Thread: Where do you get your ideas for new music from?

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I care too much about the quality of the audio to get my music from YouTube - it turns out really badly most of the time. Many general trackers (IPTorrents, etc) have a reasonable amount of music, and there are dedicated music sites, too, like Waffles. I'd start with a general PT and then move to a dedicated music tracker once you exhaust the possibilities of the general tracker.

-Z

Actually one of the things that usenet excels at is music. I love Pedro, Waffles, etc. But some stuff is just hard to find. And usenet is "seeded" (almost) forever vis a vis a good provider like Giganews.

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That's tough - your best bet is probably to pick a genre you want to explore, and find a radio show that showcases new songs every week. Direct example: Trance. Armin Van Buuren does a weekly radio show with the newest and the best trance around. I've discovered a great amount of artists that way.

-Z

If you're into the sorta thing you're describing, try Pandora, Last.fm, Soundcloud. But really, if you love music, you won't download from YouTube. I think the default bitrate for youtube videos is 96kbps and the "higher quality" version is 128kbps. Which as anyone will tell you, is shit. Bottom rung shit. Of course it also depends what you're listening to. I certainly wouldn't download anything like a Kanye West flac.

Originally Posted by Magister

I just like to listen to a different songs without having to know the title. That's why I also tried Spotify. Have you tried it? Where do you hear from new artists or new songs you mgith like?

There are so many venues to explore music in. Most of the time, I've got my own material in rotation. But I also want to discover new artists + find something fresh along the lines of what you were saying. And there are countless ways to do that.

Listen to a live radio station some of the time and you'll stumble across some interesting stuff. If you live in a musical wasteland like me i.e. a city, with a lot of pathetic FM stations, then that means internet or satellite radio. I tried XM/Sirius and found it a waste of time. But internet radio has potential. Now I can listen to a decent station from San Francisco or something avant garde from Zurich on a whim. Someone is streaming every genre you can imagine somewhere on the net.

I haven't tried Spotify, but there are so many services and web sites for music buffs. I seem to keep going back to Lastfm. You upload a list of music that you like and they run some software to spot patterns and then stream their best guess at new music that will match your tastes. It's hit + miss to be sure, but better than FM and I've found some real gems this way. I have very eclectic and particular tastes and still find it worthwhile. If your tastes are more consistent than mine, then the results should be even better. Movie buff? Pay attention to soundtracks which often feature up + coming artists.

Music lists on the net - Google will find a gazillion (technical term) of these. I flip through a few now + then and if a random list has a lot of my favourites in it, then I'll go check out the unknowns in the list. Also youtube, go look for a song that you like (by an artist that you don't know really well). And look at member channels. See who likes the same song + see what else is on their list. Or download a list of genre headers on usenet and literally browse through a genre. Do this with mp3 files because they are small and a quick click to listen. Once you know which songs you really want, then you can go look for (the larger) flac files.


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I use Waffles & LW

Originally Posted by Pedrosa

I use Waffles & LW

Those are the posts I really hate. It screams 'I am too lazy to read and then think about this thread but I want to make another post'. If you are too lazy to read the whole thread please don't even post.

To the others:
Thanks for the input. Last.fm sounds really interesting and I'm going ot check it out soon. I am not able to use Pandora, because I am living in Europe and my seedbox/VPN is also located there. Pandora is currently only available for people with a USA IP. Spotify is similar to Pandora, the competition from the other side of the pot.
I think I will try out Last.fm, search the suggested artists on a music tracker and download their albums. In my opinion is it the best combination between quality, quantity and not spending too much time getting new music.