New Music Challenge
We have a mod’s permission to do this thread IF we limit ourselves to the sources I’ll list below. I do not feel that this is in anyway a hardship given there are thousands of artists on those sites.
Anyway, we’re going to challenge the notion that there’s “no good new music” by finding some. My challenge to you is to discover a new-to-you band/solo artist with free MP3s to download, and share your discovery with us. Or more than one band, if you’re so inclined. There are tons of bands you’ve never heard before and you’re bound to like some of them if you go and look. Report back here once your hunt is over.
The catch, alluded to above, is that these free MP3s have to be legally offered, which means that the only sources that are acceptable – because all three are uploaded by the artists themselves, not third parties - are as follows:
- the official website of a given band. (No fansites!)
- myspace pages created by the bands
- purevolume.com pages also created by the bands (every band page includes a way to randomly jump to another band at the bottom, which is useful if you’re not sure where to look first: just click on any band on the front page and follow the links from there)
Here are my offerings. I’m doing a few to demonstrate each type of acceptable source, but don’t feel obligated to do likewise. You can, but you don’t need to.
Paper Models - I stumbled across this band last week when I listened to this free sampler. I didn’t think much of the other bands, but I’ve had their song “Coming Back to Me” on a semi-permanent loop since then.
A Kiss Could Be Deadly - This band has a neat promotion going on. As you’ll note, you can download the last song, and only listen to the others. However, if you send them a message to request their EP, they’ll e-mail you five songs for free. They’re all worth listening to in IMHO, but “If You Mean It” which doesn’t seem to be offered is the best, oh well.
Aaron MacDonald - Right before Halloween I was looking for songs about witches, zombies, ghosts and other halloween icons when I found a site with his song “She’s A Witch.” A couple of weeks ago I discovered that he’s doing a “song-a-day” project, and is uploading new songs to his site just about daily. I recommend “Defeated at Last” and “The Saddest Song” particularly.
Pushing Zero - A more traditional band page. To be perfectly honest, I recently bought their CD before I knew about the webpage, but this is a nice “normal” by artist webpage for demo purposes. This is a band from Maine, and I picked up their EP when a friend and I decided to buy CDs from the “local artist” section at random - we based our selection on names and cover art. The other CD was a bust, but we really liked this one. You can find the MP3s on this page under Music.
So there you have several examples of what you’re being asked to do. Please give us links to your newly discovered band with free mp3s too, so we don’t have to hunt down your discoveries.