The Music Blogosphere
Back in 2007, looking to expand my music library, I started looking for new songs using Pandora (when it was a free service with no ads, believe it or not). As a result, I was introduced to some of my favorite artists like the Arcade Fire, British Sea Power, and Tokyo Police Club. From there, I started frequenting music blogs like Aurgasm, the then newly-launched but now-defunct music aggregator We Are Hunted, Will Oliver at We All Want Someone to Shout For, and Indie Shuffle. While Hydric Media (now Icon Technology Studio) did make a brave stab at reviving We Are Hunted in the form of Wonder.fm, sadly that project is also no more.
Luckily, the amazing music aggregator the Hype Machine is still going strong. I have been a Hype Machine member since 2010, and it is usually my first stop for collecting new music and tracking the blogs and artists I like. If you like having a place online to discover amazing music, I strongly encourage you to become a supporter so they can keep doing the awesome stuff that they do.
I also try and buy as much music as possible from Bandcamp. Bandcamp has a really nice e-commerce model that offers a lot of flexibility with buying music, in particular a feature that allows artists to let customers name their own price. As the COVID-19 pandemic was ramping up back in July 2020, Bandcamp started making the first Friday of every month fees-free as a fundraiser for artists on the platform, and is continuing to do this for the foreseeable future as an initiative called Bandcamp Fridays. To see when the next Bandcamp Friday will take place, click here.
Links to my Hype Machine, SoundCloud, and Bandcamp profiles are below if you want to check out what I'm currently listening to.
"Best Discovered Songs" Lists
In 2009, I added more new music to my library than any other year. To mark the occasion, I decided to distill the new acquisitions down to a list of the ten "best discovered" songs, which I posted on Facebook. The response to the post was small but very positive, so I decided to make a regular habit out of it. Although the 2009 list has somehow vanished into a digital black hole, there are now "best discovered" lists for every year since that someday I will get around to publishing here.
