Eight miles in the snow. Both ways.
I remember combing the racks at the old Sound Ex on Westheimer or Vinal Edge to see if Palace had a new record out.
I used to sit down in front of the wall of magazines at the Alabama Bookstop and read the reviews in Alternative Press.
Josh and I went to Cactus at midnight to buy Brighten the Corners. It totally sucked, and it felt like a kick in the belly, but we felt it at the same time.
I can’t count the number of times I stood tethered to a listening station trying to hear a new CD with of one good speaker.
I don’t do any of this stuff anymore, and I miss having that kind of time to kill. But despite the nostalgia I have for those college days in the Montrose, I think finding and listening to new music is a lot easier now. Certainly, I encounter a lot more of it. The reason, of course, is the Internet.
I don’t want to belabor the point, because I think everyone around my age experienced the same shift at around the same time. The advent of the Web and the post-Napster era of broadband means that we can subscribe to feeds instead of magazines. We can download craploads of music for orders of magnitude less than we used to pay—if we pay at all.
So yeah, you know all that.
I just wanted to take a few moments to share my personal music discovery workflow. This is how I get sounds:
Yeah, I’m a huge fan of paying less than 40 cents per download, but part of eMusic’s massive value is their commitment to top-notch editorial content. Their editors of the eMusic magazine review a ton of releases and supplement their reviews with features and interviews. They also have an employee blog that highlights new releases and hidden gems. But my favorite regular feature is the eMusic dozen, which collects 12 signature releases in a given category. For example, there are dozens devoted to labels (e.g., Southern Lord, Sun Records) and genres (More Essential Alt-Country, Scandinavian Jazz). Artists like Brit Daniel, Isaac Hayes, and Chuck D have also contributed their own compilations. Because eMusic is a subscription service and you lose the monthly downloads you don’t use, I’m constantly looking for new stuff. Fortunately, eMusic’s editors do a great job helping me discover new music and classic records I’d overlooked.
Last.fm is best known for its Scrobbler, a software program that keeps track of what you play on your computer and shares it with your friends. You can see my most recently played artists and songs below.
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But I think their Web radio service is underrated. Like Pandora, if you visit the Last.fm Web site and enter the name of a song or an artist, Last.fm will play similar tracks for you. You can also listen to a style or “tag,” such as light jazz or black metal, or to the personalized station for any user (e.g., mrshl, or willadams). Most often, I listen to the “My Recommendations” station, which selects tracks based on all the songs I’ve submitted to My Library via the scrobbler. As different songs play, Last.fm will show you crap loads of information about whatever’s playing, including artist bio and similar artists.
Unlike Pandora, last.fm doesn’t force you to visit their Web page and view their ads. You can access the site through their scrobbling software, which is available on Mac, Windows, Linux and iPhone.
Recently, though, I’ve started listening to Last.fm via the Fire.fm firefox add on, which remembers your past radio stations and lets you access them in the address bar. It’s perfect for work, where it lets me listen to millions of songs without having to plug in a hard drive.
Other sites and tools I use
Metacritic
Reviews of new releases collected from a wide swath of music sites, magazines, and papers.
Jango.com
Another Pandora-like site that I actually like better than Pandora. A lot more control over what you hear, plus a larger library of songs. It’s not pretty, though. Looks like MySpace.
HypeMachine
This site aggregates tracks and links from the most popular MP3 blogs around the Web. It’s got integrated Web radio, and it can sync with Twitter and Last.fm.
Pitchfork.tv
The dominant Web zine everyone loves to hate is still awfully useful, especially if you want to see high-quality videos, films, documentaries, and interviews. This spin-off site proves that the much-dissed site is putting their massive cache of ad dollars to good use.
Allmusic.com Blog
As if Allmusic weren’t already ridiculously useful, this year they started a blog, and it’s quickly become one of my favorite reads on the Web. They cover a lot of ground, and the lack of focus on a single genre or era of music makes it a particularly useful discovery tool.
Amazon MP3
I can’t stand iTunes, so Amazon was a welcome competitor. Lots and lots of high-bit rate, DRM-free music, and most of it is cheaper than iTunes. The lightweight downloading software will automatically add your music to iTunes or Windows Media Player.
MediaMonkey
Not a music discovery tool per se, but this is what I use on my PC instead of Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media player. How good is it? I paid $34.95 for a lifetime license. It’s got features no other player has, and it can handle huge libraries of songs without freezing. Sadly, it’s Windows only.
8tracks
Recently, Muxtape (a site I wrote about here) was shut down by the RIAA. That sucks, but the newish 8tracks (review here) is a better alternative. Unlike Muxtape, 8tracks lets you create more than one mix. It also imports album art, and it allows you to add tracks from other users without having to upload them first. Recommended. Here’s my profile.
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From this list, you can probably tell that I’m not scouring the Web for the most obscure shit I can find. The sites and tools I mention above are wide nets that allow me to cover an awful lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time. That’s the point of this post, I guess.
When it comes to finding new music, I don’t work as hard as I used to. But I buy more music now. And I listen to more music. I’m not sure the music is as great as what I loved in 1995. I’m pretty sure it’s not. But I haven’t given up trying to find it.
