Posts (page 2)

Post-Reed, one of the most irritating problems I had was returning to a world without school networks stuffed with music and with radio stations that played the same old muck over and over.  Over the years (!!) I've managed to discover quite a few resources to find new music, and have since more than doubled my Reed music collection.  I'm feeling a bit bored and wanted to make a list post, so here is one!  Some day when I have more time I will compile a gigantic David Bowie covers list, but going to let that collection grow a bit more!  Anyway...

First, I've recently discovered personalized radio websites.  Last.fm and pandora.com work on basically the same premise.  You type in the name of a song or artist, and the site identifies characteristics of the music, and then creates a "radio station" with music that has similar characteristics.  Last.fm I've found to be much more accurate in identifying music that I like: for example, when I typed in artist: Elastica, I got a station that spit out the Breeders and David Bowie! (<333)  Pandora.com, while less accurate, explains to you the identifying characteristics and why it's pulling out the songs you are hearing.  I find it fascinating to see the music broken down into simple identifiers and catagorized thusly.  Music genre labels seem so arbitrary at times, I enjoy seeing music dissected in an objective way.

Second, online audio archives, while less effective in discovering completely new material, are great for finding new stuff by older more familiar names.  All archives right now are rather limited by copyrights, so the pickings are generally more limited.  The Internet Archive has a pretty nice collection of live music.  Musopen is a newer project, attempting to collect music that is in the public domain into an online archive.  At the moment its collection is pretty scanty, with a "classical" focus, with pretty obscure artists playing the pieces.  I really like the idea though, so I plan a the very least keeping tabs on where it goes.  Finally, while it isn't music, Librivox hosts a collection of audiobooks,  all in the public domain.  The drawback of the recordings, I've found, is that they're generally amateurly done.  If you can put aside some bad voice acting though, it's a nice way to listen to a book at no cost. 

Third, mp3 blogs have generally been the most effective in leading me to new music.  The major problem that I've found with mp3 blogs is finding one that puts up content that matches your taste, and furthermore, with intelligent commentary.  A good place to start is The Hype Machine, an mp3 blog aggregator that posts links to mp3s posted at various sites, with links to the original posts for your perusal.  There is also elbo.ws, but I prefer Hype's more abbreviated posts.  I have a giant list of mp3 blogs I read through regularly, but I won't bother listing them all.  I'd like to touch on a few highlists though: copy, right? specializes in covers, the stranger the better!  Stereogum caters to a more indie audience with a pop culture bent.  While the "Gwen Stefani can do no wrong" attitude is a bit much sometimes, the author has contacts in the industry and often releases mp3s of brand new music of old big names and new up and coming ones.  Finally, aurgasm is a great site with a very ecclectic collection.  The author recently had some problems with copyright issues, but the site is back up and running.  It would be a shame if it went down, and stupid of the industry: I can attribute at least one album I've bought thanks to the music he's posted on the site.

So go forth and find new music!  And if you find something good, let me know :D