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Best places to find new music – Metro US

Best places to find new music

With billions of songs available, looking for new music (or music that’s new to you) can be frustrating and intimidating. Here are a few ways to make things easier.

The Hype Machine (www.hypem.com):
This site scours blog postings and streaming websites for whatever you ask it to. Convenient “buy now” buttons make downloading what you’ve found a snap.

A New Band a Day (www.bandaday.com): Just like it sounds: a blog that promises a write up on a new band every day. No options to purchase.

New Band of the Day (www.tinyurl.com/64y36d):
A service of Britain’s Guardian newspaper. At last count, there are nearly 550 bands in the archives, too. No option to purchase.

Crazed Hits (www.crazedhits.com):
A free talent scout tip sheet featuring hot unsigned bands and artists. This is great if you want to see what the current A&R bidding war might be.

Wearehunted.com (www.wearehunted.com):
What if there was a site that monitored all the other sites where people are looking for new music and then ranked them in a chart? We Are Hunted is a good attempt at monitoring the most popular songs on MySpace Music, BitTorrent, Last.fm, iLike, blogs, Twitter and press releases. Using some clever clustering algorithms, they come up with the Top 99 songs of the day.

ExploreMusic (www.exploremusic.com): OK, OK, so this is a shameless plug for a site that I curate, but me and the staff sort through hundreds of songs every week so you can get a head start on finding something interesting. And yeah, we can help you buy something you like.

Your local record store:
I know so many people who haven’t set foot in a proper record store in years. Why not try the old fashioned method of trolling through the racks? It still works — and there’s something about the thrill of the hunt, too.

Your favourite radio station: There’s a myth that you can’t hear anything new on the radio anymore. That’s false. You just need to step out of your comfort zone. Try listening to a station you normally wouldn’t. You’ll be surprised at what you may discover. It may not be new, but it’ll be new to you.

– The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on stations across Canada. Read more at ongoinghistory.com and exploremusic.com