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How Do You Find New Non-RIAA Music?
burgundysizzle writes "Given the general reaction to the RIAA in comments, I assume that there are a number of users that try not to buy from RIAA sources. What alternatives do you use - or more importantly - what methods do you use to discover alternative sources of music? I use Sellaband.com (some free legal music available) and Amiestreet.com (new music is free and most music really cheap) to find new music, but I'm always on the lookout for interesting sites to discover new music. Tell me about your experiences and any other interesting places you get new music from. I'm looking for inexpensive, and legal."
I use the site http://www.riaaradar.com./
It has a listing of many mainstream albums and shows whether or not they are published by the RIAA.
I usually look through their RIAA-free lists and see if there's anything I'm interested in.
when bands play in the local student bar. Usually indie labels, often burned copies so you know quite a lot of the money goes directly to the band.
I strongly recommend jamendo.com...there is a lot of good music (especially if you are a electronica/indie sound rock fan Its all 100% freely downloadable from .torrent or emule, and usually covered by some kind of permissive license (making it free beer and freedom).
The site was started by french people so a lot of the music is from french bands, however lately stuff is being submitted by people from all over the world.
A couple of good picks from jamendo: SGX - Synesthetic, White Light Riot - Atomism and of course the widely famous t r y ^ d.
Check it out!
No kitty, this is my pot pie!
I have found that archive.org has some pretty good live stuff, especially if you are looking for a particular song and honestly I like hearing the live recordings of people I have never heard of before. So i hit archive a pretty good bit. It was sad when a lot of the soundboards were pulled for some of the bigger bands (like the Dead etc), however a lot of smaller groups still release really good stuff. For the most part its archive for me, and some lastfm with the occasional visit to magnatune..
I like magnatune, lets you listen to the music with descent quality befor buying it (in vorbis/mp3/flac/wav) for a custom price of which 50% goes to the artist. You're also allowed to share the music with a couple of friends.
In terms of MP3's on my work PC, I usually go to Google and type things like "Beethoven mp3" or "Bach mp3" or "Chopin mp3" or the like. All of the recordings I've downloaded have been free. It is not that difficult to produce this stuff - all you need to make a Chopin mp3 is a piano, a microphone and someone who can play Chopin decently. Plenty of people can. Not all of it is amateur though, I've downloaded fine recordings from professional orchestras for free as well. One of the top Google links I get is Classical Cat - the free classical music "cat-alogue".
I listen to CBC Radio 3 (the Canadian equivalent to BBC Radio 6(uk), TripleJ (aus), and the NPR music shows).
Oh, and it's good.
http://radio3.cbc.ca/
Also found in the "Alternative" and "Public" directories of the iTunes 'radio' section tab.
I'm subscribed to a reasonable active mailing list for the type of music I like (characterized by words like: female, singer-songwriter, alternative, ethereal, celtic, eclectic, folk, americana - although obviously not all at the same time; think artists in the range of Björk, Sarah McLachlan, Loreena McKennit, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins - although that pretty much exhausts the list of big names, and 95% of our conversation is about independent artists who (imo) sound far better than most of those, but whose names you'll never have heard of), where people constantly toss out new interesting names they've just discovered, and write about shows they attended. (The name of the mailinglist is ecto.)
CD Baby with its decent 2-minute samples and rather good "sounds like" comparisons is another way I've used to discover new music. All artists listed here are independent.
Opening acts at concerts of artists I already like also frequently turn out to be worthwhile in their own right. That's not a very swift way to get to know new artists, but it does add up over time.
Finally, every other year or so I get together (in the real world) with a group of people from the mailinglist, and we all bring the worthwhile CDs we've bought since the last such meet, which we play for each other throughout the day. We also make sampler CDs for each other, so we can all go back and re-listen to those things which caught our interest and remember "oh yeah, that sounded really good, I need to go and buy that".
http://www.garageband.com/
http://www.jamendo.com/
http://www.stage.fm/
http://magnatune.com/
http://www.soundclick.com/
http://www.myownmusic.de/
hand-picked from around 1000 at del.icio.us
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Amongst a lot of other good things (such as incremental backups of the worldwide web), archive.org also hosts a lot of music by various netlabels. This gives you access to much more good music than you're likely to have time to listen to, in a variety of genres. In particular, the chiptune inspired dance music of the label 8bitpeoples should go down well with the Slashdot crowd.