Music has become the constant in life these days. You go to the gym and an Ipod is strapped to your arm, you go on a road trip and the radio is blasting. The only problem is finding music you actually enjoy when there are so many options out there, and listening to the same bands can be monotonous… so here are a few tips to help you find new groups that you can be passionate about.

Genius iTunes has (not so) recently come out with a program called Genius. What this does is it takes the music off of your iTunes library and matches it with other artists that are similar, or fall into the same variety. The only drawback is that instead of matching songs to your favorite bands, it might decide to match new bands to the whimsical Disney soundtracks, or obscure operas you also have. This can be quickly remedied since, now, Genius can be applied to playlists that you put together on your own.

Rhapsody Everyone knows about rhapsody, it’s a website that allows you to listen to a certain amount of songs for free, then lets you buy them if you like the WHOLE song (Unlike iTunes, which just lets you listen to a few seconds of the chorus). Rhapsody also has a page for every band that it has a record of, including a quick history of the bands success and origin. How can this website help you find new bands? On the left column of each band’s page is a list of similar artists and artists that influenced the band in the first place. Go ahead and check out bands that made inspired your favorite band to make the music they create today.

Pandora is a quick radio site that personalizes a selection of music according to whatever specific song or band you put in. This is a great way to hear bands that you never knew existed. There are two drawbacks to this website. One is that you have to have an account, but it is free and you do get a demo of the radio site for a little while. The other drawback is that you can only skip a certain amount of songs and that the radio does have commercials.

ECG Tip

Have you found a new song you love, but still aren’t sure about buying the artist’s whole album? Then try Grooveshark. Grooveshark is a free music website, which lets you look up your favorite musicians and listen to their music. It’s free and you don’t have even to sign up. But if you’re having a party and need a good playlist, you can make an account and orchestrate a great playlist on Grooveshark. The only catch is that you’ll need internet via your laptop or smart phone in order to play it.

What Do You Think?

Have you had success finding new music with these programs? How do you find new music? Don’t miss a beat. Leave a comment and let us know!

4 Comments

  1. avatar Jessica says:

    You forgot Grooveshark! that’s where I listen to mine =)

  2. avatar sara says:

    check gnoosic! its great

  3. avatar Candy says:

    Hahhaaha. I’m not too bright today. Great post!

  4. avatar Aleida says:

    I actually had a discussion about this with some friends of mine the other day to see what other options I was missing out there. They listed off your suggestions too. I personally don’t find Pandora to be very useful. In all of the hours that I poured into the website, all I did was rediscover my love of Faith No More. One of the big things that threw me off about it was that a number of bands that I love but are less than well known aren’t in their database. That and I disliked pretty much everything they suggested. I’ve had a similar issue with last.fm but at least I did find one band (so far) that I have liked: Danger Danger

    For the most part, I just look for other bands in genres that I enjoy. Wikipedia is great for lists of bands. I’ll pull it up and go through the bands on that list and usually find at least one that I can enjoy.

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