Here are some ways I’ve expanded my musical horizons over the years –
- The Music Club.
When I was a teenager, my friends and I started a club. There were a dozen of us and we grouped together into three groups of four. Everyone put one pound into the kitty every week (that was 12 pounds a week). Each group took it in turn to buy albums with that week’s money and everyone in the purchase group got to keep each album for a week before passing it on to a friend. If you liked it you could tape it. If you didn’t you just passed it on quickly. Once an album had been all round the purchase group it was passed on to the next group. Once everyone had borrowed an album we auctioned it amongst ourselves with the money being added to the kitty. I discovered a lot of music that way. - John Peel and Bob Harris on the radio
I was a regular listener to John Peel on Radio 1 and when I was at school I wired up an audio lead to the speaker terminals in my dad’s radio to tape his show onto cassette. Sadly, John died in 2004. His taste and mine were not always the same but in his earlier years at least there was a lot of overlap. Bob Harris in recent years has broadcast a regular show at the weekend on Radio 2 and I’d routinely record it onto minidisc then listen to it on the train over the following week. I abandoned that practice when I moved from the minidisc to the ipod. I still listen to his show from time to time, either live on Radio 2, or on the net, using the BBC’s listen again service. - MP3 blogs
MP3 blogs are blogs about music. You have to hunt about for a bit to find one which matches your tastes. I especially like saidthegramaphone – its my favourite! I’ve recently discovered elbo.ws which is an MP3 blog aggregator (that means it collects the posts from a range of other blogs) - New net technologies
I really enjoyed Pandora while it lasted! Sadly the copyright fanatics are busy killing it off in the UK but if you’re in the US you are still in luck. It uses a special algorithm to work out what kind of music you’ll like if you tell it some of your favourites.
Most recently I’ve discovered Musicovery – it’s fabulous! The interface is THE most innovative music interface I’ve seen on the net. You have two axes – Energetic/calm and dark/positive and you just drag the cursor into the zone you want to discover. It then instantly creates an incredibly colourful music map with the central node being a song you might enjoy. You can move around the map sampling songs that are more or less like the one which is playing – oh dear! That’s not too clear is it? The best thing to do is go and see it for yourself! Musicovery
So, tell me, how to you find music you like?
Heroes Not Zombies 
thanks for the link to musicovery…sounds interesting! I really enjoy Pandora, it seems like it avoids copyright issue in the US by not allowing a person to skip too many songs per hour. Hope that lasts. I also like to skim through CDNOW.com and pop in a name of music I like, then they suggest others I might enjoy, and most of the time give samplers of the music. Other than that, just through friends with similar tastes who have wandered through myspace and heard new things, or off the web arbitrarily.
Oh yes Ester I think Pandora is great – I just hope they get all the licensing stuff sorted out for europe
Your mention of cdnow reminds me that I have found some good stuff through the amazon “other people who bought this…..” thing!
This is a belated response to your piece about expanding musical horizons in August last year – and yes, I am the Martin Waddell who was in the record club and raved about Soft Machine with you all those years ago – ah, the nostalgia. Here’s a fifth way of expanding musical horizons – get involved in making music. I don’t play an instrument (too lazy to learn when I had the chance as a youngster) but I can sing, and over the years I’ve been involved in lots of choirs, ranging from 200+ doing huge choral and orchestral pieces in the Usher Hall, to much smaller ensembles singing obscure 16th century stuff in Latin. You really get to discover pieces of music that you wouldn’t have bothered with otherwise, and you really get to learn from the inside what they’re all about, and I’m sure that must be true for people who play in orchestras, rock groups, brass bands or whatever. Hope you don’t mind me chipping into your blog – I only came across it a few days ago, and I’m tryng to get my head around all the different threads. Best wishes – Martin (Got Soft Machine Third on CD if you want to borrow it)
Well, well, Martin, welcome! You have Third on CD? I still have the original vinyl and it’s going to be the first record I try to digitise on my new USB turntable.
Hey, I miss that record club. It was SUCH a good idea!
Whatever happened to that Jumbo acoustic guitar you used to have? You were good at the Blues!
Don’t try and get your head round all the threads, just tug at the ones that capture your attention. I hope you enjoy some of the other posts.
Good at the blues – moi? I still blush when I remember my efforts. You ever hear about Sonny Boy Williamson’s comment , when he came to the UK in the early 60s and listened to groups like the Yardbirds? “These kids want to play the blues so bad – and they play the blues SOO bad.” And that was when the Yardbirds had Eric Clapton!
Martin
No need to blush! We were kids but we all thought you were GREAT at the blues! Hey, you even WROTE the songs!