Heroes Not Zombies

Here are some ways I’ve expanded my musical horizons over the years –

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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)
4. 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?