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Not everyone likes the same music and sometimes we get tired of the same old stuff all the time. So let's look at a few online ways to open a few musical doors and find some new tunes. 

 

Radio Stations:  Many radio stations have live feeds of their musical content.   Check to see if your local radio station or a station in a town you visited has a live feed of their broadcast.   Some Maryland Area Stations with web feeds are: 

 

WAMU, DC, WTMD, Towson, WESM,Princess Anne, MD, 98 Rock, Baltimore.  You can also find NPR's Nationwide list of stations here.

 

Web Based Music Services: Somewhere between radio station and interactive music are two services that can help expose you to more of the music you already like or help you discover new artists and genres.  They are LastFM and Pandora.

 

At one level, each service can be used as a targeted radio station.  You can select the artist or similar artists (thereby discovering new people) and simply listen away.  This is a great basic way to use each service.  But once you sign up for either one, you can begin to shape the musical content that you hear. 

 

As subscribers to either service, you can tag songs as favorites, or in the case of last fm with different descriptive tags.   You can import your favorite music and both services will find you something similar to your prefered music.

 

LastFM  - LastFM has a good deal of web 2.0 ness.  You can tag the music you listen to in order to further refine the descriptions.  They have a large choice of music which you can buy through a link to Amazon.  You can embed your radio station or player onto your webpage, or provide a link directly to a stand alone player ready to play your favorites or your personal library.(Maurice's is here.)   You also help rate the music by "scrobbling." When you download their client it will share the titles and bands in your music library.  As you listen, Last.fm keeps a tally of your plays in order to gauge the popularity of different artists.  Don't confuse Scrobbling with sharing your music, here you only share the titles and artist names. If Last.fm has the tune they can easily hear them if not they might have a harder time hecking the tune out. Also you can find upcoming concerts in your area or where your favorite band is playing and when.

 

Pandora - Really just an Internet Radio but with a slight twist. Uses a set of musical attributes, called the Music Genome Project, to pair your favorites with similar groups and tunes for your listening pleasure. Put in a musician or song title and they will build a station and start playing tunes, if you don't like a song tell them and they will offer something different. They will also track your ratings to fine tune your station. If you really like one you hear they provide links to Amazon or iTunes to go buy the Disc or just the song. Warning you could find yourself tempted to go buy a lot of new music. You will want to register so you can help them focus your station to your tastes. I could find a few bands but not a lot of new similar bands that I didn't already know however, but then I have kind of different taste in music from most. Pandora is very popular so it must work for many people quite well.

 

With both online stations you can find new bands, check out new tunes and tune into another kind of social network. You might even find someone who shares your taste in music. And you will certainly find some new music

 

So this week's Discovery Exercise:

1. Go to either online station and plug in your favorite band, or song.

2. Listen and see if you find any new bands you might have not heard of but like the way they sound.

3. Of course write about it in your blog!b