Photo Credit: Jeroen Diepenmaat
Social music discovery and recommendation services have exploded in recent years. It's nice to see DRM schemes crumble and looking around it seems that that the rapid fragmentation and proliferation of these services is likely to continue for some time. Changes to licensing and distribution models that spanned several generations have forced people to choose how they want to discover, consume, and share music.
In thinking about all the ways I discover, consume and share music it became apparent that the services one uses are a good predictor of all sorts of personal, geographic, and social tendencies (more on this in a later post). Here's a rundown of my habits.
For music discovery I've used Shazam to tag the occasional track here and there, but I use Hype Machine more than any other service. I have a few friends who work in the music industry and post tons of music videos on Facebook. I find their posts invaluable. There are a few blogs I check regularly too. And, lots of people on my IM network use various clients that allow them to display what they're listening to throughout the day.
MySpace music seems to have become the de facto homepage for many bands - probably because it's so easy to stream full tracks from their media player - so I poke around over there once in a while. It would be tough to go back to a world without the Pandora iPhone app and living in NYC, with so many bands passing through, Sonic Living has become an indispensable resource for keeping track of upcoming shows.
Of course, there are tons of music videos on YouTube, so I'm there now and then. Both Last.fm and Imeem are tried and true veterans that get some play when everyone else is failing to quench my thirst for something new. I also scrobble iTunes and Hype Machine with Last.fm so I have everything in one place.
As far as sharing goes, I post playlists to a great site called 8tracks so I can share them over Twitter and Facebook. We stream playlists and often entire libraries on our office iTunes network and I'm into that too. So much so, that I downloaded a little utility called iTunes Monitor that lets me see who's listening to my playlists.
I know there are some big names missing from this list, so it would be great to hear what the Threeminds readership thinks of my music ecosystem and how they meet their discovery, consumption, and sharing needs.
Dan Neumann
Strategists & Planners
Comments (1)
Great blog Dan!
Music is my life. Most of my waking hours outside of work involve enjoying music in some capacity. My favorite "old fashioned" ways of discovering new artists is through festivals like Glastonbury (UK) & NxNE (Canada) where there are literally HUNDREDS of bands performing over a week. There's nothing like discovering a new band live.
Online, my current favourite site is: We Are Hunted (wearehunted.com) which compiles a list of movers and shakers online for the week - just in case you don't have hours to scour thousands of music blogs. What's so great about this service is that all songs are streamed so you don't have to download to listen. Another service similar to Pandora is Musicovery (http://musicovery.com/), where you plug in a favourite song or artist and it maps out other songs you may like in a playlist. I've had SO much fun rediscovering music this way.
I'm also addicted to Elbow.ws & Hype Machine too. I could spend hours sweeping the MP3 blogs for new artists. I have a huge list bookmarked/RSSed and try to check them out once a week.
I also listen to radio stations like Absolute Xtreme & WOXY - which invariably will be playing the hits of tomorrow. UK's Q Magazine's monthly music list is also a great place to spot new artists.
Finally - I have a network of friends all over the world who I've met through following my favourite bands and what we do a few times a year is swap CDs of our favourite non-mainstream bands. I trust my friends tastes and have discovered some amazing artists this way.
Posted on June 2, 2009 07:51