Where do you find new music? Recommendations from friends? The radio? Going to concerts? Or maybe, just maybe, the most abundant resource of them all: the internet?
784O! J...9O... Mk+8;...Y
With the advent of the internet, the music industry has undergone some serious transformations and discovering new music has never been so easy. I mean, for the love of donuts, they just removed the CD from the iTunes logo because they are starting to surpass CD sales. If that’s not crazy for you then you’re probably young and don’t have a large CD collection… now I know how the adults in my youth felt when they were hanging on to their LP collection and freaking out over CDs.
Anyways, I just wanted to talk about some of the cool ways we can stumble across new music now. While iTunes is fresh in your minds, Apple has recently rolled out a way to combine social networking and music discovery. They call it Ping. You can access it right from your iTunes interface located under the “iTunes store” link (as long as you’re updated to the current version). You can use it to “follow” artists, see who they like, get updates from them, and share your favorite artists with friends who also use Ping. Sweet, right?
One of the best ways I like to check out new music is through my Napster subscription. I like to find an artist, like John Williams (gotta love that Jurassic Park soundtrack), and then check out the other recommendations that automatically populate or click Automix and it queues up related artists for you. The nice thing about doing this on a Napster subscription verses Pandora is that you can choose to replay a song if you like it, save it to your own personal playlists, or buy it right there and throw it on an MP3 player. Don’t get me wrong though, I use Pandora as well because a) it is super cool and b) its method of choosing similar music is different than any other logic out there. It bases the selections on the sound of the music versus just the fact that it shares a genre with other artists or what other users have liked.
The last tool I wanted to touch on is iLike. You may be familiar with iLike, not from stumbling across its website, but probably from searching an artist on Google or Facebook. They’ve linked themselves up with pretty much all of the major sources for music these days, which is quite the epic ninja-business move if you ask me. If you search an artist on Google, you’ll most likely see their top 5 tracks on iLike pop up at the top of the search results, ready to play at the click of the button. The same goes for Facebook; if you’ve ever listened to a track on Facebook, it’s because the artist is on iLike. The company is actually owned by Myspace, which is still a great resource for new music discovery as well; kind of like the good old friend that stuck with you through thick and thin.
Well, don’t just do something, sit there… and find new music! (Also, be sure to do something after you find the music because it’s healthy to move around once in a while)
Karina-BBY
on:
A Gift for my Wife
on:
How To Gift A Mobile Phone
