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Where It’s At In Music Discovery
People talk about Pandora and Last.fm as if they are the holy grail of music discovery.
Bob Lefsetz moans the loss of FM radio and drives around in his car listening to XM play 20 year old music and thinks XM is where it's at in digital music.
XM and Pandora are for the over 40 crowd who like their music spoon fed to them. They aren’t anywhere near where it’s at in music discovery.
If you want to know where it’s at in music discovery these days, you have to be on the mp3 blogs. Because that is where the next big act is going to be launched. Hell it has already happened. Take my beloved Arctic Monkeys who I found on the mp3 blogs last year. That’s where the people who really love new music do their thing.
And there's a couple of hundred
Think they're Christopher Columbus
That’s all it takes, a couple of a hundred blogs, to discover cool music. They post it and we discover it. And all we have to do is click on the link and hear the music. None of that bs 30 second sample stuff. You get the whole song on the mp3 blogs and you get it as much as you want.
And better yet, there’s an aggregator out there called The Hype Machine which culls all the mp3 blogs and serves up an aggregated playlist. It’s like delicious (link density matters) and you can get recent or popular or just one act or just one blog. And Hype Machine has its own player so you can do the spoon feed thing if you want.
I find so much great music on the mp3 blogs and the hype machine. Just last week I found a great band called TV on the Radio. I’ve been listening to them on Rhapsody and am going to buy the record.
What mp3 blogs do is combine the best of radio, music magazines, and the web into one ecosystem that works to surface interesting new music. If you want to dive into mp3 blogs, start with the HypeMachine and start listening and clicking on the links. You’ll be entering the future of music discovery.
Comments (13) | Posted July 18, 2006 in Listings , Venture Capital and Technology
Comments
have you checked out Mog.com? Its a social network for people who are really into music / who blog about music. I'm amazed at how on topic most of these people are.
Posted by: sahadeva | Jul 18, 2006 8:20:06 AM
I'm very selective as to what new music I will invest in, so I get my new music recommendations from friends:-)
You're a big fan of new music, but I think something that you overlook is that there is sooooooo much old music you've never heard, and I think that's where I, surprisingly, find myself in agreement with your buddy Bob.
Posted by: Tony Alva | Jul 18, 2006 10:22:44 AM
Dead on. A key music source for me has become http://nightafternight.blogs.com (I have no connection, I am just a loyal reader).
Posted by: David | Jul 18, 2006 11:15:20 AM
Sorry, I should have provided a link to
Night After Night.
Posted by: David | Jul 18, 2006 11:22:37 AM
I'm actually pretty facinated by Platinum Blue and Polyphonic. Their algorithms have some interesting implications on music culture. For example,if you can use the algorithm to guide the creative process to produce a song with mass appeal, and everybody created using that algoirithm, will all music sound the same?
Posted by: Danny | Jul 18, 2006 11:53:42 AM
The Hype Machine looks pretty good. I have found that for actually finding more music by interesting bands, Soulseek easily is the most comprehensive of all the file-sharing networks, especially for independent-label stuff. If it's not on Soulseek it probably doesn't exist. If you are trying to find Cornish in a Turtleneck, Abukus, Grits, or Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (before they were known) Soulseek is the only way. A lot of the time you can't buy what you find on there even if you want to.
Posted by: evan | Jul 18, 2006 12:13:26 PM
I've discovered some good new music on MP3 blogs (love TV on the Radio btw, and they've a new album out). I've found even more great music, esp electronic dance stuff, using podcasts compiled from del.icio.us tags, which I think you'd blogged about last year.
In both cases, though, I've little incentive to actually buy the track I've downloaded. In a market that may be increasingly dominated by singles, I'm not sure this provides an artist with as much flexibility in exposure as radio-style (or even on-demand) streaming. Beatport does a nice job in this department (you can stream full tracks on-demand and buy an unrestricted download).
Of course, streams can be ripped too but even limited barriers to copying will help keep most in line (and exposure legal).
Posted by: David Porter | Jul 18, 2006 5:18:37 PM
When I worked at Best Buy 3 yrs ago, I proposed the idea of BBY launching a blog that covered their music category with free and complete samples (at the time, it was inline with their newly launched "thousands of possibilities, get yours" brand message). Sadly, I was too low on the totem pole for the idea to get to the next step...All I got was "What's a blog?"
Oh well, I guess it's their loss now. :)
Posted by: John | Jul 18, 2006 11:43:59 PM
I'm going to have to agree with Tony. The cycle time for music is way too short now. You really have no chance of "getting into the music". But, that is what the young public wants. They EXPECT a new album every 6 months or less (ref: Arctic Monkies).
I'm just now listening to J-Pop from the turn of the century (man that makes it sound REALLY old).
But, I guess I did find most of the artists through Jpopsuki. ;-)
Posted by: AWilhem | Jul 19, 2006 5:08:59 PM
* Fred .. your blog has cost me countless enjoyable wasted hours searchin' for new tunes.
* finding new music is great fun ... wading thru eMusic itself is tough ...
* much more fun than workin
* how come you don't like the Black Keys?
Posted by: iain | Jul 20, 2006 7:56:23 PM
Si! Discovering NEW music is so much fun.
I'd love for you to know about the Oklahoma-born-and-bred collective, The London Broil (A couple of them used to play in bands with members of The Flaming Lips and The Starlight Mints). They are meaty. And greasy. Perhaps you will find them delicious.
http://www.myspace.com/thelondonbroil
(They have a bizarre demographic following them on MySpace for an uber-hilarious reason...Great story! More to come on that later?)
Posted by: Court Dog | Mar 25, 2007 2:57:22 PM
Don't knock XM! When driving to work, I find it incredibly rewarding to press "scan" on my XM radio, and choose to hear a satcast of music I'd ordinarily never run into. It's expensive and time-consuming to buy/download music that you are vaguely curious about. It's cheap and fast to sample new genres on XM.
Posted by: Aviva Gabriel | May 8, 2007 10:11:26 PM
FATSOO RECORDS would like to welcome music lovers worldwide to our various web sights in which you can check out our blazing tracks!!! We are a collabo of artists and producers putting it down in the mixx!! Coming out the dirty south, we are following in suit with the rest of the hardhitters!!! You can hear our music at http://www.showcaseyourmusic.com/fatsoorecords and at www.indiestore.com/fatsoorecords.
Posted by: FATSOO | Sep 14, 2007 2:26:53 AM
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