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Where Do You Find Your Foreign Music?
Midnight Thunder asks: "There issue of music downloads, and paying for your music, has been discussed many time before here on Slashdot. Generally when you head down to your local music store you are limited to a choice of music adapted to your local market. I tend to find that trying to get hold of non-English music, here in North America, from sources other than P2P file sharing is almost impossible. What do you do if you heard a track on a streaming internet music station, or from a friend with an MP3 version, that is not available in your country, what do you do to get a 'legitimate' copy of the track and reward the artist?"
The never mentioned legal music download site. $10 a month all you can eat legal mp3's.
,honestly, am just a very happy customer.
The non-western stuff is mainly indian and african but there is a lot of good stuff in there.
http://www.emusic.com
I
Oh really?
.. for one thing quit looking at Media Play, Best Buy, etc. Look in the phone book for a local shop. They tend to have more of an obscure selection. Lots tend to concentrate on local music, but many also have a good import selection. In my area there is a great New World record shop.
Cheers!
I also buy most of my movies from them. A lot of the movies can be bought three at a time for $10/each (if you don't buy them in 3s to get the discount, they're usually $12-$15). VCDs are even cheaper if you want to go that route. You can get region-free DVD players from them as well (the Shinsonic is not a bad set, although there is a weird "vertical line ghosting" issue on large blocks of static, dark, solid colors).
I very highly recommend them. One note of warning is that they take a few days to process and ship orders, since they often have to ship some stuff from their HK (I assume) warehouse to California before it will ship out to a US customer. They do seem to have been trimming this turnaround down a little (average delivery time, from time of order, using overnight is now one week), so either they're getting a little more efficient or they know me well enough that I'll keep on coming back spending hundreds each month, as long as they keep me happy. ;-)
Anyway, if you're into Korean, Japanese or Chinese music/movies/etc, definitely give them a look. And, no, I do not work for them or have any relationship with them other than being a very satisfied customer.
here
List is oriented to getting Japanese stuff into the U.S. though
For a smaller online seller, I find Other Music has an excellent selection of otherwise import-only CDs. And a great selection of older/obscure music in general.
I haven't been too impressed with Amazon.com. HMV.com is a little better, but all to often the forign music they do have are usually specials adapted for the North American market. For example I felt like checking out Nena (99 Red Balloons or 99 Luftballons, in German), but the copy I found at HMV had more english music than German. I am of the sentiment that an artist sounds better when they are singing in their native language.
:(
At work I have some Romanian and Tunisian collegues, who brought in their music. When I asked them where the got it, they told be that they either asked a friend who was going over to the country, or downloaded it online, off Kazaa or something of the sorts. It wasn't really the answer I was looking for
I definetly feel that any company that starts providing music online legally would be filling a very evident niche, if they provided music that you can't but from your usual retailers.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
If you're into Japanese music/dvd's/anime, www.cdjapan.co.jp is a great place to shop.
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
The Virgin Megastore is one. Even though it has the evil RIAA-ness and is the pinnacle of american consumerdom, the megastore lives up to its name. They have one of the largest foreign music sections I've seen.
Also, since most of the foreign music I listen to is Japanese I check out www.avexnet.or.jp. That is the site of Avex, the major recording label for the best j-pop music, like Ayumi Hamasaki. Also I head to www.cdjapan.co.jp. It is in english and it sells just about every japanese cd and dvd you can think of.
Also of course is WinMX, which many foreginers use. Especially Italian people it seems. Lots of german electronica available as well. www.cdbaby.com has some of that too.
And of course, you can fly to your country of choice and buy cds at a store.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I'm lucky enough to live in San Francisco where the music scene is very DJ orientated - so there's plenty of places that import records from all over the world - but mainly europe. Sometimes I can pick imports up at groovetech.com or satelliterecords.com - but I find that it's ultimately faster and more reliable to go straight to the source - Juno.co.uk distributes almost everything dance music related from europe. And For DJ's the advantage of getting stuff straight from Europe is that I end up playing tracks a good few weeks before my 'competitors' in the DJ scene.
I've just started doing a weekly radio show, and we have a big focus on new music. I'm not well enough known to get on the mailing lists of record labels, so I have to stay ahead of the game using juno.
I live in Québec and we don't have that problem. At one of the biggest shop (Archambault), we've got music from about 100 countries. While for some countries, the selection is mainly "best of" or otherwise limited, in general, it's quite good and affordable (20-25 CAD).
:
Example of CDs you can find
Petru Guelfucci, Corsica (Corse)
Khevrisa (Hungary)
Chava Alberstein (Israel)
Vicente Pradal, La noche oscura (Spain)
Paul Kunigis, Jeszcze Raz (Poland/Québec)
Bïa, Carmin (Brasil)
Putumayo collection
etc., etc., etc.
And if I remember correctly, this holds true for Vancouver too, in British Columbia. As for Toronto, I don't know, but I would think it's the same there too.
Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
If by chance, you happen to be looking for Spanish stuff, I can point you at Discoweb in Barcelona; they are willing to ship across-the-pond. I have been getting most of my Spanish (and even some Basque!) metal there -- stuff that none of my usual importers would get for me.
BTW, you're doing the right thing to ask in an international forum. The best research is where someone tells you the answer. ;-) But you might wanna ask around in some forum specific to your desired genre, too.
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where are the great streaming music stations? A few recommendations of where to listen might help - the more who hear this sort of music, the more people will bother their local media outlets to carry it!
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"I listen to 20th century classical music, mostly. Same deal."
A lot of people recommend www.mdt.co.uk for cheap disks from the UK to the rest of the world. I'm in the UK and use it as my first point of call - nearly always cheaper than high-street shops, and usually much cheaper. Even paying postage to the States seems to be worthwhile.