4 Ways To Discover New Bands And Be Cooler Than Your Friends

Alright here's a couple of links for those of you who are tired of listening to the same eleven top 40's bands constantly playing on the radio (*cough* The Fray/Snow Patrol *cough*) :

1-Pandora.com : I've made many a discovery with this amazing website. It's all based on The Music Genome Project, in which the "genes" are various musical attributes (there are literally hundreds of them), such as "use of vocal harmony", "folk influences", "extensive vamping" and hopefully some day "use of cowbell" (and/or "use of more cowbell").

So it's kinda like an online radio station, but not quite. You put in any artist/band or song and the site will start a playlist with many of the same attributes...for some artists it really is uncanny. I tested it with a friend the other day, put in "Black Eyed Peas" and one minute into a non-BEP song, I had him absolutely convinced that said song was their new single. What I'm trying to say is that they're good, real good. And definitely worth checking out.

2-Metacritic.com : One of my other go-to sites, if you want to know how good the new El-P album is or how horrid the new Good Charlotte album is, this is the place to go. What it does is provide access to dozens of albums reviews all in one spot. No more going from music review site to music review site to decide which CD to buy, it's all here. After they've accumulated reviews, they combine them into a Metascore from a scale of 1 to 100. And to give you an example of the validity of their scores :

Highest-scoring album ever : SMiLe by Brian Wilson/Van Lear Rose by Lorretta Lynn/How The West Was Won by Led Zeppelin (tied)

Lowest-scoring album ever : Playing With Fire by Kevin Federline

The results speak for themselves ladies and gentlemen.

3-The Hype Machine : This site is basically a music blog search engine that has new songs by the truck full every single day. The site tracks mp3 blogs and posts them all on the site's front page. There's even a streaming radio that plays all the posted songs, for Pete's sake. I honest to goodness (remind me never to say that again) discovered 5 new bands I had never heard of in about 40 minutes.

Fuckin' ridiculous.

4-Music blogs in general : If you're here, chances are you already knew this one...but I'll say it anyway, blogs have all the newest news about all the newest bands. Hell, they probably have news about bands that don't even exist yet. They're quick that way.

My favorites one are on the site, so check 'em out!

There are tons of other sites that are worthy of your double-clicks, but I've got to keep some material for future posts now don't I?

Know a great music site? Email me @ evilrobotparade@gmail.com!