Has P2P Influenced Your Music Tastes?

Whatistehmatrix asks: "About 5 years ago, when I first found out about KaZaA, it was somewhat 'underground' and had less than 1 million people. I soon discovered there was an unbelievable amount of music open to me. Instead of getting the music I always heard on the radio, I always sought out the music that was previously unavailable to me [Japanese pop & rock, overseas techno, etc]. Well, fast forward to today, and I actively buy CDs from groups I fell in love with from the songs I found on P2P. I was wondering, if any of the Slashdot community used to/still uses P2P programs to try out music that isn't heard on the radio, to expand your tastes in music from different countries & cultures?"

Comments

Streams

[Otter]

I find music streams to be much more useful for discovering new music (here's one from a couple of weeks ago that I immediately went out and bought). As a push medium, it's much better for bringing things to your attention that you didn't know about. P2P mostly assumes that you already know what you're looking for, which allows you to hear music you've read about without making you buy it but doesn't encourage discovery by itself.

How to select a good band

[jon_oner]

I recently found out a great way to pre-sort the good bands from the crappy ones. If the song you just downloaded is a 30 second loop or 3:15 of silence, then it typically means the band sucks and is in it just for the money (no talent or art). Thank you RIAA for helping us choose.

Yep

[The Bungi]

I discovered a shitload of artists I've grown to like and listen to. Indie stuff, foreign (well, foreign to the US) and so on. Much of it stuff you mainly find at B&N.

I had never really purchased that much music before. But here's the funny part: between 1999-2002 when I was really into Napster/Kazaa and other P2P networks I actually bought more music than ever before. Why? Because the stuff I really like to listen to I have to have in a CD. A downloaded MP3 just doesn't cut it for me in most cases. So I went out and bought the whole CD for those one or two songs I wanted. In some cases I found even better stuff, and in others the rest of the CD was crap, as is mostly the case. But them's the dregs.

I'm not going to try and make the point that music sharing promotes CD sales, because I don't think it's true regardless of my personal experience, but there's definitely something to say about a worldwide, diverse network of people who share their music. Back in the day you woudl find the most incredible stuff on Napster. Today (on the other networks) it's difficult to find anything beyond the top 40 crap, which is ironic considering that's precisely what the *AA people are trying to get off the networks.