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  • March 17

20 fantastic ways to find new music that you like (no Last.fm & Pandora inside)

OK, everybody knows that Last.fm & Pandora are great services, but there are a lot of other tools that can help us to find new cool music. Some of them just expose daily musical goodies, others make recommendations based on your very own preferences, and others take the web interactivity ever further. Explore the best 20 ways to discover new music in a web 2.0 world.

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Live music discovey


Awdioawdio

My favorite method to discover new music is listening to the Awdio stream (live music stream from more than 60 clubs from all over the world – including DJ sets & parties) and when I hear a nice track, I tag it with Shazam (explained below) to find out what tune is it. [twitter]

Shazamshazam

Shazam gives instant satisfaction for those times when you want to know the song that is playing, learn more about the artist, buy the song immediately – or simply share your discovery with your family and friends. A similar project for PC is Midomi.

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Music recommendation services


iLike

filter

iLike is an online service that allows users to download and share music. The website makes use of Apple’s iTunes in order to discover new artists and tracks that you should like. One of the oldest projects of it’s kind. [twitter]


The Filter

The FilterThe Filter – the vision of Peter Gabriel – is a discovery experience that filters the world of online entertainment and information, personalizing it in a way that reflects an individual’s tastes and moods through unique algorithms. It gathers your listening history through an iTunes plug-in. [twitter]

iTunes Geniusgenius

iTunes 8 includes a new feature – The Genius – that lets you automatically create playlists from songs in your music library that go great together. Right-click any song in your library and choose Start Genius from the pop-up menu for a list of new songs that match that tune’s attributes.

Taste Kid

tasteKind of an emo version of The Filter & such, Taste Kid explores your taste suggesting similar or related music (artists, bands), movies and books, based on what you like. So be it! [twitter]

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Hot new tracks


The Hype Machinehype

The Hype Machine monitors hundreds of blogs for new music, collecting the MP3 links in a massive library of songs that you can favorite, adding to your dashboard, and then play like a radio. Another cool feature is the blog music zeitgeist. There is also a similar service -> Elbo.ws. [twitter]

Pitchfork Mediapitchfork

Pitchfork is a daily blog devoted to music criticism, news and artist interviews. Its focus is on independent music, but the range of covered genres extends to electronic, pop, hip hop, dance, folk, jazz, and experimental music. The Pitchfork influence is often compared with NME‘s.

Stereogumstereogum

A leading online outlet for indie and alternative music, news, reviews, and gossip, Stereogum regularly features unknown artists who go on to become mainstream sensations. A very good tool for finding hot new tracks is the GumDrop. [twitter]

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Social bookmarking & Short Reviews


Mogmog

Mog is all about a music community. It’s very blog-centric and revolves around user pages, or “Mogs”. You build your Mog around songs you’re listening too and artists you like. That builds something like a profile for you that users can browse to and comment on. It also uses this profile to suggest other people or music that you might like.

Stumble Audio

stumble

StumbleAudio is a social music discovery site (yes, StumbleUpon like baby!) with a mission is to help you find music by new artists that you would like, rather than play or sell you the hits by mainstream artists that you are “expected” to love.

Live Plasmaliveplasma

Made public in 2005, Liveplasma is a new way to broaden your cultural horizons according to your taste in music and movies. Look for your favorite bands, music or directors to obtain a map that details other potential interests.

Musebinmusebin

It limits each review to a single line and allows users to rate those reviews up or down using Up or Down buttons. The daily selection of Musebin is a good mix of old and fresh music albums. [twitter]

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Blipprblipper

Mr Blippr gives us a really easy way to discover, talk about and organize great music trough very short reviews. They also host movie, book and application reviews so imagine the same thing extended for everything. [twitter]

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Internet Jukeboxes


Imeemimeem

Imeem is an online community where artists, fans & friends can promote their content, share their tastes, and discover blogs, photos, music and videos. The core engineers came from Napster (the pioneer file sharing service). [twitter]

Deezer

deezer

With Deezer you can listen your favorite songs for free, create unlimited playlists, and share songs with the embedded players. Something like last.fm where you have the option to listen the desired tracks. [tweeter]


Songzasongza

Songza is a web search engine that finds and plays music files on the internet. Unlike other streaming services, users explicitly search for individual files to play rather than an automatically generated playlist they cannot control. [tweeter]

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Others


Blip.fmblip

If you love Twitter and you like listening to new music, then you should definitely try Blip.fm. The service allows you to make a stream of your recently discovered songs and to subscribe to the Blip feeds of your friends. [twitter]

The Sixty Onesixtyone1

Thesixtyone is a music discovery game that rewards those who help others listen to good new music. Also, new artists can add their music to thesixtyone in a process that’s fast and simple. [twitter]

One Llamaonellama

One Llama is a music discovery and playlist-sharing site with a Flash app that lets you explore live related radio playlists. You just type the name of an artist or band and you get a big list of radio stations that usualy play songs by that artist.

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Extras


  • Jango – Internet radio that plays what you want.
  • SoundCloud – music uploaded and commented by artists and fans. Highly interactive listening process. [twitter]
  • Cherry Peel – the democratic music revolution
  • Rifflet – home of the unfinished songs; here you find pieces of a song – a bass line, a guitar riff, a drumbeat or something else entirely. Nice find for DJs
  • hey, if you’re not satisfied by this list follow Britney on Twitter :-D
  • please leave some tips & tricks in the comment

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Catalin Zorzini

Catalin is the founder of Mostash - a social marketing boutique - and he's always happy to share his passion for graphic design & social media. Catalin Zorzini has 219 posts at Inspired Mag & counting!

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Comments

  1. human March 17th

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    you forgot the record store, zombies


  2. N!C March 17th

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    You guys forgot the best ones.

    http://www.fairtilizer
    http://www.grooveshark.com


  3. grone March 18th

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    Wow, this is awesome. Let’s not forgt about Napster :-)


  4. Pierro Marie March 18th

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    Howdy;
    nice list. Thanks for sharing this .


  5. MD March 18th

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    imeem is the best! :)


  6. David March 19th

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    Great list. Another approach to music discovery is ‘social music recommendation’ based on the psychological perception of music. Our new service Music Patterns provides customized playlists based on music that ‘People Like You’ actually listen to.

    Using a psychology-based approach to music preferences, this method combines your individual preferences with identifying those that are similar to your ‘music personality.’

    This new form of social music recommendation was developed from years of research in this area by best selling author Dr. Dan Levitin and our team at Signal Patterns.


  7. Jeff Yasuda March 25th

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    Catalin – Jeff, CEO from Blip.fm here. Thanks for reaching out to us this morning with the heads up your post. Great stuff and thanks for mentioning Blip.fm. Just to add to your description, you can also think of us as a social music DJ service or the Twitter for music. Anyway, you mentioned a LOT of great music companies and I’m sure your readers are stoked to try your recommendations. Hope to see you on Blip.fm again soon!

    PS – the text link above the “Blip.fm” logo goes to another site so you may want to fix it so I can give you a better idea on the traffic.


  8. Zane March 25th

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    Hi Catalin, thanks for this article. We hope people enjoy finding music on Songza!

    Take care,

    Zane

    songza.com


  9. john March 25th

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    What Else!
    My personal favorite is Awdio.com too!

    These guys are actually streaming live events for the Winter Music Conference! Amazing service…


  10. ramouflard March 25th

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    Thks for the list !! I love Awdio too. That’s a really insane concept. Unique music


  11. Jeff March 25th

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    Awdio is awesome, really !! I stay tuned every night with the incredible line up at WMC in Miami, simply the best DJs
    Moreover I heard they were going to implement a tool enabling information on tracks played and possibility to buy on Itunes
    sounds promising ;o)


  12. chris March 25th

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    http://muxtape.com


  13. Bernie March 26th

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    Hey Catalin, thanks for putting The Filter on your list. Aside from The Filter (of course) my favorite tool is probably The Sixty One, because it makes music discovery really fun, which is actually as it should be. I also find Tumblr and Blip.fm awesome tools for discovery.

    Cheers,

    Bernie, TheFilter.com


  14. Catalin Zorzini March 26th

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    Thanks guys for all the great feedback. Stay tuned for more music material soon!


  15. David March 29th

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    Is there a music discovery site for those of us that listen to Classical Music? Just wondering.


  16. samtaters April 6th

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    The Hype Machine & Blip.fm are my two favorites. Just started playing around w/ The Sixty One.


  17. Appoilsow April 8th

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    hmm… good one.


  18. enhathype April 15th

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    mm… good one..


  19. iconViato April 25th

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    mm.. cognitively.


  20. peter May 9th

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    thanks for the useful links! my personal favorite is grooveshark.
    an other interesting one: http://goom.com/


  21. musicGAWD May 23rd

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    new kid on the block – http://www.jamwee.com


  22. joseph wageh eshak June 7th

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    you are the best


  23. xerode June 10th

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    More for finding out when your favourite artists are touring or checking out their history of live shows, there’s also http://www.songkick.com/ which I’m sure could also be used for finding new music

    Only just launched so some of the data is a little sparse, particularly for electronic acts, but it looks very promising.


  24. Kratom June 29th

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    I been looking for ways to keep discovering new music. This is has to be the most useful discovery yet. I have admit to being new to using the net as tool for finding new music. I tend to just read magazines or check radio/tv, but these are usually corporate controlled and I miss out on the really interesting stuff. have agree with the comment about Record Stores, having worked in a few over the years I find it hard to find stores with really informed staff these day as so many have gone out of business. The net is now he place to go, not as much fun but far more info. Well off to check out your list, many many thanks..


  25. Mark Bult July 6th

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    What about lala.com?


  26. Steve Bzomowski July 12th

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    Thanks for writing this blog and sharing it with the world. I would like to know how to go for reading your rss blog. Please let me know if possible.
    regards
    lodaz


  27. Dana Isley July 13th

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    Great site to identify and find new music. Thanks for all the lists—
    checking them out soon!


  28. Dana Isley July 15th

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    Forgot in my las post to mention another site I found
    http://www.whatisthatsong.net
    Found out lots of info about identifying songs from TV,Movies
    and lots of great lists.


  29. Staticfix July 22nd

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    Thanks a bunch folks….keep it up


  30. Eiffair August 1st

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    http://www.spotify.com in Europe begins to have a great buzz. It seems to be a serious competitor for Deezer in UK and France.


  31. Mila Kang October 16th

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    Wow, sweet list, thank you from the heart. Stereogum is super cool.

    Electric knife sharpeners


  32. george October 19th

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    http://www.the-fly.co.uk/ is my personal favourite, always has the best up to date reviews on all the best up and coming bands and live acoustic sessions!


  33. melanie December 1st

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    http://wearehunted.com

    beautiful design, awesome tunes


  34. Terror and Love December 29th

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    I dont see stumbleaudio on this? Just found this insanely useful tool


  35. Terror and Love December 29th

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    Oh it is on there. Hmm I feel like an ass.

    My bad


  36. someone January 4th

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    add Gnod– searches music, books, movies etc. based on your interests and suggests new artists/ media


  37. Cher Cabula February 1st

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    Wow! These are great resources. Thanks for sharing!


  38. Tom February 23rd

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    I think that the most interesting and efficient way to find new music is exceptionally unique website http://www.grokmusic.com

    GPS – grok positioning system is FUN!


  39. Tanya February 24th

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    Check out http://www.musicroamer.com!


  40. Holly February 26th

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    I like lala.com.


  41. SD February 28th

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    http://www.myspace.com/sonomadrive


  42. RoaR3000 March 4th

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    Anyone know of a place like last.fm or any other easily searchable library for new/emerging underground/abstract/political hip hop?…


  43. ML March 4th

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    I like http://tuneranker.com. I found this one is the best for Club Music

    My opinion

    ML


  44. Bridgid March 21st

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    I tried ‘The Filter’ and it was garbage. I tried putting in my musical tastes (The Ting Tings, The Magnetic Fields, Mika, The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s) and it didn’t recognize any of them….I guess some people would consider these artists to be obscure but most of them have had top 100 singles in the last few years. It’s really frustrating to go in search of lesser-known music when the mainstream music you listen to is apparently too underground for music searching programs to recognize.


  45. Jimmy April 9th

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    Hey do you think there is a linux GTK+ alternative for Shazam and Midomi? Contact me @ my email if you have an answer, please!


  46. inspirationfeed May 1st

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    I use blip.fm its very easy to find people with the same taste. Then once you find them you will discover cool new music that based on your interest.


  47. bike locks May 11th

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    Trying to find new interests can be difficult no matter what field they pertain to. Thanks for the helpful resources.


  48. Ross July 20th

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    Check out Joe Bonamassa’s new single with a FREE download..just type in the promo code: BLOG and enjoy!

    http://www.jbonamassa.com/jbstore/index.php?p=product&id=232&utm_source=J-Tube%2BBlogs&utm_medium=Blogs&utm_campaign=J-Tube%2BBlogs%2BDownload%2BLink


  49. TLFR August 7th

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    TLFR came across this (minimalist) new music upload/review site called SomeSongs. http://www.somesongs.com/ You can upload your own material, or just listen and rank other bands stuff. All the mp3s are unprotected / downloadable.

    Also, Too Late for Roses is giving away a 3-song EP over at http://www.toolateforroses.com/ (stuff from our full-length LP). Some of the material was featured on NYC animator Pat Smith’s film “Masks”.


  50. Arjan Muthert August 24th

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    “Shuffler is internet-radio made by music blogs.”

    http://shuffler.fm/


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