compmonkey

I guess I can’t really claim that all of my favorite bands were found after getting a computer with internet. Well, I could, but I don’t think it would be 100% due to that. But it probably is.

Anyway, back in 1999 I was a senior In high school. While swirling brilliant galaxies of amazing music were sitting on store shelves (there used to be stores that actually sold cds, kids!), I was living in the cardboard box of KROQ. I loved Foo Fighters, Static X, Sublime, Blink 182, System of a Down, P.O.D., and a bunch of other bands that I would rarely give a chance today. While these are not all terrible bands per se, I feel that they made a crappy musical boundary for a person my age.

It wasn’t until I graduated that I finally had the opportunity to get my grubby hands on a crappy little Compaq pc that I bought from Best Buy. Oh, if I could have a conversation with my former self. I was forever changed. Now I could easily check out all kinds of new (and old) stuff, without any hassle. (incidentally, I’m typing this on my compaq laptop that has held up for quite a while).

In the time that has passed, I’ve found a few ways to locate new music that have worked well for me. Here they are in no order:

- Pandora.com

This is the kind of thing people probably talked about long before it ever existed.
Pandora is a website where you can input a band or song name and get a streamed radio station of similar songs by different artists. It’s free and is likely to yield results of which you’ve never heard. In fact, I’ve heard a few people who get frustrated with it because they like some of the artists, but can’t find the music anywhere else. If you get a song or artist that you don’t like, or don’t agree is similar, simply give it the thumbs down, and it’ll never show up again.

As an example, I’ve put in an artist I know Kilian enjoys: White Rabbits. The first song Pandora plays is always from the band you first type in. In this case, it’s “Kid on My Shoulders” from the album “Fort Nightly”. The text that pops up illustrates “electric rock instrumentation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, acoustic rhythm piano, and minor key tonality”. These are the aspects for which it will find matches in future song plays.

The second song to come up is “Conquest” by Tapes ‘n Tapes. There are some matching aspects listed in the popup, but not all of them are exactly the same, though, the similarities are even more apparent in the music.

- Last.fm

Last.fm is like Pandora with a community built in. But it’s so much more than that.

The whole idea of Last.fm is built around a plugin for your media player. Whether you prefer iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, or anything else, chances are there is a compatible last.fm plugin for it. The plugin monitors your listening habits and sends the data to the last.fm website, where stats on your profile show your top songs and artists. The website also recommends all kinds of things based on your info, such as “neighbors” (people who have a similar musical taste), events by your favorite artists in your area, and artists and songs that play through a streaming radio station.

Last.fm is a rather vast entity for it’s age. There is a webpage devoted to every artist (even every song!) with links to similar artist pages and streaming radio stations that play similar music. There are comment boxes on every artist and song page, with “top listener” information and band information.

Of course you’ll always get the dingleberry that went on Kazaa and downloaded “Love Gun” by Iron Butterfly, listened to it a bunch of times, and got the song into the last.fm databanks… except that Love Gun is by Kiss, not Iron Butterfly. Last.fm recently integrated something that catches these mistagged or incorrectly named tracks and automatically corrects them. This is a simple, yet potent joy for anyone who has seen any horribly mis-labeled tracks that border on being offensive.

This would be the undisputed holy grail of music sites (it probably still is), but has one drawback. The music to which you listen has to be from a device or from your computer. This may not be much of a drawback for most, but personally, I listen to a lot of the music from cds in the car. But if you’re using an ipod, zune, or what have you, there is a plugin that allows you to “scrobble” (send music data to last.fm) the tracks to which you’ve listened. I’m always seeing new ways to scrobble cropping up, so who knows where they’ll take it.

- 8tracks.com

This one is the one about which I’m most excited. I am a mixtape/mixcd fanatic. If I know you and haven’t ever made you a mix, it’s out of the ordinary for me. I have to make a new personal mix about once every one or two weeks, because I’ve gotten pretty picky about what I’m hearing in a given week. I get sick of music pretty quickly.

Being the mixfreak that I am, I’ve searched for a website where I can upload songs and arrange them to a mix, so I could access it if my media player decided to magically clear all my playlists (itunes is the major perpetrator for this). It’s also convenient if you want to share a mix with a friend easily. I’ve found a couple sites in the past that do this, but they have since been shut down (“Muxtape” was one of them). I think this happens because the site creators don’t structure the functionality of the site in accordance with certain copyright laws.

8tracks allows you to upload your songs and create a playlist, but it must be at least 8 tracks long. Other site users can find your mixes via keyword search (you can apply 3 searchable tags to any 1 mix). You can view how many times your mix has been played, as well as comments that other users might leave you on that mix.

You have the option to “follow” any other user, which adds every new mix they make to your “mix feed”. I haven’t done this too much, but I know it’s a good way to get people listening to my mixes. You give a little, you get a little.

- Blogs

Now, if you told me a few years ago that blogs were a surefire way to find great new music, I would have said something akin to “Really? I’ll have to check that out.” Then never give it a second thought. Half of the reason I wouldn’t have given it a chance is that I didn’t think it would work, and the other half is that I wouldn’t know how to search something like that anyway. It turns out it’s as easy as going to google and typing in the band’s name and blogspot.com.

I would recommend searching a band you like first, find a blog containing feature or information on said band, then seeing what else the blog has to feature. Blogs usually stick to some kind of theme or genre, but they often network with other blogs, so there’s more to peruse.

There’s not much else to say about blogs, other than that many of them contain links to free full album downloads.

So there you have it. All of these items have helped me find new music in one way or another. So if you’re looking, check em out and you’re likely to find something you like.

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