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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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!
Of course, it's been a while since I used it, so your experience may vary.
--Mike--
I almost forgot.
I like Indie Rock / Emo / Punk / Hardcore and I have found that just by browsing alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.indie I have found lots of new, very good music to listen to and explore.
Interpol just rocks the Casba
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)
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
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.,
Did you say "Outside"? Another heretic!! Burn him!!!
True warriors use the Klingon Google
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
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.
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
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.
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 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
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.
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. "
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.
Some folks have been known to get weirded out by this.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
I'd love to see a service like Citysearch (which posts, amoung other things, listings of bands playing in your local area, as long as your local area is somewhat metropolitan), but that actually linked to samples of the band's music, and had the ability to quickly listen to a bunch of samples for bands playing tonight. You could do a ton of tie-ins: buy CDs, buy tickets, buy shirts, send mail to the band, etc.
"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.
go to a used music store, poke through there stuff, ask the people who work there.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
-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.
I gave it the names of one Italian folk band and 2 klezmer bands.
It suggested Sam Cooke, Patsy Cline, Dwight Yokum, some terrible German singer, and a new-age band. And a few others I'd never heard of and couldn't locate in a fast P2P search.
It didn't even manage to match either of the genres. Sorry, this is not artificial intelligence, it is artificial stupidity.
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.
Actually, Shareaza does have a search monitor. Check the "View" menu. (If you're not a hub, you'll only see searches that get passed on to you by your hubs/ultrapeers as being potential matches with files you have, though.)
It keeps stats on hits (by others on your files) in the library window.
Or you could use a more versatile system like MoveableType... :-)
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
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
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.
has tons of barely heard of artists, links similar artists and groups together. good stuff.
This is still how I find CDs to buy. (Net radio is rather difficult when you can only get 28.8 where you live.)
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.
Monkey Radio is a great alternative for all the groovers out there.
Where the Music Matters
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
They might group you with others who prefer clean underwear. Then again, maybe not.
Here's some new music - check out www.fadededge.com/audio and see what you think.
$45 per U Colocation Special
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.
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.
If you're gonna start a weblog, do your users a favor and use Scoop.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Mongomusic.com used to do an awesome job of this, but Microsoft bought them and they vanished.
May we never see th
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
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.
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.
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.
...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."
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.
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.
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
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
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
You should also be looking at ampcast.com and besonic.com and so on- Ampcast and Besonic are NOT RIAA at all.
My best music was done after I left mp3.com. Anyone you know on mp3.com is being ripped off- it's good to support your friends but you might suggest to them to find a better hosting solution :)
What would be great, for people who can't afford a serious operation like Ampcast, would be for some Slashdotters to get together and offer just HUGE BANDWIDTH and storage for indie musicians, so they don't have to resort to mp3.com and giving money to the RIAA just to have a net presence. There's practically nobody doing free music hosting anymore because it is so costly.
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.
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:
follow links from people's /. sigs
like Wesley Willis, Tenacious D, or Weird Al? check out Ghetto Mediaplay Quintet
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.
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.
Happy hunting.
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.
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....
It looks like he already has and is using slashdot to push his solution...check the link associated with his name in the article...
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 would advise you do it, if you can afford to. Tax deductible donations mean bigger donations!
sulli
RTFJ.