Finding new music?

[diechipmunk]

I'm just wondering how to most people find new music (other than modern pop)?

My taste in music is far from main stream, and I have a very hard time finding new music or groups to listed to. I need to refresh my library.

I mostly listed to blues, Albert King, Elmore James, Howlin Wolf; (hate jazz); and celtic-punkish stuff, Real McKenzies, Flogging Molly. I like rock and alternative, but not real heavy metal or pop\dance stuff.

I like Pandora and Slacker for entering a band I know and getting "similar" content, but their catalogs are somewhat limited. I'm not thrilled at the prospect of paying for Sirius, although I discovered a lot of new blues from XM when I had it in my old car.

Thanks for the retrogradations.

[CrowdAds]

[CDMP3PlayerFan]

One source you can try are podcasts. I subscribe to many of them to find new (to me) music. Among the podcasts are:

- Crap From The Past (http://www.crapfromthepast.com/)
- NPR Series: Annoying Music (http://www.npr.org/series/19348132/annoying-music)
- NPR: All Songs Considered Podcast (http://www.npr.org/programs/all-songs-considered/)
- Rewind Show (http://rewindshow.com/)
- Sound Opinions (http://www.soundopinions.org/)
- The Chillcast With Anji Bee (http://www.anjibee.com/category/podcast/chillcast/)

[reelon]

I used to be a subscriber to emusic which is (or was I don't know now) a good place to find a lot of indie music. The Zune pass is also another good option if you can get it for a month and do some automatic playlists and see what it recommends.

[dgb52]

i listen to the samples on Amazon and i download a lot of their free mp3 samplers

[sergivs]

Originally Posted by diechipmunk

I mostly listed to blues, Albert King, Elmore James, Howlin Wolf; (hate jazz); and celtic-punkish stuff, Real McKenzies, Flogging Molly.

It's cool but kinda all sounds the same, what's the point?

OK, seriously, try listening to good university stations online. For example, where I live, there is KALX. There was also KUSF, where I used to DJ until USF sold the license and it went off the air. However, the archives are still there

http://www.kusf-archives.com/

And just started broadcasting online-only, although not all programs are back yet and right now they are broadcasting silence, which will hopefully change soon:

http://wfmu.org/kusf.pls

And there are many others, I'm sure.

[dfkt]

Originally Posted by diechipmunk

I like Pandora and Slacker for entering a band I know and getting "similar" content, but their catalogs are somewhat limited.

Have you tried Last.fm? It should have quite a bit wider selection of music available than the other two.

Personally, I don't listen directly to Last.fm streaming radio (which would need a paid subscription). I scrobble my own music from MP3 players and PC, and Last.fm recommends me stuff based on all my listening habits. The more you scrobble, the more precise recommendations get - it's pretty smart about that.

[diechipmunk]

Originally Posted by dfkt

Have you tried Last.fm? It should have quite a bit wider selection of music available than the other two. ... I scrobble my own music from MP3 players and PC, ... The more you scrobble, the more precise recommendations get - it's pretty smart about that.

I'll check out last.fm; but I'll have to look up scrobble, before I commit to trying that.

[dfkt]

Heh, sorry for the 'insider lingo'.

Scrobbling just means you (semi)automatically transfer the artist/album name and track title you listened to to your account on Last.fm, and it learns from that. Almost any software player can scrobble (Winamp, Foobar, Mediamonkey, WMP, etc), and every Rockboxed MP3 player can do it as well as most MTP players.

[diechipmunk]

Thanks dftk, I figured it was something like that. I think that is just the solution I'm looking for, recommendations based on what I declare I like. I'll look into it.

[lestatar]

I second last.fm. I haven't been on much of late and I came to last.fm only recently myself, but from what I saw, it is potentially a great place to turn onto new music, especially stuff similar to what you already like.

[Confispect]

Hmmm,

The way I started to find stuff is by listening to the things people post.

Anything and everything on a forum that people seem to like listen to it.

[collegefbfan8898]

Same as dgb52 said. Go to amazon and look up free samples and download them. There really is some good stuff in there.

[diechipmunk]

I've been sampling a lot more on Amazon, and LastFM has been great. I like how LasFM points me to people with similar listening history, then I can look at their profiles for artists I don't know.

Thanks.

[IanD]

Last.fm, though I don't scrobble. The "bands that sound like" section sends you off in interesting directions.

These days, it's blogs. Like almost all blogs, there are tons of fairly specialised sources, and again, you can follow the "friend" links to widen it out a bit.

[Adub]

last.fm, a certain website's web map of similar artists, amazon lists, dfkt, freddie, other friends, some websites and blogs.

[sYlt]

Here's more: http://anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53327

[weedalin]

Choose the genre you want, go to wikipedia, search up an artist list corresponding to that genre, then start picking random names that sound cool to you.

[Satellite_6]

^lol

Grooveshark is the sh*t

[weedalin]

Originally Posted by Satellite_6

^lol

Grooveshark is the sh*t

I'm cirrus, mayne.

turntable.fm also works fine if you have access. I've gotten tons of great music from the great DJ's there.

[musichound]

Weedalin, on a seperate note, welcome back!