Though my music collection these days can neither be described as large nor small, I often find myself with a slight fear of musical stagnation – in fear of the day that I stop looking, liking, and exploring new music and grow too comfortable with the music I already have.So, being the unyielding believer in the advancement of modern technology that I am, I faithfully set out on a mission to find new sources of music that I would like, using a system hopefully a bit more advanced than using Amazon’s “Customers who bought this item also bought” system (though this system is surprisingly accurate and helpful most of the time). In my search, I stumbled upon three sources of information that have not only helped to expand my iTunes library significantly, but also have served to assuage my fear each time it arises.
My first such source is also the most rudimentary one, and though I berated Amazon.com above, the site actually is quite helpful in this regard. There is no substitute for user opinions, and it is Amazon’s customer reviews of albums I already have that I use in order to find similar artists. While reading through the vast amounts of album reviews, I run into people comparing the artist to others and accusing the artist of copying the style or genre of someone else. And from there I take those other artists, and see if I like them or not. Quite rudimentary I know and thus my second source.Throughout my music collection, and only in the last three years, I have many non-mainstream artists that seem to not get the attention they deserve (such is life). But despite not getting their much deserved recognition, it seems that finding them proves difficult as well.
Fortunately, for ind(i)ependent artists and independent record labels, emusic.com serves as a collaborative site that catalogues millions of artists and allows song downloads at relatively cheap prices ($0.25 each with a subscription model) without any DRM (digital rights management) included. Personally I have not purchased any music from them, but the articles, recommendations, and polls help to serve as a guiding light for emerging independent artists. If you have not check this site out I highly recommend it.
The third and final source of new artists (to me) is called Pandora. Pandora is the child of the Music Genome Project, a project who’s aim was to “capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level” by “assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony.”
The Music Genome Project is a pretty amazing achievement on its own. However, Pandora utilizes the genome project’s findings in order to, once you enter songs or artists that you like, offer you song suggestions not only with text, but also in a radio station type form. This allows you to hear the recommendations and let the station know if you liked the song or not, and Pandora based on your preferences, will tailor the station programming to your liking. The technology behind Pandora amazes me to this day, and the simplicity of use is unparalleled (each recommended song includes purchase links to the iTunes store and Amazon.com (in case you want to hear the song again and make it yours). Below is a screenshot of Pandora’s user interface. Enjoy!
I wish you all the best in your search for new music, and hopefully your will find these three sources helpful along the way 🙂