4 Ways to Find Good Music: Reader Recommendations

Last week we ran a series of articles about how to find good music on the Internet, with posts about the Hype Machine, Daytrotter, and BitTorrent sites. Readers responded by offering their own music-finding suggestions. Here, some of the highlights.

1.) Try one of these other websites

Readers recommended their favorite music sites besides the ones we mentioned:

• Captain Crawl, suggested by seancooper
  
• Kry Key, suggested by Doug Sanders
  
• Irie Radio, suggested by Ric Crockett
  
• Beat Port, suggested by Delroy
  
• Covert Curiosity, suggested by queenerr

2.) Comb YouTube

Suggested by Uncle Fred:

You can comb youtube for music. It takes a whole two minutes to figure out how to download them in mp3 format. Or if you want Mp3's go to bittorrents like you mentioned. I prefer "discovering" new music on youtube as I can skip ahead to something else if I don't like what I'm hearing. This is all work intensive to be sure, but much more efficient at finding new tunes that best suit your liking.

I spend a Saturday morning looking for new music. I toss all the old songs from the week before and download a few dozen new ones. Usually, I get bored of the songs after a week and toss the old ones, repeating the same search and download come next Saturday.

3.) Browse the iTunes singles charts

Suggested by The Rant Guy:

It may not be particularly venturesome, but I generally look at the top 100 singles for each genre on itunes...it tells me what's selling and what people are listening to...as somebody with a top 40 ear, I usually add a few new songs a month to the library.

4.) Get a satellite radio subscription

Suggested by Stan Brown:

I feel like I am getting a good bang for my buck with satellite radio. Alt Nation and XMU play new music pretty regularly and I have made a few requests that have been played.