How do you find new music?
 

Are you one of those people who monopolize the listening station at the CD store? Do you borrow from friends? TV? Movies? Games? How do you discover your next CD acquisition?

listen.com's Audiogalaxy Rhapsody.

(Currently: Saint Etienne, "Hug My Soul")

I try to search everywhere on the web I can think of for names of musicians that I might like, then I download a few of their songs off gnutella and listen to them. For a while, I thought I could just listen to the 30-second clips on Amazon.com. But I discovered that 30 seconds isn't nearly enough time to judge a song by. Some songs take a while to get started. They have to build up mood and tension, and it's kind of the whole thing that affects you.

I was searching for "top 100 songs" lists on the web. Some are helpful, some are not. I found that the billboard-type lists aren't so useful because they only show me what was popular during that time period, and most of the really good stuff wasn't popular. But sometimes you can find lists of individual's favorite songs or bands. Those tend to be much more fruitful.

Amazon has a feature where if you're looking at a cd, you can see what people who bought that cd also bought. I've found this to be an incredibly fruitful source. The only downside is that you typically never leave your genre of choice. Speaking of genres, though, you can also look up the best selling cds in any particular genre on amazon as well. I've found several great artists this way.

But even when I find an artist I like on Amazon.com, I still try to download the song through file-sharing.

Asking friends what they listen to is another good way.

There's also the "What Sycamore, Dave, and Undertoad listen to" thread over in the Entertainment section. Maybe you'll get lucky and have similar tastes to them.

Oh, wait, that's the "What's playing on the stereo?" thread. Silly me. :)

Happy accident and the kindness of strangers. I'm still learning whats possible with my new computer.

I dunno...magazines and peers used to be my guiding force. Various radio shows too.

I don't buy a lot of CDs these days, so I'm pretty picky about what I get. And I haven't bought a "new" artist CD in some time. Not that I don't want to, but I haven't seen a lot of new bands out there that really grab me.

If it's not in a movie, a video game or a friend's CD player, then chances are I'll never hear it. I hardly listen to the radio anymore. Actually, I find a surprising amount of new music through video games. I just recently got into Crystal Method after hearing their song, "Listen All You Mutha F***ers!" in Splinter Cell. Any other gamers here?

I've been a supplemental Lafferty [?] to my roommate. The suggestions I have usually work. He just finished getting the encryption key from Ivan at Kalinatek. It's too bad you can't pistol-whip Ivan, whiny bastard anyway! :D

I listen to/record the streams coming off the shoutcast servers listed on Winamp.com. I'm in an ambient groove phase right now, so I've been listening to Groove Salad. I picked up some Orbital, Nightmares on Wax, and Brian Eno based on the stuff I've heard. Eno is more ambient, and some of his works are a tad cheesy, but generally good.

Radio is not dead
 

We have a *really* good (for my taste) radio station out of Bloomington, WTTS. They are an independant station, the program director is also the afternoon drive guy, and there talent more or less is kick ass.

As for music, what I can think of that I've heard in the office today (I keep the radio on all the time):

Lenny Kravitz
Elvis Costello
Beatles
Ben Harper
Pink Floyd
Rhett Miller (might of been Old 97's)
Peter Gabriel


Ah hell, they play a shitload of different genere's. Monday, they play a lot of new music, and Sunday is deep cuts. I was listening to John Mayer over a year ago on WTTS (according to WTTS, and Mayer, TTS was the first major station to give him air time).

In any case, that's where I get mine :)

Uryoces! I've been listening to quite a bit of ambient myself lately; I should like to have a musically-oriented discussion with you.

I used to find music on Audiogalaxy. The groups that they had, where various people contributed suggestions -- those were excellent places to discover music. I've found a few people from whom to find music, but my musical tastes have admittedly not expanded much since Audiogalaxy was killed.

:D Too true...

Friends, relations, KaZaA, random chance. All work equally well.

There are still some great radio stations out there that are fending off Clear Channel. I don't know of any here in Philadelphia, other than the college stations. But now that I have a car stereo again, I listen to the radio. There's still some good stuff out there that I like.

Incidentally, a lot of the good stuff I've heard recently has been either on NPR or CBC. I should pay more attention when they say who the artists are.

I get my music of Kazaa, and I search by artist name.
I get the artist's name after hearing a song from them I liked on the radio, on someone else's CD, or after they've been recommended.

Lately, the few times I've listened to the radio, I ended up listening to the hip-hop stations because it's the only stuff that's somewhat interesting... which is how I KNOW things have gotten pretty bad.