Does anybody listen to Pandora anymore? I did for a while. Then they blocked it at work because they're huge douchenards. Waah wahh bandwidth is EXPENSIVE. Whatever. I do appreciate that it will occasionally play some songs I have never heard before that I like. My favorite so far has to be Carrie Newcomer's The Fisher King. I listened to some snippets of her other music and it's kind of meh but for whatever reason I think that's a great song. Finding new music I like is one of those things that happens in fits and starts. I catch some of it the old-fashioned way, on the radio, but for more obscure artists it's often pretty random. I discovered Nick Drake after Pink Moon got used in the greatest commercial ever. I discovered probably my favorite artist of all time, Tom Waits, after hearing the Eagles play Ol'55 at a concert. FOCUS: What's your best Pandora find? ALT FOCUS: It's easy to learn about new music listening to the radio or from friends. Through what non-standard mechanisms have you found new music to like?
What.cd is by far the greatest fucking thing that I have ever come across. There is absolutely no comparison to finding fantastic new music on that site. Pandora and everything else sucks compared to it.
I had the Ween station going and a Primus song came on. I had one Primus album in my youth but never extensively got into their catalogue. The song is called "Over the Electric Grapevine" and - like most Primus material - it's a mind-fuck. The story behind it makes the song even better: Spoiler Claypool: That song is about a trip that I took to Los Angeles with Adam Gates who actually is the artist who did the picture that we're going to use for the record. He's just an old friend of mine and he had a band called Monkey Rhythm a while ago and they were going to shoot this video down in L.A. Some college students that they knew were going to do it as a project so he and I drove down to Los Angeles one night in his Datsun and we were fried on acid. So there were many very interesting things that happened to us on the way down. It was a full on Hunter S. Thompson experience. So I couldn't really tell the whole story in the song because there was just so much shit that went on but there's little references to different things. But I remember, we're driving along and it would be completely dark and every now and then I would lean up and grab the little map light thing that folds out and aim it at my face and click it on and go--like some crazy face and he'd start freaking out because it was the most hilarious thing in the world to us. And we pulled into some truck stop to get gas and I bought a pack of cigarettes. I hadn't smoked in years. I bought some cigarettes and I stole a lighter and we bought a bunch of candy and, being idiots, bought a bunch of stuff, got back in the car and I started smoking all these cigarettes just to be a bastard filling the car with smoke. We were just fucking with each other the whole way down. I had this gum that when you bite it, the stuff squirts in your mouth, you know? And I didn't realize it was that kind of gum 'cause I hate that stuff. So I had this gum and I took it and I was squeezing out the juice and I was sitting there just squeezing it onto his shoulder while he was driving, the juice from this gum and I ate it. And he's like, what are you doing? And somehow the whole car seemed like it was full of this sticky stuff. It was everywhere. It was like the most horrible feeling. So we ended up in L.A. and there's references to us flying over the grapevine through the fog and hearing--Faith No More's new song had just come on the radio, from the Introduce Yourself record, which was my favorite Faith No More record. It came on the radio and it was the total perk me up and we go flying over the grapevine. And we get to L.A. and we had been listening to this radio station, I guess Deep Purple was coming to town or something so that whatever heavy metal station down there was playing Deep Purple all the time. And we were going back and forth from that station and this college station where these people were talking on the radio. It was like Howard Stern type stuff. They were bullshitting. So we're driving along and it was too early for us to show up at this video shoot, but it was late and we were tired and we didn't have a hotel or nothing, we didn't have any money. So Adam goes, "Well, we played the Roxie before." 'Cause I didn't know L.A. at all. He says, "Well, we played the Roxie before. Let's pull in behind the Roxie." So we pull into the parking lot behind the Roxie and we park and I'm lying there and he takes off. And I'm flipping through the channels and some Deep Purple song comes on so I'm listening to it on that station. I'm just lying there kind of half asleep kind of still frying and the song ends and I flip the radio back to the college station and I hear Adam's voice on the radio and he's all, "Yeah, when you think of acid, think of Monkey Rhythm." Click. "That was Adam calling from a phone booth. His friend is asleep in the car right now behind the Roxie. And they've driven down here..." and I was like whoa. It was like total mindbender, you know. Pretty soon Adam comes walking back around the corner. I told him, I just heard you on the radio. He goes, "No way, they played that over the air? " So that's what that song is about. It was just one of those crazy weekends. Hunter S. Thompson would be proud, I think, of that weekend. Anyway, cool tune.
Alt focus: I check out Bob Lefsetz's blog every now and again. The man (though biased towards a certain [white, rock, old] viewpoint) comes up with good stuff. One thing I hate, though, is how he'll recommend a song on youtube, and all the subsequent youtube comments will have "Thanks, Lefsetz!" on them. Shut up and listen to the fuckin' music. Another venue I check out is a hip-hop forum I've been frequenting (or every-now-and-then-ing) since 2006 or so (high school for me). Most of the posters are in their 20s and 30s (some in their 40s) and have a thorough knowledge of old-school hip-hop, and they range from Boston to Australia. I value their input because they can suss out which new hip-hop acts are crap and which ones are actually worth listening to. Some of them are actually my Facebook friends. And - as weird as it sounds - Guitar Hero. Speaking of Primus, I can't be the only one who heard of them through "John the Fisherman" on Insane. "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" pushed me over the edge for checking out Sticky Fingers.
I have a very ADD addled brain and getting into music is hard when it only has a short amount of time to pique my interest. Towards this laziness I've found music through TV shows that use varied eclectic sound tracks. The Sopranos had a very wide range of music styles and artist represented on the show. Maybe not as deep as many music lovers would like but I found half a dozen or so artist I really liked after searching them out after an episode aired.
FOCUS:I find that sticking to one theme produces the best results and since they deviate fairly far form the original artist your best bet is having several stations with single artists. The two best I have that I listen too now are my Steve Perry station (fuck you, I love 80's ballads) and my Grateful Dead station, no other artists added. It was through Pandora that I was reminded that 'Don't Stop Believing" is criminally overrated and 'Separate Ways' is clearly the best Journey song. Also, fuck Pandora and their 40 hour/month limit, I'm usually spent in the first two weeks and have to switch to Grooveshark or something else. And is it just me or are Pandora ads played more frequently now?
In this day and age, there is no reason whatsoever for anyone to have any trouble finding new music. I have so many artists on my "to listen" list that is honestly a little overwhelming. There are so many websites dedicated to reviewing music, sorted by any genre you can imagine. I follow a hip hop blog which posts something like 30-40 new links every day to songs, interviews, mixtapes, album reviews. For me to try to listen to all that alone would be pretty tough. Then start adding in other genres(and I listen to pretty much all of them) and there is literally a monsoon of new music being rained upon us constantly. Hell, you don't even have to do that; listen to music that has stood the test of time. Whether you feel like starting with The Beatles or with Bach, you can keep finding more excellent stuff until the end of time. Allmusic.com is a pretty good site. Their album reviews are kind of generic in that they pretty much always follow the consensus, but the real value of the site is in the sheer quantity. Just about every artist I've listened has a page on the site and going to one artist gives you a list of: similar artists, who influenced the first artist, who this artist ended up influencing. I had to systematize my music acquiring procedure because following random leads was just too chaotic. With the internet, I can't begin to imagine how anyone could have trouble finding good music unless they are putting forth exactly 0 effort.
I just started a new job this week and the commute right now is about 40 minutes, so i've been going to http://newalbumreleases.net/ here and finding random albums to download for the drives, and if i like them I keep it, if not i got to at least listen to some new music for a bit. That site is how I found out about Gaslight Anthem back this summer and I just downloaded <a class="postlink" href="http://newalbumreleases.net/33157/yuck-yuck-2011/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://newalbumreleases.net/33157/yuck-yuck-2011/</a> that album. It's pretty good, 90's rock style, but in a good way.
http://www.hiphopsite.com keeps me abreast of new shit hip hop-wise. Good mix of independent, mid-level and major label.
I heard this kickass piece of aural sex on Pandora. Speaking of which, what's keeping you motherfuckers for paying $36 a year for unlimited music? Seriously? $3 a month. That's one less shitty beer at the bar.
Not exactly on topic, but my boss gave our office a lecture the other day about not listening to "the radio on the internet" because it "clogs up the internet pipes." She apparently heard that the internet is a series of tubes and took it quite seriously.
Alt-Focus: In college, I uploaded of all the music mentioned in "Perks of Being a Wallflower" onto my IPod. It's all really slow, sitting around doing nothing music, but I discovered quite a few good new artists. "Asleep" by The Smiths "Vapour Trail" by Ride "Scarborough Fair", by Simon and Garfunkel "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum "Time of No Reply" by Nick Drake "Dear Prudence" by The Beatles "Gypsy" by Suzanne Vega "Nights in White Satin" by The Moody Blues "Daydream" by The Smashing Pumpkins "Dusk" by Genesis "MLK" by U2 "Blackbird" by The Beatles "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. II" by Pink Floyd "Something" by The Beatles "School's Out" by Alice Cooper "Autumn Leaves" by Nat King Cole "Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister Also, I'm not sure where I connected it, but one of these songs introduced to me Elliot Smith, who I really got into at the time.
I got bored of Pandora really easily once I found out there was an hourly skip limit. The only band I really got into through it was WASP, and then I only liked their first album. I didn't bother delving any further.
I love the idea of Pandora, and pay for a membership mainly because I want to support it. I should probably listen to it a lot more than I do. The only real discovery I've made is a Lacuna Coil song I hadn't heard before (one of their most popular songs it turned out, "Daylight Dancer"). I'll tune in now, see what happens...
I like to listen to Celtic rock and bands like The Pogues, also folk singers like Luka Bloom, Christy Moore, etc. I've found a lot of great music on Pandora listening to channels based on those artists. Certainly hikes up the amount I spend on iTunes later.
ALT focus : I'm a big fan of electronic music, which is sadly under-represented in most mainstream media offerings. This is why i love net radio so much. For the most discoveries period : Soma.fm . Multiple stations with many different styles, my favorite probably being BEat Blender for it's amazing deep house goodness. di.fm is also great for faster styles of electronic music.