I haven't bought much "new" music since my local public radio station(KERA in Dallas) went all "talk". I used to hear some great stuff there, everything from Jazz to classical to new age and beyond. (Yeah, and I was just about ready to pledge my support when they quashed the music.
Uh oh, no support for KERA until the music comes back.)
Much of my CD collection came from the stuff that I heard on public radio. I don't like 95% of what I hear on "Top 40 radio".
Where do you folks hear "new music?
Other people. Vh1 countdowns. Etc.
I suggest listening to local colledge radio... alternatively you can try internet radio. While my tuner wasn't hooked up for a while I had to get my morning NPR fix with my computer... a little more work, and I didn't bother routing the music to my preamp, but I'm considering it more and more because you can really sample a lot more with internet radio.
I don't know much about windows media software (mac person) - but you can download iTunes for Windows now (free), and it comes with a pretty good categorized mix of radio stations. I'm sure there are other players for Windows out there with selections are just as good if not better.
I should note that I work for Apple - so that paragraph may be construed as a shameless plug
I find good stuff in movies, tv commercials, and quite often the "bumper music" on the radio. Then I'll do a search on Kazaa to find out what the band is. I've discovered quite a few gems that way. I've bought more cd's of bands I had previously never heard of through that system. So take the record industry! This mp3 downloader buys MORE cd's because of mp3's!
Hi Mike
I really like the Maxim music magazine - Blender. It's as well written as anything out there, and I've gotten some good leads from them in the past - The Libertines, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Very well written, and I get to hear of some bands I wouldn't normally hear from Winnipeg radio (they only play radio friendly crap). I'm also partial to a 1 hour radio program out of Toronto called "the History of New Music" with Allan Cross. His program actually pointed me in the direction of these websites:
http://ubl.artistdirect.com/
http://www.allmusic.com/
really complete websites with reviews/info/discographies on most bands. Then I usually does what Spiffnme does and head to Kazaa. Man I love that program!
I've had good luck at my local Hear Music store. Their collection (though more expensive than BB, Amazon, or Tower) can be VERY eclectic and they let you listen to ANY CD. I can spend a few hours there browsing for underground hip hop and acid jazz. Found many gems there, almost all of it never gets airplay but still pleasing to me.
I haunt the Usenet and download new albums. If I like them I buy them. I have bought more CDs in the past few years than I did in the entire decade previous. Here's a little anecdote. I downloaded the latest Roseann Cash album "Rules of Travel". Played it a couple of times, realized that it was a terrific piece of work, and went out and bought it. When I brought the CD home I found out that it had some sort of copy protection mechanism that required me to install a program on the disk in order to play it on my computer. This is different from the driver install that is bypassable by holding down the shift key. Now I don't know about you, but I don't install any programs that I don't know about. I went through the DOS, Win 3.1, and Win 95 years and I have seen too many programs butcher operating systems. I won't play this CD on the computer, I'll just continue listening to the MP3s ( BTW, it took me less that 5 minutes to figure out how to bypass the security and rip the tracks to a much higher quality than I originally downloaded). Here's the irony: I never would have even heard this album if it wasn't for the Usenet. It gets no airplay where I live, and no one I know is familiar with it. I enjoy the album, own it, and would never have even heard it if the Internet did not exist. How many other great albums are gathering dust because the recording industry has their collective heads up their collective wazzoos.
Exactly! I'd say 75% or more of the cd's I've bought in the past year or two all were bought because I downloaded some tracks from the internet, liked what I heard, and then bought the cd's.
Much like people don't like buying speakers before hearing them (hence all the home demo's I host) I don't like buying cd's I haven't heard. The crap they play on the radio is soooooo bad, I have to find other places to find music. The internet IS that place.
Download iTunes from Apple (now works with Windows!). Browse the iTunes Music Store. Even if you don't plan on buying MP3s online, it's a great way to expose yourself to new music so you can go buy the CDs. All songs/albums have high-quality previews.
http://www.apple.com/itunes
tinfoilhat,
You can defeat that copy-protection mechanism by holding down the SHIFT key when you insert the CD. Simple, but true.
Peter...read his post a little closer.
Peter is right. My reply was based on a configuration problem. I have a modified vxd that shows CD audio tracks as wave files. You can then drag and drop songs directly. When you press Shift as you load a cd, you defeat the autorun feature of windows that is enabled by default. I would imagine that most visitors to this site have disabled Autorun for both data and music disks simply as a matter of security. At any rate, when I loaded the Roseann Cash disk, I immediately got a warning that the cd was unplayable without installing a software player on the disk. When I looked at the cd in explorer, I couldn't see any wave files, just the program data. I assumed that the protection I was seeing was stronger than it was. What I didn't know at the time was that another program had changed my autorun settings and broken my vxd.
Nick Drake, especially the album Pink Moon which is just him and a guitar, very good album, no, amazing album.
Medeski Martin and Wood. Very good jazz/jam band.
G. Love and Special Sauce, mixes jazz, blues, rock, country, rap and R&B for a pretty cool sound.
Ben Harper, very good artist, big in Europe, not so big here in North America. Gets too preachy some times(like his newest album).
Jack Johnson, newer artist, has played with both G Love and Ben Harper. A surfer from Hawaii(top ranked, too), his music is more layed back than previous two.
If no one has picked up on them yet, Coldplay is a good ensemble band. I know, i know, they ae all over the radio, get played too much, etc. Reminds me of Pink Floyd and Radiohead mixed together.
Portishead. Unique, to say the least.
Last but not least, Morcheeba. There first album, Who Can You Trust?, is a very mellow piece. The lead singer has a very addicting voice. Their second album, Big Calm, is much 'happier.'
XM Radio!!! I recently subscribed to it and it is singlehandedly responsible for re-awakening my love of music. I must admit the sound quality is not exactly top-notch, but the scope of music is simply amazing. My favorite stations are Fred (alternative 80's), Classic Jazz and Fish (Christian pop).