The current “What are you listening to” thread brings this question to mind, and it’s something I’ve always wondered. I know there are some major music geeks around here, so where do you find the “good stuff”? My only outlet to find new (to me anyway) music is local radio which rarely affords me anything interesting, especially since the two times a year I don’t hear Bob Seger or Boston, I have no idea who the artist is or what the title of the song is because NO ONE SAYS WHAT THAT SONG was, or I can’t stay in the car to try and find out.
The last couple years since I got broadband internet has been great, I just love Yahoo Music. Honestly, I’ve found some real treats there, and of course, I can’t think of a single one. Um… The Hives? A French techno band called Daft Punk has a great song called “Robot Rock”, something I would never ever ever hear locally.
Where do I go? How do I find it? Whatever “it” is?
I found some great music by listening to bitcasts of radio stations from other countries. Pandora is good but I’ve yet to buy CDs based on what I listen to there whereas I have bought CDs by listening to bitcasts.
For the most part, by word of mouth and word of Internet - by which I mean this board. But I did hear a violinist on the radio the other night who I intend to check out. Now I just need to find out how to spell her name or something.
My friend used to choose albums by their art work, he bought only the ones he loved and hated. I found several of the bands that I love to this day that way.
Several BBC radio shows which may or may not appeal to your taste, but all of which are places I’ve found new stuff I’ve loved, and all of which can be listened to on-demand on t’internet:
…and MySpace. That’s where I’ve found more stuff I’ve liked recently than anywhere else…following one band or performer’s ‘friends’ links to others, and you hear a lot of rubbish, and a lot of excellent things.
If you like Daft Punk and The Hives, you may wanna check out pitchforkmedia.com. They seem to hold quite a sway on the indie community (which could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it), and their writing is somewhat pretentious, but they never fail to point me in the right direction for new music. Just don’t be intimidated if some of their in-jokes and hipster comments go over your head. I don’t have any friends that listen to the same music I do, so pitchfork and stylusmagazine.com are my best sources for discovering new artists.
I’ll second Pitchfork and Pandora. I like Salon.com’s Audiofile, too, which is a little hit-and-miss by my tastes but very good in general. My favorite, though, is bandhopping. Just look for connections.
If you notice a lot of good bands showing up on a small, niche label, you can probably be safe checking out their other acts - I’ll buy almost anything that shows up on Metropolis Records, for example, given a nudge.
If two bands share an EP, or show up as remixers/guests on each others’ CDs, you’ll probably like one if you like the other. If a good band cites another as an influence, that’s almost definitely a cute to go head in that direction (it doesn’t work both ways; plenty of bad bands have been influenced by good ones). Sometimes a member of one will pick up with another group. And so on.
Having moved to the middle of nowhere, relatively, I’ve found that if I want to find something that’s actually been released in the past 5 years, and feel connected, I have to use my bookmarked Shoutcast stations on Winamp. I’ve made a Notepad file of bands to check out, because I usually will only listen to stations that display the artist names.
Mostly radio these days. It’s been a good while since I bought any recordings so I may not have any relevant input. Most of what I listen to on radio is jazz, but the music on A Prairie Home Companion or Fresh Air would also qualify for an occasional tune or artist I wouldn’t have heard otherwise.
Long ago I worked in a record shop and a couple of radio stations so I got much exposure that way. Most of my record buying was in those days.
I’d say that the number of musical exposures I got through other individuals would have to be less then 20, although some of them were exceptional finds. My son, brother, and a few friends have all had similar tastes and occasionally have exposed me to people I hadn’t known of before. People and groups like Jean-Luc Ponty, Dire Straits, Kenny Rankin, Larry Carlton, Michael Hedges, Danny Gatton, Tony Rice, and a few others all came to my awareness through other individuals.
These days something will have to knock me down before I’ll go buy a CD of it, and I don’t avail myself of the latest gizmos for downloading things. It’s an exceptional CD that I will want to hear again after maybe 10 listenings, so I don’t buy new ones. They rotate on the radio often enough to suit me.
I may get boring saying this but I think Australia’s Triple J is the best youth culture radio station on earth. You can listen online. Here is their current playlist. Honestly you will never grow old.
If you’re interested in a particular style, do a Google search for “<that style> radio”. Pick a band you like and start poking around on allmusic.com. Or ask about specifics here.
Saturdays on KCUR, the NPR station in Kansas City. At noon they have a local two-hour show called Cyprus Avenue, which is actually a pair of one-hour shows – each hour is devoted to a specific artist, or genre (like gospel), or maybe what they call a “survey” show where they feature samplings from three or four recent releases. The host is very knowledgeable and provides a lot of background information about the artists and music. In most cases the first hour is a new show and the second hour is a repeat of an older show generally in the same vein as the first. My only complaint is that the guy does too many shows about Elvis, or – as you can probably guess from the name of the show – Van Morrison.
Up until a few years ago they used to run the syndicated World Cafe for two hours after Cyprus Avenue, but they have replaced it with a local show called Sonic Spectrum. Sonic Spectrum is similar to World Cafe in that they play a variety of artists and different styles of music, but I think it has a little harder edge to it than World Cafe.
Then from 8pm to midnight is the Fish Fry, “four hours of blues, soul, rhythm & blues, jumpin’ jive and zydeco”.
Kate Bush: Back in 1986, I caught a few seconds of her on an episode of Night Flight. When the repeat came on, I recorded it and have been a fan ever since based on the song “Suspended in Gaffa”.
Tori Amos: VH1 showed her “Silent All These Years” video about 300,000,000 times, so I figured I’d give it a listen. A fan since 1992.
Alison Krauss: I was at a time where I didn’t have a car. I’d borrowed my landlady’s car (a 1974 Ford LTD with an AM-only radio) one Sunday. The only AM stations that had any music was a country station. “I’ve Got That Old Feeling” came on. I bought that CD and have been a big fan ever since.
I get my recommendations from various sources;
Online - I check out Pitchforkmedia.com and tinymixtapes.com daily
Magazines - faithful reader of Q, Mojo and Uncut (in my opinion nothing beats the UK magazines for music reviews)
Friends - a friend back home has a recordstore so he emails me constantly with what to check out
Myspace is really cool for discovering new music. Sometimes I just cruise the top rated lists and other times I go looking for a specific band I’ve heard about. Most bands have at least three or four songs up in their entirety (which I find way more helpful than the littel snippets Amazon has) and some bands will even preview their entire albums.
This topic comes up a lot on here I’ve noticed. Here are some of my suggestions. Note that I was also a music critic for many years so I got free music all the time, but I was also a music geek beforehand.
Friends are a good bet.
Label affinities: if you find more than one band/artist that you like on a small-ish label, you may like others on that same label.
Dependable, quality music magazines, like The Wire and Mojo for example.
Distributors and record stores who describe the music on the product or in their catalogs. Like Aquarius Records in SF or Reckless and Dusty Groove here in Chicago.
Record stores that will let you listen to music first has led me to many purchases over the years.
The Internet is very helpful. Listen to clips on sites like Amazon, or whole songs wherever, from a band’s own site and so on. Or read reviews on Internet-based magazines like Pitchfork, or on discussion boards. Find streaming radio sites. Pandora – very 1-dimensional and has some serious flaws but you might find something on there you like, especially if your musical knowledge is very small. There’s another site I’ve heard about on here that’s like Pandora but I don’t remember what it is.
I have to admit that being a music geek means being willing to a) take risks (pick up mystery music and find out if you like it or not without knowing what it is beforehand – I’ve been doing that since I was a teenager), b) do your homework (read, research, pay attention, listen, don’t depend on any one source and you’ll never get anywhere if you just listen to commercial radio – I can’t speak for satellite radio though because I don’t use it).