Top 10 Ways to Discover New Music
Posted on 03. Nov, 2008 by Kyle Judkins in Internet Tools
Most of my life I have strived to find new and interesting music, but I am often far too busy to really dig deep and find new artists everyday. Now that I am done with college and have a real job, I find that I have even less time to find new music or even stay up to date with all of the new bands.
I have, however, found some great resources that keep me in the loop with minimal time and effort.
Pandora
Pandora is an easy to use music discovery website that has been a favorite of mine for some time. Pandora allows you to create “stations” by putting in your favorite band or bands. Then, Pandora will play songs from that artist and artists that have a similar sound to your main artist. I like Pandora for its no frills approach, as it doesn’t throw a bunch of extra stuff at you.
Last.fm
Last.fm functions much the same way as Pandora, but focuses much more on the social network side of things. Of all the websites and services on the list, I use Last.fm the most. I have found that it has a huge library of tracks that doesn’t stop at the end of mainstream. Their library has exposed me to lots of unknown and underground gems.
StumbleAudio
StumbleAudio was covered in my previous post Discover New Music with StumbleAudio. It is a great service that is easy to use, but it has a smaller library that is mainly focuses around smaller unknown artists.
The Hype Machine
The Hype Machine is a very unique website, in that, it aggregates all kinds of MP3 blogs from across the Internet into one place. This way you can find out what bands everyone else is talking about and discover them for yourself.
Musicovery
Musicovery presents a much different experience than most of the other services on this list. At Musicovery, you choose genre, mood and timeframe in order to discover new music. This is definitely a very unique way to discover new music and is worth checking out.
Skreemr
Skreemr is an MP3 search engine that returns webpages where MP3’s of the artist you searched are posted. This allows you to easily listen to your favorite song by that artist. Skreemr also gives you the option to search for similar artists.
iLike
iLike is a music social network that is similar to Last.fm, but iLike integrates with your iTunes through a sidebar. This allows you to easily get recommendations from iLike and find more people with similar tastes in order to find find new artists.
thesixtyone
thesixtyone allows its users to “bump” up tracks by different artists. It functions in a way that is very similar to Digg, but it is only for music. This way you can find great songs and great artists by using the knowledge of the other users on the site.
Amazon
Amazon is a site that just about everyone should be familiar with. Back before I knew all about the sites listed above, I would go to Amazon and see what else customers bought when they bought an album I liked. If you keep doing this, you start going down a rabbit hole and can find some great music. The little snippets that Amazon lets you listen to provide you with a great way to sample the artists as you come across them.
Blogs
What list of places to find music would be complete without blogs? There are lots of great music blogs out there that keep you up to date with current artists and events. I subscribe to Stereogum and Pitchfork in my RSS, and I highly recommend them.
Where else do you discover new music?
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120 Responses to “Top 10 Ways to Discover New Music”
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Sandip
24. Jan, 2010
http://www.deezer.com/en/ for some real obscure foreign indie stuff…
anon
25. Jan, 2010
http://www.nutsie.com
Music Community
01. Feb, 2010
I don’t discover new music. I prefer the old school time and time again. I’m just not as enthusiastic as a 17 year old me. When we digested loads of music from back then, its just hard to accept new music.
More Bad Religion, less All Time Low, if you know what I mean..
Lee
05. Feb, 2010
I wouldn’t agree with you.
I too, like the old school musics.
True, some of the mainstream music nowadays are not as good as back then when music is still about music only, not cash–hell, even most of the music the radio play these days are not even worth to listen.
But refusing to listening to new music is just like stabbing your own eyes.
I found some new great music, mostly indies or non-mainstream, that are as great as the old music, or even better.
and in the end, I still listen to Nick Drake, Pearl Jam or a-ha, as well as Oren Lavie, I’m From Barcelona, or the Kings of Convenience.
Tanya
23. Feb, 2010
Check out http://www.musicroamer.com!
Music Lover
15. Mar, 2010
I find all kinds of new artists (and songs) by rating music at HitPredictor! The best part is earning points to cash in for prizes all for rating music
http://www.hitpredictor.com
Jacklyn
24. Mar, 2010
Unfortunately, Pandora isn’t what it used to be. Now there are a lot more adds, and a limitation on how many hours of music you can listen to. I can’t use it anymore.
Vic
29. Mar, 2010
you’re absolutely right….its a damn shame what happen to pandora.
D Stevens
01. May, 2010
I must say that I think a viable site has been left out. http://www.wearehunted.com List of 99 top songs being downloaded and played online and is updated automatically every 30 mins.
Keith
31. May, 2010
Deeper Into Music – old school + new school + alot of obscure alternatives http://deeperintomusic.net More organic than Pandora and a little more broad than last.fm. Enjoy.
Henry
04. Jun, 2010
Great stuff! Keep bringing it!
epidenimus
08. Jun, 2010
Umm… get off your computer and go see live music?
Or if you are just that non-committal, check out the sites of bands you like and check out their influences.
Jono Is Always Right
08. Jun, 2010
http://www.tastekid.com
Music, movies, books; AND it works in Canada. Pandora can suck it.
Albert K Reid
13. Jul, 2010
This was pretty cool!
JB Smith
03. Aug, 2010
Check out Peel, http://www.getpeel.com/, it collects songs posted on blogs and you can dl them for free, great way to find music based on a genre.
Diana Lili M
31. Aug, 2010
stereomood.com
and thanks for wearehunted.com!
Diana Lili M
31. Aug, 2010
re-typing with proper links
http://stereomood.com
and thanks for http://wearehunted.com !