Movies

I have several different methods for finding new music. When I'm at work, I'll have Pandora, RadioParadise, or some other internet radio station playing all day. At worst, it serves as background music, and at best, something will really catch my ear and I'll add it to a text file I keep on my desktop of artists I want to investigate/download.

I agree that slogging through all the bands on MySpace is tedious at best, but I've found lots of good music by starting at the MySpace page of an artist I already like, and investigating their top friends...which usually consists of bands that they really like. I've had really great success finding new music this way.

I also have found several new bands..."Company of Thieves" and "The Acorn" specifically...by browsing bands that are coming to town soon, and investigating whether they would be of interest to me.

And finally, I'll go into the local record shops about once a month and check out any new music on the listening stations. I haven't found any media source that can consistently pinpoint bands I would like. I haven't even found a blogger that's got the same taste as me.

I've been subscribing to Paste magazine for the last few months, they have a CD each month with 20 different indie artists of all different kinds of music. I've got into about 3 bands due to the CD's.

I also use Lastfm.com, you don't have to download or anything, you can just listen to free tracks, check out your favorite artists and see if the similar artists that they suggest sound any good. Amazon kinda does the same thing, I check out "People who bought this Cd, also bought this.." and see if I like any of the music.

h**p://indiesurfer.blogspot.com/ - its updated a few times a month. here is the catch; check in the comments section, copy and paste the links, enjoy browsing some open directories of some of the best bands you have never heard of. oh, and tons of new stuff too.

the links to other blogs on that page are worth it.

Landlockedmusic.com out of Bloomington sends out a great weekly e-mail filled with info on new releases. And, I also like to search around Amazon.com for music and listen to the 30 second snippets of songs. Pandora.com is great, too.

I haven't checked out RadioParadise yet but I hope to tomorrow. Otherwise, except for obscure genres Pandora is really good as Stellarswarm pointed out. When I had a Yahoo account Launchcast Radio was the best thing I have come across for discovering music in a long time. I think anyone can set up an account but I am bitter because I had ranked thousands of songs in my fancy account which I lost when I changed email providers.

NPR's music page is a great place to get lost in music stuff also! Very eclectic offerings.

Creamy Radio www.creamyradio.com is a good one to get some hard to find stuff with nice fidelity to the sound

muxtape.com!!!

Promosquad! Rate new music and you get prizes - though I have to say they don't do a very good job of shipping prizes in a timeing manor but I have heard a few songs on there that I really lived and ended up buying off iTunes.

www.promosquad.com

oh yeah forgot about this one - really top notch web application based on the music genome project. You tell it what you like and it finds similar music based on the "DNA" of the music you like. Check it www.pandora.com