I'm Returning to Modern Music: What's Goin' On?

Mods: I believe this is the right forum for this post; please move it if necessary. To all: my apologies for the long post, and my thanks for your patience in reading it.

I remember clearly the moment I became my dad, and said to myself, “These kids and their music today!” Don’t remember what month or date it was, but I know the year and I remember where I was. Since that time, and it’s been a looooooong time, I haven’t made any real effort to keep up with what’s been happening in music. Any kind of music. Recently, however, I’ve been exposed to new(er) artists through forum posts, both here and on other forums I frequent, and my interest has been piqued. Thus, this post, which I’m dividing into roughly four categories, and in which I invite any and all information and discussion.

My musical tastes back then probably rotated around two or three major influences. I lived in the U.K. for a couple of years in the very early 80s; music trends, then and (I presume) now, varied greatly from the way they happen here in the States. I religiously read Creem magazine and followed up on lots of its “recommendations.” I came of age just as MTV was starting up, so maybe I’ve been forever imprinted with the idea that music videos are essential or at least valuable.

There isn’t, to the best of my knowledge, any music that I hate (despite my earlier “Get off my lawn!”-type statement; it was just a bad year for me in general. :confused: ). In every genre I’ve ever encountered, I’ve found something I liked and something I didn’t care for so much. Aside from the influences of the aforementioned Creem magazine, MTV, and local radio (pop, classic rock, oldies, R&B/hip-hop/rap, country, gospel - and usually only one of each, at least where I’ve lived), I mostly stuck to newer work of artists whose work I already liked. MTV videos were mainly the work of pop/radio darlings, but I also branched into what might have been called “alternative” or “adult alternative.” I also was influenced by what my friends were listening to, and the music being played in the clubs I spent far too many hours in.

I said all that to give you some background on where I’m coming from, musical-interest-wise. Now, on to my actual questions and topics of discussion. Since I can’t seem to stop the huge flow of words, I’ve tried to cut them up into digestable chunks, so as to better decipher them and actually find the questions and/or points of discussion. :wink:

1) Yeah, music videos on MTV, not so much anymore. Has YouTube “officially” taken MTV’s place, where musicians (that bother making videos for a given song) place their videos to be viewed?
a) If so, is it that I can subscribe to a given musical artist/band and maybe see all their videos, new and old, or is it just whatever I can find?
b) If not, well, I know that musicians are still making videos; I’ve seen recent ones done by new(er) bands. If YouTube isn’t the place to go, or the only place, are there other centralized places, or are we talking about visiting individual artist/band websites?

2) I am sick unto death of local radio, but there is a college station here that I tune into some of the time, and it has interesting music (I gather that’s true of most college stations, as long as one is open-minded or younger or both).
a) I’ve heard mention of online streaming radio. I have a fair idea of what that is, but what might be some good online radio stations to check out?
[INDENT]1)) My criteria here is that the station offers a variety of music (not just focusing on, say, speed metal - not that there’s anything wrong with that), that it’s a fairly well-run station (not just somebody playing his or her favorite songs haphazardly with no sense of how to “run a show”), and maybe that it’s well-established (the well-established stations, IMO, tend to be backed up by sponsorship money and thus tend to become calcified over time, turning into online versions of local radio).[/INDENT]

3) The purchasing of music these days is (or may be) largely by download, as I understand it. I don’t have an iPod (but am not averse to getting one), but I am interested in hearing what’s good and bad about them. Note that I’m mostly a homebody/hermit who’s at his computer most of his waking hours, so perhaps an iPod (or other such device) is unnecessary.
a) More importantly, what are good sources to find and purchase music (like, what’s it called, iTunes or something?)?
[INDENT]1)) I don’t mind a reasonable monthly subscription rate to have access to catalogs, but I believe when I purchase a musical download, it’s mine, to do with as I see fit forever, even when I stop paying that subscription. As you might imagine, I dislike DRM strong-arm methods quite a lot, actually.[/INDENT]
[INDENT]2)) When Napster first came on the scene, I dabbled in it, but I don’t do file-sharing any more. Live and let live is my policy, though, so if you do, more power to you; just don’t recommend such to me, please.[/INDENT]
b) While we’re on the subject of finding good sources from which to purchase music, do you know of any good sources of music recommendations?

4) Lastly, please don’t hesitate to recommend your favorites, regardless of genre or even when that music came out (if it’s 60s music I haven’t been exposed to, for instance, I’m willing to give it a fair shake). I won’t name the handful of bands I’ve recently become interested in, so as not to skew your answers. I want to come out of my self-imposed shell; thus, the exploration’s the thing. What do you like, and maybe why do you like it?

Thanks in advance to any and all responders. Know that I will value your input no matter what it is; when one is building a map, one needs to know everything.

Ready. Set. DISCUSS!

Youtube is my go-to source. Some artists embrace it and post official videos themselves. Some artists don’t care, and their fans post up videos. Some artists (or rather, their publishers) actively police youtube for their content and demand that it be taken down. So it’s really going to be dependent on the artist and their publisher whether you can find their videos on youtube. There may be some other places you can look, but personally, if it’s not on youtube, then I don’t bother hunting it down.

There are many many radio options nowadays, be it local, satellite, or internet. I subscribe to an internet radio service called Pandora (you can listen for free too, but limited to a certain bandwidth/hours). From what I understand, many internet radio-type things follow this same model – you input the kind of music (groups, songs, genres) you like, and it’ll pick songs based off of that. As each song comes up, you can thumbs up and thumbs down to make the algorithm smarter. So far, it’s done a great job of playing songs I enjoy as well as exposing me to new artists I previously missed. I have something like 6 or 7 different “stations” set up through them, depending on my mood.

Again, there’s a whole plethora of venues from which to buy your music digitally. My preferred method is Amazon.com’s mp3 store. The downloads are quick, cheap, acceptable quality, and most importantly, free of DRM. If it’s a work where I’m concerned about the quality (like say, Robert Shaw’s chorale performing Rachmaninoff’s Vespers), I’ll just order the CD instead. They frequently have a lot of great specials in their mp3 store, too. The only downside is you have to be diligent with backing your orders up – if you lose it, you don’t get to re-download it for free, even though they have a record of your purchase (this is true of most mp3 outlets – I’ve heard of some that allow you to keep a “digital locker” of sorts, but I don’t know them off the top of my head). If you’re against DRM, definitely steer clear of iTunes. They’re incredibly restrictive on how you can use the mp3s you buy from them, unless you’re willing to do some work/jump through hoops to crack through their scheme.

I’m going to refrain from making recommendations on music for now. Like you, I like a little bit of everything, and I’d be typing for weeks. Maybe later!

I’m going to skip making recommendations, also, and just ask you to bookmark my blog and go there from time to time. I mostly write about jazz-tinged music and metal (and jazz-tinged metal), and I always include links to some of the songs I writing about, even if I have to make the videos myself.

I’m working on my Best of 2010 article now, and should have it up between Xmas and NYD.

Great information and suggestions from both Headrush042 and Snowboarder Bo! Pandora looks almost ideal for my purposes; I’m eagerly looking it over now. Bo, I’ll be going through your blog as well. Thanks to both of you for your help!

FYI iTunes is 90-95% DRM-free since the beginning of this year.

You may also want to check out Rhapsody. $10-15/month for unlimited access to a huge library of music. The more expensive plan ($15) you can download music onto a digital music player and listen to them all you want as long as your subscription is active. You can also buy tracks from them outright but there’s really no reason to do that.

VH1 actually still plays music videos in the morning. There are also music channels like Fuse and Paladium that play music videos and concerts in HD.

Napster has changed to a subscription format similar to Rhapsody and is now 100% legit.

Well it prolly would have been nice of me to leave a link to it then, wouldn’t it? [sigh]

This hasn’t been the best morning ever.

http://poorimpulsecontrol.blog.com/

This is outdated information, there is no DRM on any of the music in the iTunes store.

Very interesting OP, tripthicket.

I am always on the lookout for good music, but I’ve felt fairly out of the loop for at least a decade. Here is what I do:

I record every episode of David Letterman. When I watch each episode, I zoom forward to the night’s musical guest. This gives a pretty good exposure, I think, to what is going on in the music world (minus the dance/pop bullcrap that I can’t stand); I’ve discovered some new musical interests this way.

It would also work with Conan, etc., but so far I’ve stuck with Letterman.
mmm

  1. Pretty much. Not every artist supports youtube, but many fan posted videos are available. I don’t know of another site that’s popular for music vids, although many bands have at least a basic web site and sometimes post videos and/or mp3’s.
    1a) I usually do a search on the band name and see what comes up. If there’s a lot I’ll do another search on band name + song title to narrow it down. Videos vary pretty widely in quality but often there are multiples of the same one.
  2. Sorry, I don’t listen to radio and don’t know much about it.
  3. I have an ipdod classic (80gb), and I love it. I resisted getting an mp3 player for a long time (early models were very buggy and had short battery life), but finally picked up a Creative Zen Micro 6gb about 5 years ago. Ripping my cd’s and transferring them to the Zen was fast and easy, and it sounded great. Eventually I needed more space, so wound up with the 'pod. It doesn’t sound quite as good, but you can play videos and games on it, plus it holds all my mp3’s (about 400 cd’s worth), so that kinda makes up for the slight drop in sound quality. I have ripped a few dvd’s of music videos and television shows using a program called Handbrake, and it was fairly easy. I have 2 plug in devices for my ipod, a cassette adapter which allows me to play the pod in my car, and another device which converts my music to a short range fm signal to play on any boombox or radio. The FM converter doesn’t work well in cars, which is why I got the cassette adapter, but between the 2 devices I can carry 400 cd’s worth of music around with me and play it anywhere I go. The games and videos are great time-wasters for work breaks and on the bus too.
    3a) itunes and Amazon are good sites to download music. The artists web site usually has stuff cheaper though. Personally I like to buy the cd’s (usually from ebay), and rip them myself.
    3b) I like amazon’s user reviews for product recommendations (not just music). Amazon also has a “recommended for people who like this product” that is pretty spot on, and a “list” feature (created by users) that’s great for finding similar things to your taste.
  4. I like a lot of different stuff but it’s mostly small bands on small labels. Categories of music that I’m into are European style power metal (mostly Lord of the Rings type fantasy metal bands like Blind Guardian and Rhapsody), Goth bands like Nightwish and Within Temptation (just the music, I’m not into anything else Goth), Indie Rock and Pop (which covers a lot of ground), Instrumental rock/pop (Tristeza, The Mercury Program), electronica, experimental bands like Radiohead, prog (modern versions of bands like Genesis or Rush), 70’s/80’s rock/metal (not the hair band crapple like Poison or Motley Crue though), some early punk (Dead Kennedys), stuff like Nick Cave which is really hard to classify, and spooky/scary stuff (Black Heart Procession, Pinetop Seven). If any of this sounds like it’d be up your alley let me know. I would like to get more into Jazz and Classical music but don’t have a good source for recommendations or the cash right now to indulge.

I mostly use last.fm’s suggestions and digging through blogs and friends’ recommendations to find new stuff.

For music recs from us though, you can try my most favorite artist, Sarah Fimm, who has a 31 track sampler available for free download. I discuss it here.

I am an old fart but stay up to date by listening to Aussie radio station Triple J. I think it is the best youth oriented station on earth. You can stream their stuff live and there are tons of things to play on the site.

Boy, am I out of the loop. Is it still in a proprietary format or are they straight-up mp3s now? (I realize there are conversions and third-party decoders available, but that’s an extra step)

They’re the same file format they used to be (AAC), just without the protection (the entire music catalogue was has been DRM-free since April 2009). You can convert to MP3 in iTunes easily using the right-click menu.

I believe (but am not certain) that Japan is the only country to still have DRM on the music, and am pretty sure movies/TV shows in all countries are still protected.