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[duallain]

Recently I began to rediscover how much I love finding new music, it isn’t just the music being awesome but the new lyrics, new styles or otherwise can often be awesome.  So how do you find new music?  In time I hope that this post will be the place you consult if you’re looking for new music, but for now I hope this will prompt some discussion.

•Internet radio
o   Pandora radio is a great internet radio station that takes your tastes into account while you listen.
o   Last.fm is great for tracking what you actually listen to and finding new things to listen to by listening to their artist stations or your own personal station.

•Random downloads
o    The mediafire thread So much awesomeness, in one thread, the downloads offered are the best recommendations around.
o   Myspace.  Though much derided myspace is one of the best places to get absolutely free listens to music.

•General information
o   Wikipedia.com has great info on musical movements, what albums an artist has put out and other general information.
o   Amazon.com is where I go to if I’m thinking about buying an album, typically also has decent reviews.
o    Riaa Radar is great for buying indie music and has some great info on record labels.

•Websites explicitly for music discovery
o   Music Map

•Review sites
o   Tinymixtapes; from a site focused on having volunteers make and share mixtapes to what it is today, tinymixtapes is a great site with some great people writing for them.
o   Pitchfork used to be (is?) the one site everyone can agree has reviews on it.  Beyond that its usefulness is very subjective. 

[Daft pun]

Free/streamable stuff:
Thinner: Electronic netlabel which offers freely downloadable albums.
Paper Thin Walls: Daily dose of three free songs roughly lumped together by genre
The Hype Machine: Collects songs posted on all kinds of blogs for your convenience
3voor12: Dutch music site, if you click on "Kijk en luister" and then "Luisterpaal" you'll find an assortment of streamable recent albums (not sure if this works for non-Dutchies)

Reviews:
Drowned in Sound: UK based review site
Cokemachineglow: More of the reviews

Discographies:
Discogs: A community-built database of music information. Imagine a site with discographies of all labels, all artists, all cross-referenced.

[amok]

Allmusic - The name pretty much says it all. Encyclopedia of music, with your standard blogs/reviews/obligatory bolt-ons.

[coldenginelogic]

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/  Dusted magazine is one of the best music review sites/interviews etc however-the deal in 90 eclectic music with very few reviews of stuff you could see elsewhere
http://totallyfuzzy.blogspot.com/  Totally Fuzzy is a wonderful blog which list blogs from around the world and what they are offering, extensive search and a kick ass community a hipster fave on the Euro scene and here as well
http://www.archive.org/details/audio Live music archive chock full of sanctioned bootlegs approved by the bands...both commercial and underground a wonderful resource to find shows

[Nodaisho]

I like Pandora, but there are some really damn weird things it will come up with. I was listening to Type O Negative radio and it gave me Eminem, and I was listening to black sabbath and it gave me Nelly. The only connection between Eminem and Type O negative was that they both contained foul language, which seems like a really stupid trait to use, though it also claimed they shared rap roots. Anyway, yeah, pandora is nice, but it gives you some really crappy picks sometimes.

[rynne]

I seem to have the opposite problem with Pandora.   For me, its algorithm seems to focus on bands of the same genres to ones I already like instead of suggesting anything surprising that has similar qualities.  Every time I use it, my experience tends to go like this:

Me: I like [band X].
Pandora: *plays song by band X* Do you like this?
Me: Yes.
Pandora: *plays song that sounds like a crappy rip-off of band X* Do you like this?
Me: No.
Pandora: *plays song by band X* Do you like this?
Me: Yes.
Pandora: *plays song that sounds like a crappy rip-off of band X* Do you like this?
Me: No.
etc., etc....

Frankly, I haven't found a particular review source (website, magazine, tv channel) that wholly matches my tastes.  So, I go to the music itself.  I take a band I like, and search for interviews, see what contemporary music they like and what past music influenced them?  What artists have they invited to guest on their records, who have they collaborated with, who have they remixed/been remixed by?  Who are their tourmates?  Who are on the same record labels?  It's not as simple as going to a particular website, but I find it's a lot more effective to trust musicians' tastes than reviewers' tastes.

[Nodaisho]

I dunno, I haven't had much bad luck, sure I get some nu-metal mixed in with the good music, but it isn't usually very bad. I have also found some music that I really like (TON Tiamat, Paradise Lost, possibly Poisonblack) on it, so I like it. What bands have you tried? That could have to do with it.

[rynne]

Foetus, Ladytron, NIN, Current 93, David Bowie, Public Enemy are the ones I remember.  My issue is that I'm not a general fan of many particular genres, but I like *good* music from just about any genre.  That's a very difficult point to get across on Pandora; it wouldn't take that list and realize that I like albums from Orbital or Blur or GYBE. 

For me, Pandora's not good at making the non-intuitive leaps that I'd find truly useful.  It can point me to bands that are similar to what I already like, but I'm perfectly capable of doing that myself.  I want records that don't necessarily have the same sound as what I've already heard, things that I wouldn't consider on my own.  Ideally, I'd want Pandora to take a look at the bands I like and go, "Here, try this Elton John record" [just as a random example] and it turning out to be something that totally works for me.

[imagist42]

The thing about Pandora is it gets better as you continue using the same stations. Its algorithm more closely matches what you're looking for when you've been at it a while, giving appropriate and accurate feedback.

It is not, however, a really good place to find music vastly different from what you already listen to. If you're not looking for the same genre, it's probably not going to work out for you.

[rynne]

Exactly.  Whereas for an example, if I take collaborators of Current 93, I get everyone from OM to Will Oldham to Nurse With Wound to Andrew WK to Marc Almond.  There's a huge range of styles, but I know there's a similar artistic sensibility to something I already enjoy.

[dalconnsuch]

http://www.rateyourmusic.com/ is an awsum site for it has just about every album and band in the history of ever plus a great place to read many diverse album reviews, i find it helpful to find a negative review and a positive review for an album

[Noff]

Musicovery.com has an interesting take on the internet radio thing, in that it lets you pick the mood (based on 'energy' and 'positivity') and genre, then plays tracks based on that.  If you spend a lot of time looking for the same pace of music it tends to repeat a lot, but it still surprises me when it find music that fits my mood from genres I didn't expect.

[Daft pun]

The best thing Pandora had to offer me was Gay Dad, and seriously people, that's not very good.

[amok]

Pandora was an epic fail for me. I plugged in Icon of Coil, big name in the scene, figured it'd turn me onto a few smaller ones. I got exactly one EBM result then an endless onslaught of dodgy French happy hardcore.

Last.FM's recommendation system is leagues ahead if you give your profile a few weeks to grow.

[Patrick]

Idunno, Pandora told me to check out British Sea Power. Only reason I didn't was because Demonoid got killed.

[amok]

Yeah I didn't want to turn this into another debate between the two. Just saying, it's hit-or-miss. But then, so is last. sometimes.