give you ideas of what's cool and new, etc.
This post was made by I, Mojo Trolljo, for you to read that was written by I who is Mojo Trolljo!
Fans of singer Happy Rhodes long ago started talking about other musicians on their mailing list Ecto, much like other music lists. These conversations were officially declared "on-topic", and a rich cross-pollenation began.
Eventually, someone decided to put some common musical recommendations and observations up on a web site, and the Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music was born. If you agree with some of the basic tastes of the listmembers, you'll find an amazing database of interesting new musicians, with many comparisons and cross-references.
This site is pretty cool:
http://www.freeburnguide.com
It lists free download links in CD blocks for easy burning.
In general, I find using any of these sites, including and especially MP3.com, to find decent music you haven't heard elsewhere is a ton of work. I continue to contend that, when someone comes up with a decent business model, services which suggest new music will make more money than companies which sell music. I have yet to see one that I think actually works. This is a difficult task: music is an intensely personal decision and relying on suggestions of others takes trust. I really wonder what ever happend to firefly, and the host of other sites that purported to use neural networks to suggest music based on you rating stuff you know you liked. I think these agent based approaches are more likely to succeed than something like a web log or zine.
"If you are an idealist it doesn't matter what you do or what goes on around you, because it isn't real anyway."-R.P.W.
Get out of the house and go to shows! Pick up a copy of the "alternative" newspaper in your town, see what's going on, and hit the clubs. When you find bands you like, buy their CDs, talk to them about what music they like, check out their websites, and take it from there. One thing will lead to another, and another, and before you know it you'll be plugged into another whole scene you never knew existed.
Who knows, you might even make some friends and meet some girls.
If you're into hip-hop, I encourage you to take the trouple to check out both Dragon Ash and Lamp Eye, two Japanese artists. As far as online music *ahem* communities go, the best one for finding new music is Soulseek (www.slsk.org), due to its napster-esque chat rooms.
but now it's gone. nothing else is quite the same. damn RIAA
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
from zines to msg boards to slashdot similar thing to online stores to even online encyclopedias... there's a variety of information sources...here's just a few of the ones i know.
the fake matador bb
i love music
aquarius records
pitchfork
pataphysics research lab
mideheaven mailorder
all music guide
m.
But shoutcast's website has a search engine to classify the channels by bitrate or genre or whatever ... might be something worth checking out. Plus you pick the software you want to use, and platform.
And if you get bored a shoutcast server is always fun to play with, possibly set your own up.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
For basic help with "similar artist" type stuff, I'd recommend AMG's All Music Guide. I've spent hours randomly browsing their Music Styles section and cross referencing artists I like. Their search engine is pretty crummy and they do occasionally hit their simultanious user quota but on the whole, this is where I go for artist and album information and exploration.
Global Pop Conspiracy I always hear something new and cool (or old and cool), or an band I'd totally forgotten about.
It seems like you are looking for a Recommender System. Netperceptions Here is a company that builds recommender systems. You could find out from them if they have built music recommendations systems for clients. http://movielens.umn.edu/ is a recommender system for movies. You could try it out to gauge the performance of the recommender system. If you don't want to go through all the trouble, Amazon is perhaps the only free and reliable recommender system for music you could get !
A google search for "music recommendations" turned up some interesting online tools to find music you might like.
ListenUp
Emergent Music
The Library Blog
Otherwise I recommend using google to search for bands that you do like, browse through the listings and you're sure to turn up something you might like. Then search for it on P2P, and if you like it, buy it. Simple.
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/
Let's say you like Phish's "Billy Breathes" CD. Now, you can go search for that on Amazon.com, and if you scroll down a little bit, you can see:
Customers who bought this title also bought:
* A Picture of Nectar ~ Phish
* Lawn Boy ~ Phish
* Rift ~ Phish
* Junta ~ Phish
* The Story of the Ghost ~ Phish
Granted, this is only going to work for commercial releases, and may only give you results for the same artist, but it's a good way to expand your web of music. It's also a good way to abuse Amazon.com by not paying for anything from them and still gaining benefit from their site.
I just saw this On edgey's page:
i'll be removing my tracks from online... albeit no cost to those that download, it was a source of income for myself, and such the case, i offered my music free of charge for download to anyone that wanted. The lack of commercial (or independent) releases i've had over the years, was justified by the fact that i still maintained an income off my music, from MP3.com... a goal i think every musician wishes to achieve (unless your one of those that likes to point fingers and call someone a sell-out for wanting to be heard and monetarily successful with their craft).
so needless to say... all my tracks will be removed from online, i can't afford the $20.00 a month to continue their premium artist service, i.e., i can't pay for people to listen to my music...
so, get your downloads before they're gone...
All artists on MP3.com will have to reduce their pages to a maximum of 3 tracks as of January 15th, or PAY for their once free-offered service.
quoted from mp3.com:
"P4P Promotion Will be Discontinued
It's our goal to offer Premium Artists the best service for their money and tools that benefit all members. But this was getting more difficult given the enormous accounting, engineering, research and fulfillment costs that went into both the P4P promotion and regrettably, the monitoring of individuals gaming the system. We have thus decided to discontinue the P4P promotion on January 15.
Artist Cash Program Will be Discontinued
Accounting and engineering resource issues associated with the P4P promotion apply also to the Artist Cash program. This has made it necessary for us to discontinue one of our more convenient Artist programs. If you are currently paying for any subscriptions with Artist Cash, please go to your My Account to easily create an alternate payment method. "
Formerly spinner.com
I use it on windows.
Using a realplayer based client, their "stations" have few adverts, include a lot of information about songs (hyperlinks take you to artist information).
Epitonic features legal tracks from signed bands, with a comprehensive set of "suggestions" and "similar atists".
I've found a lot of good stuff through them, but Epitonic is limited to a few specific genres: indie, electronic, jazz, and other progressive type styles.
-cbare
I've got two ways that I do this:
1. Amazon (I preferred CD-NOW, but now everything is Amazon). Enter in your favorites, and it'll make suggestions based on what other people buy who like music similar to you. Works very well.
2. Launch.com. It's Yahoo now, but Yahoo didn't change the basics... it's still the best streaming radio out there. You continually tweak what songs/artists/albums/genres that you like for your own radio station, and you can also set how much "other music" is inserted into your radio station. That "other music" that's inserted is music that other people with tastes similar to yours also like. Even better than the Amazon thing, since you get to hear the music right away without actively doing anything. Also, I like Yahoo a smidgen more than I like Amazon.
This is a great magazine. They focus on Jazz, all types of Electronic (from drum and bass, techno, to the most experimental noise) all sorts of rock/indie stuff, and everything outside of these categories, stuff I'm not really describing well. Definitely check it out.
LP side length rock songs? No thanks.
I'm sure this has been said by now but try Furthur. It is a P2P program (written in Java) where you can download legal music (mostly live concert recordings) from hundreds of bands. Pick a random one, download it and see if you like them. There is also a chat room in Furthur where you can discuss the music.
http://www.askthevoid.com
Electrogarden has a ton of sample music, discussion forums, and band links if you like electronic music.
I've got a $9.99/month subscription to Emusic.com which I have been enjoying immensely. Although they don't have everything, like Napster or Audio Galaxy's glory days, they do have a surprisingly deep catalog and I've found a lot of really good stuff in their archives.
I also like the fact that I can get clean, nicely labelled, high-quality MP3s and don't have to deal with all the cruft and duplication of gnutella clients. I used to use LimeWire back in the day but found that the program was too heavyweight for my computer and it seriously burdened my computer when it was running.
Good luck finding some music. God knows the music industry isn't making it easier these days.
Furthur is a LEGAL P2P program that allows you to download concerts from bands who allow taping. You can download concerts in MP3 and and loseless SHN format. There are many bands you will recognize and a lot you 've never heard before. There are a lot of jambands such as Phish, The Grateful Dead, but there are rap, metal, jazz, and grunge groups on there as well. Best of all, its written in Java so it will run on just about any platform.
can be good, but is too inconsistent to recommend to everyone.
If you want to listen on the internet, look out for Triple J No ads, excellent non-patronising news/ features. Completely uncensored. I only wish the UK had something like it.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
You can visit Soul City Cafe. They profile new and up coming artists and bands.
Now and again, I find All music guide and their "related artists" categories to be quite useful for this purpose.
go to a used music store, poke through there stuff, ask the people who work there.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
www.theprp.com is a excellent site that constantly updates with news from the indie/rock/hardcore/emo/etc scene...
www.modernfix.com is cool too, but it's more of a site for the print magazine.
One of the granddaddies of National Public Radio, KCRW is based in Santa Monica. We used to get it using creative tuning tactics while at UCSB. Their programming like Morning Becomes Ecclectic is full of in-depth artist interviews, new music, and interesting archives.
They also used to have some great evening programs that tended to vary. It was very much like the college radio that the original poster was talking about, but KCSB wasn't quite up to the usual task of college radio when I was at UCSB. I used to listen to KSPB up in Santa Cruz. It was a progressive radio station at Robert Louis Stevenson High in Pebble Beach. That's the first time I heard the Muffs, the Cure, Smiths, NIN, Strawberry Zotz, Sisters of Mercy, Front 242 etc.
KCRW has REALLY extensive archives. The Beck shows are great. He never plays anything from an album. Also, they used to play Joe Frank. The archives still exist there. Dang cool.
TTFN
Somafm Try Groove Salad, Secret Agent or Drone Zone.
Shoutcast is a great source of streaming music.
My personal favorite radio station is Proton Radio. Extremly reliable, and great stuff.
1) Amazon.com : If you haven't tried Amazon.com lately, their recommendations are very smart. They can tell you why they think you would like the recommended products, and their recommendations respond well to new ratings. I also love having a selection of 100+ reviews for each album.. after reading a few of them, you usually can tell whether or not the album's for you.
:)
2) AllMusic.com : Excellent reviews of albums. If they rate something five stars, chances are you'll like it. I guess this is more of a reference site, but it's the ultimate reference
3) Rateyourmusic.com : You archive your cd collection by rating your albums, then you get amazon-style recommendations. It has more of a community focus than amazon or other sites (message boards, private messages, etc) so it's easy to get direct recommendations from other users.
4) Emergentmusic.com : Basically, someone writes a recommendation, and everyone else gets in on it, making corrections, adding new information, and making it better. By the end of the process, you have a well-written recommendation that gives you all the information needed to decide whether or not you like the artist/album.
Go here. Not only do they have a lot of interesting shows for various styles of music you might not be familiar with from rockabilly to reggae, they stream in three different formats, they have a playlist page that's updated in real-time, and they keep two weeks' worth of archives of all their broadcasts.
Dear Avid Fan: inherit my mantle
and surpass my achievements.
Mementoes for you at Baltimore
Central. Left luggage 72683.
shoutcast search for sk123
as a music geek i can genuinely say... gnod rocks!
go!
m.
Live365 is working well for me, too. The original poster doesn't say what he is looking for, but I've found several good stations that play bands I've only heard of, and many I've never heard of, in many different genres I'm reasonably familiar with (progressive rock, ska, new wave of British heavy metal). It works on OS X as well as Windows, straight from IE or Mozilla. No software install required. There's also a wishlist feature, so you can keep track of stuff you want to hunt down later.
I searched the station playlists for Molly Hatchet and came up with a couple good Southern rock stations and learned about a bunch of bands. Also looked for Witchfinder General and learned about Armored Saint, Witchfynde, etc.
And it never hurts to look interesting stuff up in AMG. It's a great way to find out what else went on in whatever musical movements you are interested in.
Also, look for a band you like on mp3.com and see if anyone who claims to be like them is to your taste. I found some gothic rock I really like that way.
you can type in an artist that you already like in allmusic.com or hell, probably cdnow.com or amazon.com and just look at the related artists. or "people who bought this, also bought this"
You want new music? And Some Old stuff you've probably never heard - just listen to the John Peel show from bbc radio 1 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1
;-)
Trust me - once you get into him you'll never look back. Actually R1 has quite a few good interesting evening shows to check out it's well worth your time.
Or if you live in San Francisco you could just come to some of my DJ gigs and listen to what I play
You might try KEXP. Commercial free independent radio. The BEST radio station on earth. They stream in all the formats, including uncompressed CD quality. They are also really good at playing requests. Then there are the online playlists. Then there are the two weeks worth of archived sets.
Try it, you will like it.
ldb
We have been working on a ground breaking music discovery technology called MusicMagic... which does what captainclever is asking.
You can read more about MusicMagic in "Moving Linux into Commercial Applications" which discusses the use of Linux for MusicMagic.
Serious business inquiries can be emailed to JUSTinquiry@NOpredixisSPAM.com.
--beachcomber
I think it is plain to see that certain people tend to like certain genres. Sure, some of us are downright ecclectic -- I like Aphex Twin, Bjork, T.A.T.U., Smiths, Squarepusher, Busta Rhymes, Tom Waits, De La Soul, Guster, etc, etc -- but those who like opera, for example, are probably good sources on where you can find more of the same.
So if you're not averse to using file-sharing programs such as Gnutella et al, I would suggest looking for songs you already like and instead of downloading the songs you find (or in addition to), browsing the files of the people who have those songs. This way you can make as big a leap as you want.
Since this is human-based I think you'll find similar tastes that jump genres, something that even the most clever algorithm is likely to miss, and will do precisely what you're seeking; introduction to new sounds.
Also, you might consider stuff like MP3.com. I've found a lot of stuff that is unknown only for lack (or refusal) of a record deal.
My
Limekiller
BBC hosts some great radio using Real Audio. For example BBC Radio 6 is a popular format for purchase through cable lines in the UK. On the net you can get access to the excellent Brit playlists that the DJs come up with. Definitely not the sort of stuff you hear in the States.
Where the Music Matters
Try my discogs.com they always ive good suggestions. the only problem is they specialize in electronica.
peace j
Garageband.com has great selections of independent bands. There's a big mixture of quality on the site, but you can find some of the best stuff in the charts there, and check the playlists recommended by bands you like.
They also have a ridiculously cheap subscription service that allows you to get CDs of some of the best tracks on the site on a monthly basis.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Aside from "random within a genre" I like to use the Liner Notes from my existing CD collection.
I'll follow the intricate web of artists involved in albums that I enjoy particularly well. By reading the liner notes, I can pick out musicians that I enjoy, and patterns start to come out. So...
Frank Zappa leads to Terry Bozzio leads to Jeff Beck
Peter Gabriel leads to Tony Levin leads to Bozzio/Levin/Stevens (note tie-in to Bozzio)
I would say that Billy Idol leads to Stevens, but that would imply I like Billy Idol.
Joni Mitchel leads to Pat Metheney and that tangent, or Jaco Pastorius and that tangent
Frank Zappa leads to Warren Cuccurulo leads to Duran Dur.... forget that one....
While the above examples are fairly jazz and/or fusion related, I could go in many different directions from the various CD's in my collection. It is a great way to expand your horizons and get a better understanding of who is good and bad out there.
My two cents...
When it comes to new music, John Peel is The Man. Check him out on BBC Radio One.
SoulSeek - Windows, Mac & Linux, linux doesn't work perfectly but it's usable.
Ninjatune's Forum - My choice label's forum, nice place to post "got any tunes for me to listen to?" because you're sure to get a lot of good music.
Personally, I prefer to fire up soulseek, hop in a chat room, sort the userlist by speed, and start at the top (browsing people's files). I usually keep it to one album per person, and I've noticed that the chat room names actually DO have a lot to do with what type of music you'll find inside.
musicaltaste.com aims at this, somewhat. However, it is a pretty small community so far. It allows you to suggest particular songs to others and read other song reviews.
www.wfmu.org
91.1 in the NYC area
Free form radio at it's best.
Interviews are the primary source of ideas that I have been using for a long time to find out about different music. Check out various magazines and/or web sites to find interviews with your favorite artists. Most musicians love talking about their early influences and what their current tastes are. I've found the best sources to be magazines aimed at other musicians, like "Guitar Player" (Not like "Rolling Stone").
Great college radio station
http://www.kcrw.com/music/
Electronic music
http://music.hyperreal.org/
Fax records
http://music.hyperreal.org/labels/fax/
Ear Rational
http://www.ear-rational.com/
Too bad Soulseek isn't around anymore.
I know it has been mentioned, but it seems to me to be worth mentioning again. Amazon, in my experience has been wonderful at suggesting music to me. Granted, I usually already own what they are suggesting, but I could tell them that and they'd tell me some more.
I'm a huge fan of independent and college radio stations, but even then, most of these stations are "programmed" by genre, and I would rather listen to a station that is completely unpredictable, where you might hear the Dead Kennedys followed by Jurassic 5, followed by Johnny Cash, etc. IOW, true "Freeform Radio". KEXP radio in Seattle, I have found, is one of the best freeform stations in the world. They even have an UNCOMPRESSED stream of their broadcast available (sure, it's Windows Media format, but it's still a neat idea), in addition to WMP, MP3 and RealAudio streams. Also dig the real-time playlist!. This is a great way to discover and document cool music that you've never heard before.
In my experience, the best is always found by looking for it for yourself. Word of mouth and IRC are the best, no "system" is as best as finding it for yourself and experiencing it. To that end, I often just google for websites and bands (I listen to mostly punk, but there are always bands out there that I find interesting.)
If you want good music, do searches for sites by guys who truely love their music (like at http://www.punkrocks.net) who do reviews, or google for top 20 lists. Search mp3.com for all those unknown bands. Often a bunch are crappy garage artists, but out there too, is alot of new fresh perspective that I've found to be enlightening. Look for the new stuff, not corprate BS, out there by the people who REALLY love their work. Google, talk to fellas, and don't be afraid to experience new music. If all fails, build your own top 20 lists that YOU like. And don't forget all your local talent; if you really want to find music, check out all those clubs and scences around your town; you might be surprised by the fresh talent that is out there. And for heaven's sake, turn off MTV! They don't show music anyways anymore.
I support publik eduscatation!
Interesting that not many /.ers seem to pay attention to the technology of this question - how to discover new music. Some companies have very interesting takes on the statistical/technological aspect to this question and beyond. There's a very interesting whitepaper at musicmatch.com -- completely aside from their MP3 jukebox software -- that talks about relations in the musical universe;
/ personalization_whitepaper_021106.pdf
http://www.musicmatch.com/info/company/press/docs
You can see the results in their "Guide" at
http://www.mmguide.musicmatch.com/match/best.cgi
You can type in artists and albums and see what their "recommendation engine" comes up with.
There's no ONE way to discover new things. Nothing replaces going out and listening to new things, having friends, etc. but this is an interesting approach to augment that and to start new discussions.
nonsig. unsig. desig.
Despite audiogalxy being sued, it is still a great tool for finding new bands. It displays similar artists to the ones being searched for, and it has a featured artists section where good independent band's music is reviewed and partially downloadable. This is the best place I've found on the web to find excellent new non-mainstream bands
New reviews and news: Pitchfork
Good, but specialised reviews: Absorb and Urban Smarts
Also, check out what label releases your favourite artists, and visit their site to check out other artists/albums they've released. This doesn't work for EMI or Virgin, but if you like Aphex Twin, try other Warp Records artists (or Rephlex). If you're partial to Pavement try other Matador artists, etc etc etc.
http://labs.google.com/sets
http://www.somethingpositive.net Funny + bitter = comedy gold
Have you ever considered getting up from your computer going outside, maybe even with 'other people' and watching a live band?
Joking aside, most cities of any size will have a vibrant live band scene where you can pick up on what is going on and hopefully once in a while find and band that you'll like and maybe even the big thing.
But having said that audiogalaxy probably taught me more about the wide variety of music out there than a hundred concerts ever would.
Luke P - Bristol - UK
At work I listen a lot to various streams from Digitally Imported. When I hear a song I like I write it down. Also, they provide a forum where you can discuss tunes you like with other listeners.
The forum is synched with the song that is playing. If you go the the DI webpage, the current song is listed there, and a link takes you to a forum for that particular song. A lot of the time you will find users who post "If you like this song, you'd like X..." I find it is a great way of finding out about new artists.
use amazons people who bought this cd also bought... you can also enter & rate some cds (or other products, of course), and it uses that to profile you and make suggestions. Also interesting what people who like your music read or wear :-)
Fleur de Sel
Try Emusic.com. I've found many new artists at a very reasonable price.
basically a station is someone setting up a list of songs they like on mp3.com and giving it a fancy little mp3.com hosted webpage. for example look in 'alternative' then click on 'stations' then click on 'save me from tears'. there is a little 'station' that is basically a list of a bunch of artists that the 'station owner' likes, and maybe some updates now and then about new bands he/she has seen, etc.
its not that bad.
I've learned a huge amount about new music in the last 18 months since joining a listserv called Postcard From Hell. It was originally started to discuss the legendary alt.country band Uncle Tupelo and, after they broke up, its two spin-off bands/leaders Wilco/Jeff Tweedy and Son Volt/Jay Farrar. Although that is ostensibly the subject of the listserv about 95% of the music related content on the list is about other bands. I've discovered some great bands through this list and met some other people in my area who have similar musical tastes.
Try to find a listserv or newsgroup (better than Yahoo! Groups! With! All! The! Spam!) devoted to a band you already like and then see what you can find out from there. Lurk for awhile, don't just go in and blurt out stupid shit 5 minutes after you subscribe and you'll probably learn a lot. I bought about 40 CDs this past year when in the past I would have purchased 3 or 4.
BFL
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
My suggestion - search on google for what you like. You're bound to come up with quite a few hits. Look at a few of them until you find something that suits you.
There are all sorts of music communities out there. If you're into metal, I personally recommend taking a look at Perpetual Motion. You're bound to find similar communities for other genres as well.
habbits
Is that what you get when you cross hobbits and rabbits?
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
Ages ago (1996-ish) there used to be a site that would give you a list of recommended artists based on a list of yes/no questions about other artists...firefly.com I think it was called and I can't find it any more. These days I usually get new music via word of mouth on p2p networks and mix tapes. Yes, I still listen to tapes.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
see what bands they like. see who influenced them. then go look at those people. and see who influenced THEM. and then look at THOSE people. also look at history. like what aprt of the country they were from, what cities their band was born in, what club scenes, etc.
ahhh i suppose this is a troll but i have no shame. check out my band.
http://tg16.iuma.com/
This may be a tad off-topic, but I've found that television is one of the best ways to discover new music. And no, no, no - I'm *definitely* not talking about MTV or the like. I've caught plenty of great bands on late night talk shows... including lots of bands that are relatively new and get little to no radio time. For example: http://www.30secondstomars.com - 30 Seconds to Mars, caught them on Carson one night (I hate him as a host, but his guests/music is usually interesting enough to make up for it) I've found that internet radio usually isn't my thing... all I've been able to find are the generic trance/dance/rave songs (that all sound the same after a while), and really bad quality indie rock... it's not that I'm against indie rock, but... it honestly sounds like most these people used a pocket tape recorder to make their songs =P P2P is still the tool of choice. I find SO much new music there that I can't even imagine what I was doing to find new bands before the P2P boom. Just type in a few random seraches and grab whatever comes up - you never know what you'll find. I've purchased so many new albums just because I randomly found music I liked through napster or kazaa or whatnot.
i'm a habbit rabbit
depends on how you listen to music.
I don't pay any attention to the lyrics per se or the individual elements of the music.
Just if I like the piece as a whole.
If you listen to music this way, I suggest you check out world music charts and winners/notables from international music competitions via Google.
The language won't matter and you'll discover some nice melodies.
You misquote Costello:
"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture"
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
I actually have found bands by having Amazon suggest them to me. As an obsessed music fan (think a milder version of High Fidelity) I do feel I have some taste and it came as a surprise to me that by me rating a few albums that Amazon could come up with something new for me. Then, I usually check them out on Kazaa, then if I like them enough to keep the mp3s I buy the album. Being involved in mailing lists maintained by fan clubs for bands you like help as well. The people often feel a kinship with each other and will recomend things at the drop of a hat. Another suggestion is to take note of the record label some of your favorites are on. Indie labels often put out compilations to promote their less known artists that often have a similar feel to the bread winning ones.
The Shizz is a good place to discuss local bands here in Arizona. They have discussion and calender events as well as mp3 downloads.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Try Epitonic. Quite a few gems that I've found there have pointed me towards new groups/artists and even genres I didn't know I liked. It's been the inspiration for quite a number of my CD purchases!
The method I use -
,ZZ Top,Ozzy Osbourne,Black Sabbath,
Go to Google Sets
http://labs.google.com/sets
Search for 2 or 3 bands in a particular genre or listening habit. example: metallica & megadeth
Go with the small set, Pantera,
Slayer,Iron Maiden,Testament,Sepultura,Korn,AC DC
Marilyn Manson,Tool,etc..
Now use whatever method you prefer for downloading music, search for those bands. Download the most heavily shared (popular) songs. After a few minutes, you should have several hours of music in whatever genre your interested in.
I like all sorts of music, though. Nearly any genre between classical and metal. This means I could listen to Vivaldi one moment and Helloween the next. I'm weird that way... I don't settle for just one kind of music and ditch the rest, I pick anything that's good, from any genre.
Good music:
Nearly all the only classical albums I have are Vanessa-Mae playing Vivaldi, Bach and her own tunes. Very good if you like that kind.
Something that I started to like really late was Depeche Mode, like a year or two ago. Nearly any song they have made is good if not great.
I like the metal kinda stuff too, and there we have Metallica (goes without saying), Helloween, Hammerfall, Nightwish, etc.
Then ofcourse there's a lot of great techno and trance... Paul Oakenfold, Sasha & John Digweed, DJ Fairlane, TbO & Vega, and many more.
1) Find a recording of the "Bacchanale" from Camille Saint-Saens's "Samson and Delilah". Listen to it.
2) Go to either The Phantom Regiment or Drum Corps International's website and purchase a copy of a recording with either the 1990 or 1991 shows from the Phantom Regiment Drum & Bugle Corps on it. Listen to the whole thing, but especially to the very last piece in the Phantom Regiment shows.
3) You've just been exposed to two amazing genres of music performance. Your life will never be the same.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Well If you are a Trance fan, then there is TranceAddict They post tracks and Livesets, and always have tracks from new artists, and are pretty up to date. Many of the Livesets are available there before they are on P2P. The only downfall is that they have a lot of control on the amount you download, you can only get 1 at a time, and if you change your mind in the middle, it sometimes takes a while before they let you download another. Also the forums they have their are very active and the people there will help you indentify any trance song you may have heard in a club - they also have meetups at clubs all over the place. Pretty Interesting! I imagine there are other sites like this for different genres ?
theres this new band out. man they are hot. they controll the charts and the media, litterally. there the hottest thing to hit the streets, its caled the cornhole the reamer by the RIAA
epitonic
splendid
Launch lets you rate songs, artists and albums through their websiite and as you listen to them. According to your ratings, you will be able to listen to your highest rated songs more often, and additionally, thanks to the joy of data mining, you will be presented with new, undiscovered groups that will match your listening habits.
The advertising is not intrusive. The cons: to actually listen to music you need IE 4.0 + Windows Media 6.4 to 8.0 (it doesn't work with 9.0 at the moment).
Engage!
Cavort With Whores[mp3.com]
1. Pirate music
2. ???
3. Profit
Or you could use a more versatile system like MoveableType... :-)
If you have one nearby, join your local public library. Rather than using the electronic catalog, just walk around the stacks, and pick out a few selections that catch your eye.
I find all sorts of great music that I would never have heard, otherwise. You will be surprised at how quickly you begin mapping and exploring all sorts of new genres and artists.
For instance, I recently found the 9-disc Rounder Records 25th anniversary box, which is really terrific. That's something I never would have sought out -- it was just sitting there on the shelf.
If I get really curious about something that I found at the library, then I look it up on Amazon, and follow the reviews and favorites lists. These can be very useful, especially with more esoteric stuff.
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
Sites like Epitonic and Parasol have steaming audio and are not 'radio' per se. Parasol is a distributor and Epitonic is a site like MP3.com but with a more condensed selection of signed indie artists (not the myriad of DIY stuff that might be fun to wade through at MP3.com, but since you said google was dense, then this is a valid comment). Epitonic's radio stream is cool because you can listen to what they have programmed or 'walk through' genre, labels etc or create a playlist for the broadcast.
Allmusic is very good at guiding yo to stuff you might like. By checking roots, influences, followers and similar artist of an act that you like you might stumble on some new stuff.
Weblogs, forums... of course.
Then there is the old reliable. Magzines, college radio and record store clerks.
Some of my favorite mags: Magnet, Wire, Signal to Noise and CMJ.
You must have some local college stations... some of them do internet streaming if there is none near you. Local to me (Northampton, MA) there is WAMH and WMUA.
There are a few great record stores that send out new release emails of obscure titles. Also, they have employee lists. I have bought many titles without listen by looking at the employee lists. If 10 people that work in the store say it is great, then it more than likely is. Here are two great stores on each coast: Forced Exposure in Boston (click on "Employee Top 10") & Aquarius Records in San Fran (click on "Favorites" for each employee)... for both sites, sign up for the email updates for weekly new releases.
If anyone is into Free Jazz, check out my site.
pronoblem
http://www.brainwashed.com/brain
The Antique Phonograph Music Program is pretty neat too. Where else but WFMU can you hear music being played on the radio, directly off of wax cylinders and old gramophones?
WFMU also archives virtually ALL of the radio shows (albeit in icky RealAudio format) in thier entirety. Way cool.
I'm actually a financial supporter of WFMU, even though I live in Honolulu. It (along with KEXP, WBAI, WMBR, KCRW, KTUH) is what keeps me sane at the office, when everyone else is listening to stupid, vapid Top-40 and corporate "alternative" radio stations.
this is a website that has turned me on to many cool new bands. the people who run this site go through tons of the MP3s available for free on the web and find one winning song each day. they've got everything: rock, hip-hop, dub, electronic music, reggae, metal, etc. needless to say, a LOT of MP3s i've downloaded here have turned me on to many cool new bands. check it out!
The related bands link gives you a cool little app that maps the relations between bands. The closer two bands are the more likely it is that if you like one you will like the other. Here's the map for Pinback.
Check out: Digital Gunfire. They are an electronic/industrial webcaster who can't be shut down by the RIAA because they only play non RIAA stuff. Before you scoff at that, this is good stuff and many times a LOT better than you will ever see come out of the RIAA. So if you are into that genre, give it a try, if you aren't, give it a try anyway and listen for a few hours. It grows on you!
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
What's really funny about this is that your post is in no way responsive to the parent. Instead, you picked a high-scoring post and slapped your offtopic reply to it, obviously trying to stay near the top of the screen for people who read "highest scores first" and don't have the patience to make it to the bottom of the page where your lame whoring post would be if left to its own merits.
www.mono.net
www.brispop.com
That'll only help you find interesting Australian acts. But that ain't such a bad thing.
Perhaps there are similar sites in the states and other countries? Internet - The CBGB's of the new millenium.
Cheers.
We need a gnutella plugin. One that will allow the user to rate mp3s, and media. And then finds people with other similar ratings. And finally informs the user of files that that similar peers note as good. The ratings must be positive and negative, and allow for varing tastes. While eclitic people may throw a wrench into everything, only a free solution will do. All of the for profit companies will just sell out the to the RIAA cartels.
No, no, not those 24/7 classical NPR stations, but real public radio is where I find the most new msuci that I go on to love. Check out www.kgnu.org in ther afternoon between 1:00-4:00 (MST) and then after midnight for some of the best stuff out there...
Ok, this is just out of the blue, but download some Toadies! Texas band, hard rock, bad-ass. Snag Tyler, Possum Kingdom, Away, I Burn, and whatever else you can find. I'd tell you to go see a live show, but they're not doing anymore! I got to see one of their last shows and they kicked major ass. Go give a listen.
May I suggest IPM Radio as a good way to learn about music?
They've been broadcasting for over 4 years now, and I have to say that in the year I've been attending broadcasts, I have found a lot of new types of music I like.
There is a weekly 6-8 hour live show, that starts at about 8:30 PM EST every friday, with real audio and MPEG-4/AAC versions showing up in the archives a few days later.
Ogg streams might be possible, if someone can direct me to an OGG streamer that lets clients skip around in the streams, like Quicktime/Mpeg-4/AAC does.
here is the link to the mpeg-4 version of the 4th anniversary show as a sample.
I discovered The White Stripes and several other indie bands months before they hit MTV by going to Amazon.com and looking at some people's custom lists. You can listen to samples of the music on their site, and I found a lot of new and good bands to check out.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
www.audiogalaxy.com used to be my favorite, but it got crowded with illeagal music ala napster. The rumor is its back to basic so it might be a good idea to swing by them.
Yep Yep....
greenplastic.com is best for the fastest access to the latest news on Radiohead. The latest piece of news points to NME reporting a return to The Bends or 'dark pop' on the new album. Ace... can't wait.
ateaseweb.com is a better site for finding chatting it up on the forum and getting multimedia like the latest webcast Radiohead held in anticipation of their new album.
Where the Music Matters
has tons of barely heard of artists, links similar artists and groups together. good stuff.
Take a look at Epitonic Radio for a wide variety of non-corporate music. They have a "build your own radio station" site that was put together by folks that like innovative music. It's helped me discover a number of new and interesting bands, and I say that as a vinyl and CD junkie with over 1000 albums in my personal collection.
It's one of those things I wish I had invented myself. Check out the variety of music they offer (no, I don't work for them... just a happy camper):
20th Century ComposersAbstract
Acoustic
Ambient
Avant-Pop
Breakbeat
Country
Downtempo
Dronology
Drum and Bass
Dub
Electro
Electronic
Emo
Experimental
Folk
Folk-Rock
Funk
Garage Rock
Goth
Hardcore
Hip Hop
House
Improv
Indie Rock
Instrumental
International
Jazz
Lo-Fi
Lounge
Math Rock
Metal
New Wave
No Wave
NoisePop
Pop-Punk
Post-Punk
Post-Rock
Power Pop
Psych
Punk
Rap
Rock
Shoegazer
Singer-Songwriter
Slo-Core
Space Rock
Techno
Trance
havent read up to see if it's already been suggested, but gnod introduced me to several new bands I'd not heard of.
Hope that's of some use to you.
wcbn-fm in ann arbor is a freeform music station devoted to music of all styles and genres, from all time periods. you can find us on the web at wcbn.org, and you can listen via a variety of formats.
tune in at any time of the day and you're liable to hear any kind of music. if you don't like what you hear, come back in an hour and you'll likely hear something completely different.
music dept. playlists are archived online and are a good place to learn about new music.
we tend to feature independent artists, but will play just about anything. our top five for 2002 included neko case, mum, richard youngs, julie doiron and merzbow.
also, for more on the indie/electronic scene, check out <a href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com">pitchfork media</a>.
i found that www.audiogalaxy.com was a great source of new bands, as well as www.epitonic.com . audiogalaxy no longer hosts mp3's but epitonic.com does, and i use it frequently.
radio free santa monica broadcasting from the peoples republic of santa monica...little joke about santa monica politics
This is still how I find CDs to buy. (Net radio is rather difficult when you can only get 28.8 where you live.)
Etree is geared for bands that allow trading of
their live shows, but all kinds of discussions
happen there.
There is a mailing list, IRC channels, and most
importantly, a collection of FTP sites.
Probably the most striking feature is its interface. You select a band, say Radiohead and a collection of related bands appear and slowly organize themselves so that similar bands are clustered and less similar ones seperated by what looks like some sort of simulated annealing process. Clicking on one of the names redraws the collection with the selected band at the centre.
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, and where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"-T.S.Eliot
You know, the first time I read that I thought he said hobbits!
Please note that I do not recommend this approach if you're looking for major label artists.
http://www.epitonic.com great site for browsing for music.
If you're into progressive rock, and even if you're not, and especially if you think you're not, then I highly suggest you check out the New Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock. This is a simply awesome resource for finding new music to hunt down and listen to. In addition to the aforementioned encyclopedia, the GEPR has its' own webzine and you'll find links to many sites which review prog rock discs.
Although I have personally not listened to their Live365 stream (dial up line -- not enough bandwidth), ProgRock.com has an informative website and a very active discussion forum.
One streaming radio station that I listen to a lot, often for hours, is Delicious Agony. They play a good mix of both classics and new progressive music. Highly recommended. A great benefit of streaming radio is that you can see the playlist while listening and in progrock.com's case, there will also be links to where you can buy the music and to the artists' homepages. Happy hunting.
Must be pretty bloody awful then!
The best way I know of is to go to the nearest town with a decent college scene and hit the clubs. Find out which caves are the most consistantly decent, and hit the shows for the bands you've never heard of. You don't want the bar that the high school punk bands use, you have to wait five years on those groups. And you don't want the nightclub that books well-known-but-not-yet-mainstream acts, because that would probably be defeating the purpose (I mean, you already know all that music, right?). A happy medium bar/club will have a rather ecclectic schedule of up-and-coming acts from across the spectrum of musical tastes. It costs a few bucks, but hey--you can steal their music in a few years after they get a decent contract.
Monkey Radio is a great alternative for all the groovers out there.
Where the Music Matters
Hip Hop Infinity
;)
God Loves Ugly
you can't beat your local small/independant record store (aka, not tower, wharehouse, etc). It kinda depends on what you're looking for though. A lot of them specialize in certain things, like punk or indie or dance etc... but the people who work there are usually very knowledgable. Go to a record store that seems to be your kind of place and ask the guy to recommend something. It's a little intimidating at first, but you'll get over it soon, they usually like to help you find things. i don't know where you live, but if it's in socal, ameoba records in hollywood and fingerprints in long beach are *excellent*. Also ubl.com is great website, they have a lot of obscure bands, and have a "related artists" type thing.
;)
One last pointer, if you find a small band you really like, see what label they are, then order a sampler from that label, they are usually really cheap and have a lot of bands on them. i personally recommend any matador comp, if you dig indie rock. --Andrew
ps. here are some "hip" band names to drop =) gang of four, spacemen 3, polvo, st. germain, superchunk, cato salsa experience. that covers a little spectrum, but if the person knows thier stuff, that should get your foot in the door with them
i've got this great site that i use often. it has links to lots of other sites out there. sometimes, i type the name of a band in their little search field and go from there. it's kinda neat. it'll bring up all these pages that have something to say about the band or bands that i put in the query... and from there, i just click and click and click and voila! i learn about groovy new music. sometimes, i'll take the new group i found and put their name back into the search to find a sample of their music. it's pretty cool actually. maybe one of these days it'll catch on.
Sorry, but I tried some variants:
Nick Cave -- where is Einstürzende Neubauten?
Sisters of Mercy -- where is The Mission?
Ebba Grön -- where are all the other projects of Joakim Thåström??
Naa... nice try, but....
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
Try WOPN. its owned by freenode, formerly OpenProjects. Come and chat in #wopn on irc.freenode.net, too. Its got an OGG stream, so you get good quality with low bandwidth.
Most of the following applications implement collaborative filtering. A few are based on expert systems and/or the nearest neighbor algorithm.
e cords.com/discovery/o ut/
c om/reel.asp?node=matches. com/
a s.edu/users/libra/
n et/ever/
t eitall.com/
All are free to use. A few require free registration and maintain a persistent user profile within the system.
For Music
http://www.gnoosic.com/
http://www.towerr
http://rateyourmusic.com/ab
http://www.emergentmusic.com/
For Movies
http://www.gnovies.com/
http://www.reel.
http://www.filmaffinity
http://www.movielens.umn.edu/
For Books
http://www.gnooks.com/
http://www.cs.utex
For Websites
http://www.alexa.com/
http://www.gnod.
http://stumbleupon.com/
General
http://www.dooyoo.co.uk
http://www.ra
While they're technically a pure commertial venture, and thus I'm not exactly sure how closely they mimic the ClearChannel-style monopoly of "you-will-listen-to-this" music, I find that the BBC radio channels are an excellent alternative source of music.
BBC Radio Main Page
They have several HUNDRED streaming media files available for a huge variety of music, much of which is hard to find in the USA. I find it very refreshing, since British musical taste as always been a bit different than American taste, though the two tend to be quite compatible.
All their DJ shows are available on-line, and are updated weekly. And, since it's the BBC, they have virtually anything that you might be interested in, from Talk Shows about Scottish Sheepherding to the latest Dance club hits from the Continent.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Go to a good record store in your area. If your lucky enough to have a store that specializes in the types of music you like (like I am - Stinkweeds, in Tempe, AZ) they will overload you with good recomendations.
Eating is for wimps.
There hasn't been a decent album made since 1996, when the Ramones broke up. I don't listen to hardly anything recorded after 1984. But there is hope. Through the magic of digital restoration, there are many of us who are restoring our old rare recordings and pushing them out on the net. There's more good OLD music out there than there is good NEW music. And we know damn well that the record companies are never going to rerelease our favorite obscure old punk records on cd. So we'll do it ourselves.
check out:
Tommy February 6
Tomoe Shinohara
Aki Maeda
Ami Suzuki
Well, I'm a student at the University of Minnesota, Morris and I volunteer at KUMM, where I try to play an ecclectic mix of both old favorites and obscurities as well as new music, so I'd suggest listening to our (Windows Media) stream. I've also archived playlists for my show here.
Well, if ever there was a thread I could advertise in, this has to be it! :-)
:-)
:-)
I write a lot of music in my spare time, from orchestral scores to lullabyes, themes and easy jazz. I guess it's light, it's easy to listen to, good for backgrounds and just chilling out. Anyway, have a listen. Suggest 'This Time For Real', then 'If You Only Knew', then take it from there
http://www.hawksley.net/mp3
If you're modding and you like it - mod me up
Enjoy all,
John
2 cute chicks pretending to be dykes and singing OK techno songs
http://ghotli.cjb.net/cj/musiclog/
It's nice because it only gives you one song a day to listen to instead of a gargantuan amount of songs linked on a main page. What's also cool is it covers a wide variety of music and isn't genre-centric.
Slashdot discusses "news"
:-)
Even the editors put it in quotes
actually, i have found mp3.com to be kind of cool and useful for certain things. i found some cool local bands that way. i lvoe finding new bands that no one has heard of and making my friends listen to them. i prefer to do taht with local bands and i found mp3.com to be the easiest way to discover local bands, other than listening to this radio show called local bands on WPLR 99.1 in the new haven area of connecticut. they play music from local bands for half an hour every sunday night at like 10 or 10:30. it's pretty good, although some of the bands suck.
:) if you live in the new haven area, or anywhere in connecticut, toad's is a good place to check out. also pyschedelic breakfast and max creek are on mp3.com if they are new to you and you want to check out their music.
another good way to discover other bands is to look at other bands members of your favorite bands have played with, or opening acts for your favorite bands. they usually have something in common (or sometimes don't, but that's rare). go to a small club or bar in your area and listen to a band or bands for like $5-10. go to the whole thing, not just the "headliner". a lot of times the openers (usually 1-2, sometimes 3) are decent bands. of course that doesn't always happen as i went to see psychedelic breakfast (i went to grammar school with their guitarist) one time at toad's place in new haven (they were opening for max creek that night) and the other opening band, spiral trace, was a high school band that absolutely sucked, so we just left, not seeing the other bands. we ended up getting drunk at yale instead, which wasn't a bad idea at the time.
my last suggestion is to join any email discussion lists pertaining to the bands you like or the types of music you like. etree.org has a some discussion lists that pertain to taper/trader friendly bands. always a good way to find new music. so good luck on your music search, i'm sure you'll find a lot out there.
please me, have no regrets.
KALX, UC Berkeley's station, streams if you aren't within a mile or two of campus (90.7 FM for locals). It's easy to find some DJs/shows that focus on your preferred genres, although I look forward to new experiences. Good times.
Hate to say it, but I've found most of my new music by downloading semi-randomly from genre-related usenet newsgroups e.g. alt.binaries.punk or alt.binaries.mp3.heavy-metal. Download and delete, download and delete, eventually you find a group that you've just got to go buy every CD they've ever made. Sort of like when I was in high school and traded tapes with people.
The way I've found most of my music is that I went to the site of a group I liked and checked their links page. If I liked something they linked to, then I'd check that link page as well.
Also, if you're into electronica, you should look at some of the stuff on Nectarine.
"Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Take over the world."
When I'm looking for new music, I often find myself looking through my music collection for what labels my favorite musicians recorded on, then jumping on that label's website to browse their current releases. Especially with small labels that only cater to a small genre, its easy to find interesting new music.
I worked at our college radio station. I think the idea was if someone had heard of it, we couldn't play it.
Okay...yeah...so that does mean that new unknowns get played, but the majority of those were complete crap.
It was really no different than commercial radio...instead of having Britney Spears and 500 clones, you had all the REM and Cure clones - just because they were trying to be a clone of an alternative band didn't make them great.
I'll admit I did find one or two bands I really liked, like Sisters of Mercy, but just because it's new or unheard of doesn't make it good - most of it is still cookie cutter crap, or just too off the wall crap.
Of course, according to taste, YMMV.
EXCELLENT program, been using it for at least 3-4 years now. Mostly I listen to the Gothic channel, and then if I've discovered quite a few artists I never heard of as a result (I am listening to Sol Invictus as I write this).
I live in Los Angeles, home of the record business...and music on the radio here here is pathetic! I like alternative and AAA (adult album alternative) and neither are played here. We have KROQ (AKA Hype radio) but that's about it. There's a bunch of hip hop and top 40 stations, a couple of classic rock stations, one country station and the rest is Spanish. I find it pathetic that I have to go to websites of stations in other parts of the country to find the titles of music that otherwise I might not have even heard of! Then I have to break the law by downloading the stuff so I can sample it. THEN if I find something I like and want to buy, it's likely that I won't find it at a local record store. If the RIAA wants to know why music sales are down, just look at me. They've gone out of their way to alienate me as a buyer! Hilary Rosen would do more of a service to her industry if she figured out how to court the 25-54 demographic (you know..the baby boomers who represent the largest single group of people in the U.S. right now - and the ones with most of the $$ too!), instead of working her panties into a froth about p2p.
Filesharing is great for finding new artists, but it's good to know what to look for. I wake up every morning and read Pitchfork Media's reviews, and once a week we get music reviews in print locally from The Weekly Dig. They both generally review stuff from hiphop, rock, and electronic stuff, so I get a good variety. If someone says "These guys sound better than Soul Coughing," I'm apt to download a few mp3's to try to prove them wrong.
What sites do you read for music reviews?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
I wonder if he's heard of AmpCast. A moderation system (as someone else asked for), and I understand that the artist gets $0.05 per download.
A musician friend of mine left MP3.com for them about a year ago because of MP3.com's shitty service...
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
Garageband.com has been really great for my band, and for my own library.
You must review music to be allowed to upload music; Then you get reviews of your own work.
Non-musicians can review music to earn credits, to buy music.
It's been really great to get 100% anonymous reviews from people around the world.
They might group you with others who prefer clean underwear. Then again, maybe not.
I use soulseek to download music, and alot of people in the chatrooms are pretty knowledgable (if not a little elitist). At any rate everyone has suggestions, i've found a lot of great music there.
http://launchcast.yahoo.com is Yahoo's free online radio station. Essentially, you customize it by what you like, picking genres and artists, and then every time it plays a song you can rate the song (1 - 100), or ban it from your radio station entirely. You can also rate artists and albums, which is cool. It's a little frustrating at first, but once you use it for a little while, it gets pretty good at playing stuff you want to hear. It makes pretty cool recommendations sometimes. Also has music videos and news and things. Just thought I'd throw that in the pot, even if I've been a little wary to comment so far. I have this paranoid fear that I'll get a really horrible score. I enjoy launchcast, especially the free part (all it requires is a yahoo id).
This also works well.
Here's some new music - check out www.fadededge.com/audio and see what you think.
$45 per U Colocation Special
http://www.shoutcast.com. This is a great streaming music product. There are a large amount of varieties of stations and you can sort according to stream quality.
. shoutcast.net:8000/listen.pls
There are many windows and mac players for shoutcast streams and I've even created one in Director for Mac and Win. I'm sure there are Linux players as well.
For me, I love love love ProtonRadio (http://www.protonradio.com).
http://lsac1-0-s03
Try out shoutcast and find some stations you like. You'll never go back.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
unixpunx radio. listen and discover.
Up and comers... www.insilentcode.com Pretty good stuff if you like indie rock.
Snoozer.
Finding new music is like stepping stones; you go from one to the next to the next. So when you find music you like, you look at similar music.
Fundamentally, you will need to sample bands and be disappointed a lot. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting.
but if you can shell out the cash for it, i'd recommend satilite radio (like XM for example). The selection of music is great, and you get artist names and song titles, so you can look stuff up later.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Others have mentioned SHOUTcast and CMJ. I also use Live365 (I pay for a subscription) to keep my audio pleasures broad while I work.
--The more you know, the less you know.
This also works well.
Damn links...
What I do is put the names of a few bands I like into a search engine, and look at DJ's playlists, etc. that turn up in the result, and then pull songs off of direct connect. The real problem is finding a local place to buy these albums...and I live in a major city! Even finding US based mail order places that have a reasonable selection and prices is difficult. Next time I am in Europe, I'll spend some money for sure.
Some college radio startions are starting to use RCFM because it is a great deal cheaper than a low power transmitter in the educational band...
Too bad it's range is 500 feet so you really can't hear it off campus...
Mongomusic.com used to do an awesome job of this, but Microsoft bought them and they vanished.
May we never see th
I've used the Ultimate Band List quite a lot over the years, and found their "Related Artists" and "Related Genres" recommendations very useful. Definatly worth a visit.
I leave launchcast running all day on my desktop.
1 019669531 )
It can bring quite a bit of music you don't know if you let it, or just keep playing stuff you've told it you liked.
www.launchcast.com
( if you want to try my radio station, go to http://launch.yahoo.com/launchcast/station.asp?u=
I like loungy and electronic music, so I try to download all albums that are posted on:
n ds.mp3.electronic
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.lounge
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.dance
alt.binaries.sou
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.house
I even trade on it, what I don't like I delete, and I never download those artists again the others I try more of. if you cannot find more on usenet try to find it with http://search.ftphost.net/indexer/search.htm
hadn't MSIE already replaced NCSA Mosaic by that time?
The Art of the Mix. People post the contents of their mix CD's. Search for a song you like, and you'll find complementary tracks in 74-minute batches. Good stuff.
unless your into some obscure type of music that cant be performed live, then just get out into the scene.. talk to people.. youd be surprised.. word of mouth is far better than anything you can do on the net.. ;)
I live in Athens, GA and my main way to discover new music is to listen to the college radio station I DJ at 90.5fm. Many stations play a mix of the best in national New Music as well as many great local bands that need support support. These stations offer music that is programmed by students and non-influenced by payola. A recent congressional ruling also allow these non profit stations to
The online tool that I find useful is Listen.com's Rhapsody. I pay 9.99 a month for the service, which allows unlimited listening and no downloads. They are missing many Indie labels, but still offer a very good selection. The quality is great, their servers are fast, it's very usable and offers recommendations for each artist on the service, along with a radio station that will play of mix of the selected artist and similar artists.
While I was once very reluctant to pay for music, I have no problem paying for this bill each month. I spent enough time at my computer where being able to listen to the complete discography of many artists is priceless.
Kompressor crush all lesser forms of music.
"if you waste time to put comments on internet about how you do not like KOMPRESSOR, you are worth less than politician and corporate radio disc jockey. in night while you sleep your windows are opened with synthesizer, broken glass fall on your face. at this time you know the pwer of KOMPRESSOR.
continue to watch your television and type on internet. KOMPRESSOR gains control of all american people while you have guitar music in headphones."
- Kompressor
And watch how their recommendation bots bring you the latest in totally irrelevant-to-your-taste artists, and steer you toward kitchen gadgets and other sundries you never knew you needed.
I wonder if he's heard of AmpCast
OK, so how do I satisfy section 8 of the TOS, which requires artists to guarantee that all musical works embodied in submitted recordings must be original? It's a pretty standard requirement in the mp3.com clones' artist agreements, but how can I prevent what happened to George Harrison from happening to me as well?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I like this program called Napster
Napster is dead.
Long live WinMX.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Reviews of independent bands {usually on mp3.com} sortable by genre, date reviewed, and rating.
Have you ever tried going to a bar or a club where live bands play music? I'm not talking about the places you already know about that are frequented by the bands you like. I'm talking about going some place new, that you've never been to before where they play music that you don't think you like.
Fly into Dublin an go lick the tins with me boys down at Temple Bar. There, the patrons play the music. Heck, you may find yourself playing with them.
Speak truth to power.
I usually browse the catalogue they have at All Music Guide . The best thing is being able to browse artists by the extensive number of genres available, and just browsing genres by themselves. You can literally lose yourself in the number of new bands that have been hiding from you and just waiting to be discovered. Unlike Amazon, the system isn't obstrusively selling CDs in your face, and I think the number of artists they have catalogued and described about is more.
You do realize where you are at, don't you?
You really expect slashbots to have friends?
Phil Dirt's "Surf's Up" on KFJC..It really doesn't get any better than that!
A while ago I came across this Bio/Demological media feedback systems (1)
jounal entry at infoanarchy.org. This Journal entry discusses the potential of the internet to introduce people to interesting music and even hone their taste into some sort of demographically aesthetic purism.
I.E. it is the very instrument we use to discover music that shapes our taste. That what is inherently interesting about music is that it rubs our nuerons in the same way as music we have already heard and perhaps experienced at a pleasant if not interesting moment in our lives.
Currently the media for introducing us to music are still primarily owned by corporate interests. But this article suggests that the internet offers a potential meathod for cloud seeding our lives with interesting music.
This article suggest that a system could be established that introduces music to people that tends to stimulate people who have similar demographical profiles (like amazon's purchase comparison) but that allowed for mutation by introducing semi-random tracks from a royalty free database. In this way people could become accostomed to music that isn't packaged in the conventional way.
Anyway the article puts it more eloquently than I do.
...a good local independent record store or radio station.
Seriously, the latter is a great source. Radio DJs listen to a LOT of music, much much more than they play. You'd be surprised at how many will list their top 3 and they're acts you've never heard of and certainly never heard on their station. I'm lucky enough to live neat weqx.com, with several fantastic DJs, one of whom I've followed across three stations and who introduced me to roughly half of the artists in my best of the left of dial stack. Plus DJing can be a lonely gig, especially at night...DJs love to talk shop over the phone when they don't have a promo to cut or whatever. There's also "listener appreciation parties," many times they'll bring stacks of discs with them to toss out to inquiring fans.
Then there's emusic.com, where I met three of my favorite new acts of the year.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
XM Satellite radio has a channel called "Unsigned", that plays nothing but unsigned bands from around the U.S. Most of it's really good. The also have links on their website to the websites of all the bands they play that have websites.
They have a sample stream of the station on their website, but I think it's in a Windows Media format.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
I'm currently getting into Japanese music, and that's REALLY hard to find decent recommendations for.
Ever think that might be the sample space's problem more so than the recommenders?
With all the hype over blogs lately, it would seem appropriate to suggest finding a livejournal community dedicated to music or a similar blog or forum which discusses music to broaden your tastes a little.
You could always check out the local music section at the record store to get exposed to the new music the kids in your area are making. Occaisionally you'll find some gems in with the crap, but it may be a difficult search.
I went to college in california, and I later moved to one of the deeper layers of hell (Atlanta, GA) for a job. Talk about shocked, what KROQ is playing today won't make it through the sludge (the south) for another 3-4 months. Even the Clear Channel stations have this lag.
I don't like all music played by stations like KROQ and O-Rock (Orlando - I'm in grad school in daytona beach now) but at least you have "new" music.
I'm always perusing Live105 (SFO) and KROQ for new songs that will never even make it to the south (I like subsonic on Live105).
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As long as I'm writing a new message, let me talk about 96.7 The Buzz; in Peachtree City outside of Atlanta. Clear channel has one of it's power stations (96.1) in the market, but opened up this station under the guise of a small family owned (the pot smoking DJ's uncle bought it for him) station that plays new music.
Well, the music is still always a month old and plays crap compared to the stations it attempts to imitate. Mind you, there are no Clear Channel adverts on the station, but it slams the other rock station (99x) in the market with hostile adverts without a peep about it's CC bretheren.
That is just pure evil on the part of clear channel if you ask me. Damn the FCC to hell.
You find a station that plays a couple bands you know, and after a while you find they also play music from a couple bands you didn't know...
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
MP3.com is, IMHO, the best resource I've found. there's thousands of bands on there. Find a genre that you like, listen to the charts. That's how I found all my favorite bands. (Check out Franklyn Currie if you like folk-y hippie music)
Windows only, but ALL the major labels are supporting it. If they don't have an album for on demand listening, they probably have it on one of their radio stations. You can look up an artist you like then here a radio station that is customized for that artist. Great way to find new bands. Rhapsody is THE only app that I miss when I'm not running Windows.
"It's like polishing a turd." -FZ
does anyone really want to see a website that does to music discussion what the dot does to news discussions? Seriously, do we really need 'clusters' of stereo-equipment, or 'In Soviet Ru...an Music'...?
Oh yeah... ontopic... Try listening to college radio if you can, in general I've seen that later-night shift d.j.s can get away with playing, and often do, new/strange/non-pop/whatever music.
"It's the Law of the Universe, and I'm the sheriff." Slash-cott 2/10-2/17
WOXY (as recited by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man) has been one of my favorites for hearing good stuff. Also, the world cafe on NPR.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Fester knows more about music than any other person or paid critic that I know of. He reviewed countless albums from 1965-2002 and listens to more than 600 albums per year.
http://www.fastnbulbous.com
A direct link to his review archive:
http://www.fastnbulbous.com/rock.htm
I am surprised that MoodLogic hasn't been mentioned. It is a neat little program that connects to a database mp3 song information. Based on that information and some input of your mood and or song preference it finds other mp3's on your disk that you should like.
As others has suggested, randomly downloading mp3's from users who got what you like is a great way of building up a library of mp3, then you let MoodLogic do the searching for you.
By the way, I found this program when I was searching for a good solution to give all my mp3's the correct name (I hate downloading Moonlight sonata by Mozart), MoodLogic will organize and correct names/id3-tags too.
Does anyone know of a similar solution for Linux?
don't you people have any friends?
I listen to all sorts of music...I like browsing the stations on Spinner.Com (which is now branded Radio@Netscape Plus)...they play lots of great stuff some of which is quite obscure and you'd never be able to find on your own short of having a full time job listening to this stuff. Once I find a track I like I look up the artist/album/song on AllMusic and find out more about them...from there I can find out about related artists as well. Allmusic is great because it notes key albums and songs of particular albums. From there I usually go to Kazaa see if I can find a track or two to check out. If I like a few tracks I usually then go and buy the CD--I'll admit I don't always buy stuff, but if I really like the stuff I usually do end up buying if only becuase, its hard to find the rest of the tracks off the CD, I'm too lazy to burn it, or I genuinely want to support the more obscure artists I've found.
I found some highly excellent music that was TOTALLY new to me by going to a small independent record store (which was called "Wall of Sound") and asking the guy working there what he thought was cool and weird. He let me listen to a bunch of stuff - some of it sucked, but some of it blew me away (and I ended up spending about $200 that day). Forget internet searches. Go the smallest, weirdest, most underground record store in your town, and ask the strangest-looking guy that works there what he recommends. I was sure glad that I did.
SoulSeek has been working pretty nicely for me; the chat rooms actually tend to have people with pretty solid musical interests in them, and you might just find out about new bands in one of the chat rooms, or actually have interesting conversations. Plus, I've occasionally been able to find otherwise rare stuff on there.
For the metal fans here, I've found that Metal-Rules is a fantastic resource for metal reviews. They review a few dozen albums each month and I've bought many albums sight-unheard (sound-unheard?) successfully just based on the reviews alone.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Do as some creative Fruheads have done. Create a website for your favorite bands fans.
Then, create a section for recommending music.
For example, people who like Moxy Fruvous also like:
They Might Be Giants, Guster, BNL, Great Big Sea, The Beatles, Ben Folds (Five), Arrogant Worms, Eddie From Ohio, The Nields, and more.
Of course, that's a lot of work...
You could also check out sites like Diaryland.com or Livejournal.com. Look at music people like, and see what else they like. Livejournal has "interests" with which you can search for people.
It's not exactly automated, but, with some luck, you might be able to find a few different things.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
WVUM is the only radio station I listen to anymore. Check out the playlists there.
I usually read a few music magazines every month, read the liner notes on cd's I buy to see all the names listed there(writers, collaboraters, record labels, shout outs to similar artists). If an artist you like is on tour, see who they're playing with. Amazon will give you suggestions on artists you might like, do about 5 searches on different artists you like, the system should be build up a page of suggestions.
Not quite what you're asking for, but I have found quite a lot of great new music as a subsciber to Rhapsody. It provides recommendations based on what you're currently listening too, and has some good "radio stations" theough which I've also picked up some tips for digging deeper. Of course, you have to pay for it, but it's pretty cheap compared to the cost of buying a CD that you end up listening to a couple of times and getting bored with.
You make an interesting observation, but I want to point out that most people being idiots does not imply that recommendation systems will necessarily fail. Consider a related example: economics is based on the premise that even though individuals act irrationally (as you say, most people are idiots) a large group of people will on average behave as if they were rational. Here's what David Friedman writes:
... when predicting a market or a mob, what matters is not the behavior of a single individual but the summed behavior of many. If irrational behavior is random, its effects may average out"
:)
"Economics is based on the assumptions that people have reasonably simple objectives and choose the correct means to achieve them. Both assumptions are false--but useful. One reason to assume rationality is that
-- David Friedman, Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life
So, if a recommendation system such as amazon's fails it is probably because there isn't enough people using the system and the random effects due to the idiots have not yet averaged out.
BTW, I know Moby and like some of his songs, so I decided to listen to the clips for "Tangent 2002: Disco Nouveau" and I have to agree the style of music isn't anywhere near the same, but yet I sort of liked it. Perhaps the problem is that "amazon.com" learns to associate music that people own in common, but not necessarily whether it is the same style or kind of music.
There are people like myself that may confuse the system by liking music from all sorts of totally unrelated genres (so next time amazon.com suggests some country album to you after you've purchased a new age album, it's probably my fault
Thank you for your attention.
You want good industrial? - WaxTrax Records
You want decent indie? - Homestead Records
Ethereal/goth? - 4AD
A lot of those labels got bought by the major labels and kind of screwed over. But... there do appear to be new indies popping up introducing lots of cool new stuff. If you are into electronic stuff (anything from retro to glitch) the following labels seem pretty good:
Emperor Norton
I discovered the following (mostly retro) acts on Emperor Norton:
Miss Kittin and the Hacker
Felix Da Housecat
Ladytron
For glitch, I've been following Warp Records
Some of the great glitch stuff they have:
Plaid
The Boards of Canada
Autechre
Broadcast (This one isn't glitch it's more of the new psychedelic wave hitting the UK)
So, I suggest that you find a few things you like and then start shopping the labels. If they aren't majors, chances are you'll find some good surprises. Good luck, and happy searching...
Un-news
don't forget BOWIE, HANK, SR., and MILLIE VANILLI!
CREED RULES SUPREME!
Well, the best way to find new music is to listen to new music.
I used to buy random CDs just to see random stuff. I bought a lot of crap, but got some good stuff as well. I think a good thing is that in most P2P services allow you to browse other people's files. I think the question of if this is right or not is not in the scope of this discussion right now. It's an option, a valid one for some people.
Also, you could use allmusic.com, look up a band you like, and make a couple steps in their history, followers, ancestors, who/whatever. Or you could join an e-mail discussion list about a band you like. I'm on one for a rather big metal group, and have found dozens of good bands through word of mouth by people who have similar (but not identical) tastes.
The thing is, the more you look the more you'll find, but don't be afraid of the chaos of a random purchase or download. I found my favorite band (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) that way.
not indy enough --
Dan
There is a little-known site called Allmusic which you ought to look at.
Here's how the system works. Let's say you search for Pink Floyd. Their artist page displays the following related info:
In addition, you get to search for "other pyschedlic rock", "others in British Invasion" etc. More goodies at the site itself. Allmusic does not show up on Google too often only because they are fiercely protective of their URLs.
Since audio galaxy died the All Music Guide http://www.allmusic.com/ is the best resource I have found.
Look up artists you like and it will have links to similar music, labels, and even the their influences. You can spend an amazing amount of time there.
Tell that to several million musicologists. :-)
http://insound.com -- mostly a store but lots of great mp3s (rare sonic youth etc) http://epitonic.com -- reviews and links to related bands/projects in tons of different styles....well worth picking through...got lost in this page for hours
FreeBSD for the impatient.
www.furthurnet.com - it's like napster, but only for bands that allow fans to legally trade live recordings, such as phish, sci, the other ones, the dead, and many, many more. both mp3 and shn on the network, no copyright/legal issues, and you'll find some incredible music.
You're a cunt.
There are good artists that aren't known worldwide, but are popular in their countries. Look at country-specific Tops (but beware :), newsgroups related to music, IRC, etc. So, the ways to know about good music aren't different, but the places are.
/ /zemfira.ru/music/mp3/50.mp3
For one, Japan is absolutely worth looking at, I especially like soundtracks, they are usually a lot better than, well, non-soundtracks. Laputa, Nausicaa, Mononoke Hime OSTs are very good.
For two, take a look at these (poor quality, for review only, etc.):
http://zemfira.ru/music/mp3/56.mp3
http:
10 Reasons You Should Check Out CD Baby:
If you want new music, and stuff that sometimes is only tangentially related to what most people consider music, you ought to listen to WREK Atlanta, Georgia Tech's student radio station. It is streamed online at www.wrek.org, and generally features music that is not heard on any radio station, despite the genre specifications listed (that is, the classical music show plays mostly abstract modern music, the rock show plays insane sounds with beats, and the jazz show doesn't often play, say, Louie Armstrong), so you can most always find something cool or at least unique by listening.
follow links from people's /. sigs
...music discusses you!
If you like rap, http://www.rapreviews.com is the place for you. It features weekly reviews of the latest rap albums and the guy who runs the site (Steve "Flash" Juon) is one of the best unbiased reviewers on the Internet.
Lots of music, all free, all independent. Lots of crap, but it's not *all* crap, and there are ratings. Hit the "top songs" link, and I guarantee you'll find something you can dig.
www.somesongs.com
And yeah, I'm on there too, so this is a self-serving plug. *shrug*
find a good used record store in your area that lets you listen to discs before you purchase them. you can now listen to cd quality audio of a wide variety of artists, and purchase albums for less than 10 dollars.
-=tonyt=-
like Wesley Willis, Tenacious D, or Weird Al? check out Ghetto Mediaplay Quintet
there is a mailing list on yahoo groups called "net label releases." the group exists to keep people who follow the "underground" mp3/ogg/mod scene up to date with everything comming out. most of it is electronic music but that is not the only genre represented.
the group has a good link list, that and the archives can be found at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/net_label_releases/
Along the same lines, there are a few Omaha bands that I'd recommend to folks who like good guitar-driven rock mixed with a little ska flavor: Pomeroy, Clever, Cursive, Anchondo, and Mandown (also check out Factor 8 from Wichita). For emo there's Bright Eyes. If you're into post-altrock altrock, I like Five Story Fall and Grasshopper Takeover.
The Faint are a great new wave band, and Eighth Wave from Lincoln do a kick-ass ska/punk cover of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" -- anyone can take a good song and make it bad; it's a rare artist who can make a bad song good. For blues, we've got Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise (although I'm not sure they're actually from Omaha, they do play the Music Box a lot). And if you're really into Grateful Dead tribute bands -- to each his own -- there's Darkstar Orchestra.
If you're an EVIL CONTENT PIRATE like I am, you can find all of these bands on KaZaA (or KAZAA or perhaps kAZaa or whatever); I'm sharing tracks from most of them.
Oh, and almost forgot -- the late and much-lamented Blue Moon Ghetto did some damned fine genre-hopping music. "Tendency" is a great late-night depressed driving song.
They that would sacrifice their
That's exactly the problem. If you are exacting and critical, then you will be disappointed with recommendation systems because the averaging out effect removes all the interesting music.
Of course it recommended Moby: Moby is so common, popular, and inoffensive that even if Amazon's source data were perfect, it would still be the safest suggestion. Most people like Moby. I happen to think that most of Moby's stuff is cheap crap. My tastes are uncommon. Even among the few people that I agree with about music, we have sharp disagreements: My brother agrees with me on everything about music within genres, but he can listen to D&B, which bores me to tears, and I can listen to Johnny Cash or Elvis, which similarly drives him insane.
If Amazon could specially identify picky people, such as myself, they could insist that their algorithm only treated people as matches when their *uncommon* opinions match, and then only use *uncommon* opinions for recommendations, I'd be discovering a lot more music all the time.
Of course, I could buy ten CDs a week for the rest of my life, and not really run out of new things I'm interested in as it is. I don't think I need a referal service. So nevermind.
Anyway.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
- Using Kazaa, search for a favourite artist. Go and browse the collection of someone with a lot of that artist. Download one track from every artist whose music/name you don't know
- Look up favourites on Amazon, and as well as reading the "other people bought..." section, read the comments, they often mention other bands. I've found a few this way.
- Search on Google Groups. See who is talking about a favourite artist. Who else are they talking about?
- Try and find like minded friends. I find this hard as my tastes are fairly esoteric, but I've got one or two friends who aren't too far off, and I have some good discoveries through them.
- Use Launch. It takes a while but once you've customised it enough it does make pretty good suggestions every now and again. I've discovered at least 2 favourite bands via launch. Also good to listen to at work.
- Find a radio station that plays interesting music. My personal favourite is WFMU - mostly shows are rubbish, but a few real gems in there (your mileage may vary). Browse the playlists. Some of the radio stations have "top 100 most played songs for 200x" lists - these are great.
- Just keep your eyes open. You'll find stuff when you least expect it.
Happy hunting!Read reviews of shopping cart software
Pitchfork has interesting stuff about indie/alternative music. They also have sample songs of alternative bands. You can also listen to radioIO. Somewhat pretentious, but they do have good music and they have a "who's playing" applet, which lets you locate music you like. There is also digitally imported which has streams of trance/house/eurodance/classic music, and also sports a playing list for each stream.
--
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
www.epitonic.com is a great source for (mostly) independent artists of just about any genre you care to browse through.
It only offers a limited selection as far as mp3 downloads go (usually 1-3 tracks for each artist), but I've found it to be an invaluable source.
For each artist there are links to similar artists, which may be what you are after. Enjoy!
What's your GCNSEQNO?
I third this, and also recomend insound.com (too lazy to link, but not too lazy to type this), which has a lot of overlap with epitonic, but some stuff that's not there. Plus if you like the music, you can buy the stuff through them. Though make sure to sign up for the newsletter as they send coupons codes out. I just got 15% off of an entire order last week.
Pull up your favourite p2p application and type in a word or two that describes some trait you like, then download tracks at random and see what you find.
Works for me. Discovered several bands and artists that I now have complete CD sets of by this means - and incidently giving the lie to the RIAA about p2p reducing the amount of CD's bought.
Amazon's lists are also useful - especially if you find a new band from the p2p method which you can then use to seed into that.
Amazon lets you select and rate albums you've bought, then recommends artists it thinks you'd like. I was pretty skeptical, but I find that I like about 1/4 of the recommendations, which is a lot better than, say, listening to the radio. Plus you can listen to tracks easily, see similar albums (based on sales), etc., etc.
If you love music, I say get off your ass, seek it out, embrace it, and directly support the people who have the balls to put their art out there!
If you're on the left side of the United States by god set aside 7/4 and do not let yourself miss the High Sierra Music Festival.
And, lastly, if you would like to hear what the best band going, Garaj Mahal, did on 12/31/02 just drop me a line... I was there and taped it... User is gibbs and the domain be crater dot net. I'm happy to fill a few folks' blanks with music provided they include SASE
;-)
"A matter of internal security, the age old cry of the oppressor" - Jean Luc Picard
But just go here, for now:
For Links To Cool Underground Geek-ish Hip-Hop
For Links To Cool Metal Stuff
http://www.gnoosic.com/ asks you for tree artists you like. Then based on what other people said in their list it will recommend some artists to you.
Search for your favorite artist on Kazaa.
When it starts downloading, select "find more from the same user".
You then have a list of that users shared files. If they liked your music, then maybe you share their tastes and some of the other music they have is of interest to you.
The best way to discover new bands are fanzines, any scene has one, so look out at your local music shop.
After you get one, it's easy to get more, since most fanzines check and list other fanzines...
For a list of fanzines, hust check google, e.g. punk - fanzine:e-fanzines on punk
I worried time marched on and left me uncool, but it seems they've just abandoned the venerable KCMU for the more "edgy" KEXP. I find it hard to believe they're that much more 'freeform' or 'experimental' than they ever were, which is to say in the upper quartile of college radio stations. I just hope state of Washington taxpayers didn't pay for a call-letter change.
I just wrapped up my late night at KTRU which is certainly the peer of many of the stations mentioned here. I believe we generally sound better than most college stations, since the 50K watts tend to keep us from doing anything too dumb.
www.kxlu.com is the website for my local college station. No commercials, no corporate money, they are funded by their yearly fundrazor. They work out of the campus of LMU in westchester, CA(but don't receive any funding or services from the school) and are known for being the first radio station to play bands like Guns and Roses, and Red Hot Chili Peppers on a show called DemoListen, which only plays demo tapes unsigned bands. Of course, even if you don't like that type of music, you will find something you like being played, but I use those bands to show how "New Music" they really are.
Anyway, they have a decent webstream, and I talked to the General Manager and he said said they would have a higher bitrate stream soon too.
personally (aside from just talking to friends etc) i've usually found it best to browse around other peoples collections on P2P apps... you can instantly tell if they have similar tastes to you and you can always message them and ask if an album is really that good before downloading/buying it.
perhaps i'm just biased by my musical tastes, but i'd recommend soulseek for this... not least 'cause it preserves the directory structure when you're browsing someone's files.
oh and amazon's recommendations aren't bad either, but that's been mentioned already =)
avatar
mesmerized.org/teki
www.markwheeler.net
and I like to find other bands with a similar sound, so what I do is go a Google search with keywords like "helmet inspired", "helmet meantime" etc which usually will bring up some interviews with other like-minded bands confessing they've been heavily influenced by said band.
I've found Trust company, Pressure 4-5, Snapcase, Align and other cool bands that way.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
It's only available in german, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to browse the top-ten.
INTUNE.ORG! Scoop-based discussion website.
97x bamm! the future of rock and roll. www.woxy.com independently owned and operated in oxford ohio for 20 years. they had a commercial on a little while ago saying that on other radio station in the nation plays more new music and that "wasn't just an opinion, but a fact" It was also featured in the movie Rain Man for goodness sakes!
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Happy hunting.
you select a genre that moght intrest you.
do a search for -
download the results, listen through and pick the ones you like : )
I'm surprised no one mentioned this site yet, they've been around a couple years. They cover a fair amount of major label artists but the majority are not on the majors. The artist interviews are really compelling and I've bought stuff I never knew I'd like as a result of hearing the interview. I only wish they updated the site more often, and their presentation is very low key, but I think they're on to something.
Tree artists? I didn't know Ents even formed bands!
-- And when Justice is gone, there is always... Force. --Laurie Anderson, "Oh Superman"
I tried most of the suggested websites and I like www.gnoosic.com best. It's simple and works better then the others I tried. Seems to be a general phenomena of the net: the most simple things work best.
I'm currently happily perusing all the other suggestions made so far for specific websites, but in my experience a big problem of websites like these is that they can be either very broad but pretty shallow, or limited in scope but very thorough. Given these two options, I definitely prefer the second kind. So you need to find the websites dedicated to specific genres. For finding these websites I'd suggest looking around on usenet groups for whatever genre you prefer.
:) This is mostly female singer-songwriters, from pretty well known artists like Enya and Loreena McKennitt, all the way to the fabulous, and if you ever come across someone who's heard of them you shouldn't bother playing any lotteries ever again, Basque and Happy Rhodes.
Personally I'm an ectophile, meaning I like ectophilic music.
The website dedicated to this particular kind of music is The Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music. Almost all the entries for different artists have links to other comparable artists, or you can simply follow the pretty specific subgenres.
I'd assume that there are similar websites for other genres, from barbiepop to hardrock, although not being overly interested in these other genres I wouldn't know where to find them. Still, merely being aware of the existence of this 'class' of website with extensive information within one subgenre like that, I think it should be possible to find them for other genres.
1.) Go to a show where a band you like is playing.
2.) Strike up a conversation with someone there and ask them which band they're there to see (opening act? Local band? Headliner?).
3.) Tell them that you're dying to hear some new music. Have they heard anything new and exciting recently? Virtually everyone that goes to shows has something on their playlist that they want to share.
4a.) Put an ear to some of the suggestions. Were any of the other bands playing that night any good? Listen to them too. If you find one that gets you, find out when they're coming to town. Repeat.
4b.) Look in your local indie paper for articles about local acts. Visit them randomly and talk to people in the bands that you like. Often they just played/toured with some other good band and are more than happy to talk about it. Find out the good places to see a show and just start going there and drinking.
(5.) ??? 6.) Profit!)
Seriously, this isn't a 'get out and get a life' post, this is how I've found most of the bands I listen to. It's all well and good to find good bands via websites or on Kazaa, but a ton of really great stuff still falls through the cracks. Just my opinion, could be wrong.
I just downloaded Audioscrobbler, a Winamp plugin that checks out the music you listen to and recommends similar music. I haven't used it enough to know how well it works yet, but there it is.
I like the Lite version as it has no spyware or such crap. I search for known music and then search the stash of shared files of specific users. Chances are, if they like something that I like, then they may also like something good that I have not heard. The Content Nazi must realize that this unintended side effect of peer-to-peer has got to be a Good Thing for music as it is a new variation of word of mouth that spreads the work on previously unknown music.
However, it is probably illegal where you are. As is smiling on a cloudy day.
Oh, for the love of Big Brother
Are you sure he didn't say "LOL, discovering new music?" I was right behind you and I'm pretty sure that's what he said.
Strange as it may seem, my friend entered 'zero 7' and 'air' as bands he liked, and found out about other, similar bands he never knew existed.
Unfortunately, My company hasn't gone beta with our new music recommendation service yet. If only you would have asked this question a few weeks later. :)
Come on, Amazon is a joke for discovering music. Try: www.epitonic.com, www.buddyhead.com, and of course www.mp3.com
I know a guy who makes a living listening to music and writing reviews and selling CD's. Buy guys like this and you'll get good music and they can stay in business so they can find you more great music.
Check out www.backroadsmusic.com
Lloyd has a great ear for modern music, is real friendly and ships fast.
You can read up on and discuss independent bands on NetLiveMusic.com.
/. like site (actually postnuke) and there are mp3 downloads from some of the bands, as well as discussion forums, bios, and other features.
Jeremy Krause and his gang have done a pretty good job on that
You need to check out
http://www.allmusic.com
Its a crazy cool music database webstite where you can do queries on artist, title, album, etc. One of the other features is a 'similar to other artists' category, where you are given examples of artists which sound like the artist from your query results.
Check it out!
-- NeTMoNGeR
Check out a site called Auralgasms (http://www.auralgasms.com). It is i site dedicated to the discovery of under-appreciated artists. It features a variety of alternative music genres and allows you to review, comment, download sample, rate artists, view bios, tour dates and more....
Please check it out and have fun!
One of the bands that "appeared from nowhere" and gained instant appreciation from whoever I had shown it to, was Clann Zu. They have their MP3 free on the site. A sort of modern rock-folk with a real flavor and excellent lyrics.
:)
Another one, and on the more melodic rock-metal wave, would be (albeit this one not exactly "unknown") Sinch. You can listen to snippets of songs on the site.
And, to finish, one of my all-time best surprises: My Vitriol. Just listen to the on-site snippets of their debut album Finelines. 'nuff said
Note: just a basic restatment, but... If I hadn't downloaded the MP3s ilegally, I wouldn't have bought the albuns (save for Clann Zu, for which the MP3 were legal and the physical album hasn't come out yet).
There are actually quite a few Ent bands, but they're not very popular with non-Ents, since the songs average about 17 hours each.
Ok. I think I see what you're saying now. By "interesting" you mean music which would be appealing to someone who is already an "expert" (a connossieur) in a particular genre, not one which would be interesting to someone unfamiliar with that genre.
I can relate to that. To return to the Moby example, I have a friend who is really into alternative music. For many years, I thought her music was horrible, because I couldn't make sense of it. It was only when she showed me a particular Moby CD that I began to find that particular genre acceptable and right now I'm less likely to consider her other music to be "horrible." So I think this is what you meant by Moby being "safe" and "inoffensive" -- it's the type of music you would show someone who is unfamilar with a particular genre, and which by such reason might seem like "cheap crap" to someone who was an expert in a particular type of music.
So I think the crux of the problem is that amazon.com's system is tuned to find such music which is appealing to novices of a particular style while you're looking for recommendations for someone who is already an expert in that particular genre. I see where amazon.com would fail.
It seems to me like it would be entirely possible to build such a recommendation system, but the system would be tuned in a different way than the ranking system which amazon.com employs. I'm sure this is a potentially interesting research area, but since amazon.com's data bank is proprietary, it isn't possible for people to play with it.
Sadly, I don't think we'll have a good recommendation system until people get together and come up with an "open" data set related to music preferences. Once this becomes available, I think we could have some definite progress in this area and different forms of AI could be evaluated.
Amazon.com also has the "people who bought this also bought..." feature. I've found quite a bit of more popular stuff that way.
Crizo.
As seen in Rainman,.....
Small station has been rocking the boat for 25 years now playing nothing but the best alternative (real alternative).
Ironically I have to go here to hear bands from D.C. and I Live in D.C.
Plus they stream in broadband....
97X - BAM! The Future of Rock and Roll....
Ah. Like 'Yes', you mean.
-- And when Justice is gone, there is always... Force. --Laurie Anderson, "Oh Superman"
WDET is Detroit's public station that has been playing an eclectic mix of music for years. Way back when, they we're playing the "Talking Heads" before any of the commercial stations even noticed. The hosts are knowledgeable about the music and provide insight and bios. They stream their content and have playlist archives at: wdetfm.org . Happy listening.
Get friends in college radio stations.. they will introduce you to lots of crazy artists you never knew existed. :)
They're going to have a lot of new music stuff. www.exfest.com
try http://www.epitonic.com
I'd say there are 3 main ways I discover music:
Incidentally, I came across another blog yesterday, because it showed up in my referer logs: Homeland Obscurity. Might be of particular interest to
CrippleJ is LOADED with ads (hey, they might be their own ads, but they're still ads) The news service is the most politically biased bullshit i've ever heard on air (which is understandable, they are funded by the govt. so they change their view like the breeze depending on who is in power and how much funding they gave them, as well as straight-out pushing their propaganda), and they dont play a thing that hasn't already been established on the alternative charts. It is just mainstream radio for poseurs who think they are superior. The sad thing is, 5-8 years ago and before, TripleJ was one of (if not THE) best radio stations in Australia. Now, they are just MTV with govt funding. Uncensored? Have you ever tried communicating with them? They screen every call, every comment on their website and their guests to only push certain views on current events/politics (As it affects the're funding directly). Their talkback show is basically a loadmouth presenter spouting uninformed garbage with no basis in reality, which wouldn't be a problem if they didn't aim it all at high school students. Mate,i'm sorry but TripleJ, since you went to the UK, is now the vampire of the Australian music scene. They used to be great, now they are just whores.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
I just want to clarify that SomaFM is not a 501(c)3 Nonprofit corporation. We don't bring in that much money and can't afford to hire the accountants to audit our books. However, we are commercial free, although we do have links to Amazon.com which we receive a (small) commission from, and a few other companies from time to time which we link the web site to for other affiliate fees.
SomaFM is run like a non-profit though. All our revenue (90% which is donations) goes into the actual costs of running the station, any surplus funds go towards expanding our programming and accessibility.
It would be great to be a real 501(c)3 nonprofit corp, and hopefully some day we can achieve that status. Then I could get a big-ass salary like the head of United Way or all those other charities do.
(Just kidding about the big-ass salary! But I would like SomaFM to be successful enough that I could do it as my only job.)
Rusty Hodge
SomaFM.com
(my email address is my first name at the domain)