It's a common dilemma. You want something new to listen to, but have no idea where to find good new music.
The radio only plays commercialized crap, and your friends only seem to be able to recommend bands from the
90s (or 80s or 70s, depending on their age). So what do you do?
After intense struggles with this problem, I have come up with a few sure-fire places to find new music that
is exactly what you are looking for. Read on for the three best places to find new music on the web.
NPR: Music
The first place to check is also the most 'traditional'. The NPR music site has articles,
reviews and recommendations for every genre of music, and it even covers music that doesn't really fall in
one genre or another. What I find most helpful when looking for new music, however, is their daily and
weekly music features.
Shadow Classics is a weekly
column about older albums that are good, but have been overlooked commercially. On the list now, they have
artists that range from Sly Stone
to Joe Henderson to The Tokens. Yeah, it's an eclectic
mix. With each column, you can stream 3 full tracks from the album that is being recommended, and that's
certainly enough to let you know if the album is right for you or not.
Other nice NPR:Music features include Song of the Day and Open Mic. Song of the Day usually
features a single catchy tune that is worth a listen, and Open Mic features great unsigned artists.
Metacritic: Music
Metacritic may be the best 'web 2.0' site out there. The idea is simple: collect all of the review scores
for any medium, organize them, average them, and make them easily searchable. Voila! The new music section
immediately shows you the major albums that have been recently released and reviewed. Could it be any
easier?!
Well, yes it could. Their Best Of lists make
it easy to find the new music that critics like.
The one caveat with metacritic is that it IS based on review scores. Hence, only albums that are widely
reviewed will show up. This will immediately remove any music being released independently, or by smaller
labels. Also, what does a review score really mean? It's a single number that sums up an entire artistic
work, and that's an oversimplification.
Nonetheless, if you're just looking for something that you are guaranteed to like, then metacritic is a
great source.
Pandora
Pandora is the best place to find new music that you will like.
Period. Enter an artist that you like, and it will show you a bunch of other artists that you will probably
like. And it really works. And it's free. And it plays music by the artists that is suggests. And ... and
... well, it's just amazing,
Besides being free, and working shockingly well, Pandora is great because it is not limited in the way that
other major outlets are limited. The bands it recommends aren't filtered by popularity, commercial success,
or advertising. They are only filtered by similarity to the music that you like.
If you haven't tried Pandora, go try it now. It rawks.
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