Finding Music Online
Let us start with a simple truth. More music is recorded and released every day than any one person has the time to hear. There is no way to keep up – let alone explore back catalogs. The only way to address this mighty river of song is to find editors. But even editors are thick on the ground. Here are the editors I trust:
Radio:
I like Bob Harris on the BBC. Bob has been on the radio since the 1960s and has known practically everyone. He was one of the founders of the Time Out magazines. (The Broadway TONY awards stand for Time Out New York. ) He used to host a television show called The Old Gray Whistle Test and he continues to accumulate knowledge and relationships. On BBC Radio 2 he hosts two shows. A one hour show on American country and roots music and a three hour show of pop rock with an hour of live show in the middle. I have never regretted listening to his shows and I have taped quite a few. You can listen at:
Everyone loves The Morning Becomes Electric on KCRW. Jason Bentley began hosting the show back in 1988 and it has become a foundation for indie and pop music. I find that the shows are less consistent that Bob’s, but that is because Jason pushes modern music more aggressively. Jason will have entire shows where he plays nothing more than two or three years old. If you want to be part of the conversation and recognize the music on TV shows and in movies, listening to The Morning Becomes Electric is a good start.
Coming from Seattle, I feel compelled to mention John Richards, the host of “John in the Morning” on KEXP. John is also very influential and a big pusher of indie and new bands. John grew his audience so big, that he became bicoastal for awhile. KEXP began broadcasting in both Seattle and New York City and John would fly between the cities hosting alternate weeks. Quite impressive.
Pandora and Last.fm both fit roughly into this category. Both are internet radio services that feature machine programmed playlists based on an artist or a song that you like. My experience with them has been a little hit and miss. Pandora especially seems to get stuck in a rut after awhile and is afraid to play new things for me.
Other Radio Worth Noting:
Laura Cantrell periodically hosts a show called Radio Thrift Shop that draws a notable audience for her folk / soft country sound.
Bob Dylan hosted a show on XM for three years called The Theme Time Radio Hour, the BBC still has the playlists.
Radio 3 on the CBC is their version of BBC’s Radio 2. I occasionally enjoy their podcasts.
Magazines:
My favorite is Uncut. Uncut is a British magazine that blows through a hundred albums, reissues, movies, and DVDs a month. For awhile, my tastes tracked pretty closely with theirs. The editorial taste is changing and I find it is less to my liking, but it is still a great way of narrowing down the amount of albums worth seeking out. I have confidence that if I listened to all 100 of the albums they reviewed every month, then I would be able to hold forth in musical conversation. The magazine Mojo is their major competitor.
In America, read Paste. Paste is now well established as a the source of hipster cred in America. The magazine started about a decade ago and has experimented with a number of formats and release schedules, but they have somehow survived and become the new king of the indies.
Both Paste and Uncut publish a sampler set with their magazines. So in addition to having tons of reviews you read, you can plop one disc or playlist into the stereo and hear twenty new songs at your leisure.
I still reading Rolling Stone, which can be useful and interesting, but it’s feature articles recommend it more than its anemic review section these days.
I subscribe to all three of these. Other magazines that I recommend as occasional buys:
Texas Music. It does what it says. It writes about Texas Music. For several years, Texas Music had an excellent sampler CD that came with the magazine showcasing new bands from Austin and elsewhere with a country rock edge, but the CD has gone. The reviews have stayed and are still worth reading through.
Oxford American. The Oxford American publishes a Southern Music issue once a year with a CD or two that is entirely worth the time to buy and hear. A little laid back, but also a little geeky. The Oxford American tries to make a statement with its selections.
Down. Down is a magazine devoted to Southern Hip-Hop. I’m not sure if it still publishes, actually, because I only ever bought it at Tower Records which closed in 2006. The website is still up. Southern hip-hop is out of the mainstream and is a little slower, which I like. Coastal hip hop wears me out.
Relix. Relix is targeted more at the jam band circuit with a focus on touring acts at music festivals. Is sampler generally has a good mix of straight forward tunes.
Blog Aggregators:
There are two main websites that simply scour other blogs and compile them into one very large RSS feed.
The Hype Machine has emerged as the big player. It has a player to allow you to listen to the songs from each of the blogs. It also allows you easily keep track of which tracks, artists, and blogs that you like. I did not start out at a Hype Machine lover, but I have become one with its continual updates over the years.
Elbo.ws is the other aggregator. Elbo.ws takes a different approach to supporting artists. It does not offer a listening player and instead encourages people to go to the individual blogs and go from there. This approach frustrated me so much that I ended up writing my own program to download mp3s for me. Still, the site is a good zeitgeist machine.
Music Blogs:
Find a few music blogs that you like. There is no better way to find obscure, cool music that you would never have found otherwise than by following some music blogs. Here is how to find the stuff you like:
1a. Plow through Hype Machine or Elbows until you find some startling new track.
Or
1b. Search Hype Machine or Elbows for bands that you already like.
2. Go to that blog (or click on that blog in Hype Machine) and listen to the other things that they’ve put up.
3. Done
One of the biggest blogs is Pitchfork. Pitchfork is so big that it has its own music festival and might as well be a published magazine for all the attention that its reviews get. Still, I don’t agree with its editors very much.
Aurgasm.us is much more my speed. Its editors have a variety of tastes. I tend to find that Julija finds a great variety of pleasant music and occasionally posts something truly wonderful.
Cover Lay Down is an interesting cover blog. He collects folk covers of familiar rock songs and stitches them together on theme or playlist.
Blogs tend to appear, run strong for a year or two, and then disappear as the author runs out of favorite things or just wears down. There are notable exceptions, sure, but that is the pattern. All you can do is keep looking.
Music Services:
The one I am falling in love with is LaLa.[UPDATE] Apple is closing LaLa. LaLa allows you to upload your entire collection and then to stream it from anywhere. LaLa also allows you to listen to almost any album from its catalog for free once. For a dollar you can stream it as often as you like. For 90 cents a song, on average, you and get mp3s and stream it. They also sell CDs. It is quite thorough.
Rhapsody and Zune are the big two subscription services these days. Both charge a monthly fee of $15 and then allow you to stream as much music as you like. The services used to be essential for checking out the latest album releases, but now they are less compelling.
The CD Listening Party. Each week Spinner and AOL have full album streams of new releases from that week. Any given week you can listen to ten to fifteen albums for free. (The two sites have different discs.) Generally three or four of the artists are established and the rest are new to me. NPR also has an occasional full album stream.
The best combination of different online music options might be MOG. For $5 a month, MOG lets you stream music as often as you’d like – like Rhapsody. MOG also has a radio option that helps you stay in a groove or find new music. Unlike Pandora or Rhapsody radio, though, MOG tells you what it will play next, allows you to adjust the mix on the fly, and has a generally better interface. MOG may also have some social functions that I didn’t explore (I’m not into that sort of thing).
Concerts:
PollStar and Song Kick both keep track of touring schedules for larger artists and some key venues. They can be useful in finding out who is coming to your town and they can be even more useful in planning your trips to other cities.
Labels:
Labels still have their place of importance as music editors. That said, I have not found any label to be a long term guarantor of quality. Music labels come in several different size rings. The big labels like Warner and Universal sit at the top. Right below them are the minor-majors – SubPop (Seattle), Merge (Chapel Hill), and Matador (Chicago). Stepping down again, you can find Barsuk (Seattle) and Rough Trade (UK Imports) – Secretly Canadian (Bloomington, IN) is hot right now. Slightly more regional, but still with a national following, are labels like Kill Rock Stars and K Records (both from Olympia, Wash). Paying attention to labels can be a very useful way of understanding what sounds are going to be on the record.
Labels are at their most useful if you can find one that dedicated to a specific genre that you like. Here are a couple soul labels that I find consistently interesting:
Numero Group. The Numero Group is primarily a reissue label that has built its name on performing amazing music archeology on 45s from local scenes that have come and gone. In the 60s and 70s far more bands were able to release one or two singles than were ever able to press an album or gain national attention. The Numero Group digs through those lost singles and puts together snapshots of, say, Cleveland in 1968-1972. They also do full album reissues.
Light in the Attic. Light in the Attic has a greater emphasis on full albums, it is also more willing to work with current artists than Numero. One of Light in the Attic’s big projects has been digging up the Toronto funk scene of Jamaican immigrants during the late 60s to early 70s.
Cheap Music:
Emusic is really an mp3 store masquerading like a service with a monthly subscription fee. For $15 bucks a month you are allowed to download 35 tracks. That works out to roughly forty cents an mp3 – not bad given their extensive catalog of music. When the site started ten years ago the selection was meager, but the downloads were unlimited. Gradually they have increased the quality of their selection and the price per track.
Aimee Street is an mp3 store that carries many of the same indie style bands you’d find on music blogs. Aime’s claim to fame is a demand pricing model. When the music is first released, it is sold for a penny a track. As the music becomes more and more popular, the price rises until it reaches 99-cents a song. You can also earn credit for free music by recommending cheap songs that go on to become popular songs.
Amazon and eBay are great places to find used CDs. I also tend to prefer Amazon’s mp3 store to other online stores.
YourMusic is what became of the BMG music club. Rather than buy 1 get 12 for the price of shipping, the site sells you as many discs as you want for $7 shipped. I use it mostly to fill in gaps in my back catalog, but it also has the occasional new artist release that I pick up.
Bootlegs
The Largehearted Boy will help you keep track of recent shows.
You can download shows from either Dime A Dozen or Archive. Archive is easier and freer, but Dime A Dozen can have some absolutely killer shows.
Daytrotter features four live recorded songs every day. That can be pretty cool.