needcaffeine

People talk about Napster & the other P2P choices of yesteryear as their sources for music discovery, & yet I never found any of them great for it. They were great mass downloaders of content that you knew of & wanted, but not for finding some new bands.

There are 2 schools of thought on finding something new: A) Review someone of similar music congruence with Last.FM,  Ping & alike B) Shared playlists & songs via WWW, Spotify & alike. The problem with A is that you’re unlikely to find bands/genre’s outside of your current tastes. By listening to music presented by SocMed friends or shared playlists you will listen (often unknowingly) to new genres & bands. 

For music purchases, I’m not a proponent of iTunes, it’s the standard for music management but I find their store interface inefficient for my browsing methodology. (I like to review multiple things at once and flip back & forth between). Most of my purchases are on Amazon, their suggested music (based on recent purchases or my recent views) is also a great place to find new content. 

In the past 6 months, (negating SXSW) I’ve come to love about 40+ new groups. My suggestion, talk to your SocMed friends/read their blogs, you may find some great new music (that they may not talk about elsewhere).