Note: I in no way represent or work for Soundcloud or any other music services. I’m merely a fan and musical explorer.

I’m always on the lookout for new ways to discover new music. I love finding that new tune that just clicks for me, and I do admit to sometimes playing them into the ground. For instance, I’m playing this song over and over right now:

I spend a significant amount of time discovering new music, whether it be the bleeding edge electronic artist or discovering some obscure jazz classic from back in the day. New to me is new in my book.

Back in the day the best method was via the radio, mix tapes shared among friends, or taking a chance on something new at the record store. Then came digital formats.

When I attended college(before the days of the World Wide Web), I had an account on the college’s server that allowed me to connect to servers out on the budding Internet. There I found Amiga MOD files, crude electronic music files (by today’s standards) that I could download back to the the college’s server and then back to my own computer using terminal software. I could then play them back on a MOD player on my computer. It was some of the earliest music downloading going on, as far as I know. The MOD files were electronically generated, there were no vocals, but I was fascinated and downloaded a large amount of them.

Eventually, musical mediums evolved to digital formats for all music, and that opened up a lot of doors. For me, that meant I was an early user of Napster. Napster to me (the first edition, not what it is today) was a method for finding new music. Often the recording was some poor quality MP3, and if I liked the music I would do my best to find it, buy the album, helping pay the artist to support them. There is nothing like voting with your paycheck. As we all know, Napster was killed off by the music industry. But is was just one of the first cracks in the levee.

My local music shop (Easy Street Records in West Seattle, which I still strongly support and recommend….please, please, please keep your local record store alive by buying music there!) also had and still has, music stations where you could listen to and discover new music, which I put to good use and found lots of great new music. I primarily buy vinyl, but make good use to the download cards that come with most records these days. While I love spending time down at Easy Street picking through their vinyl selection upstairs, it is also very nice to explore from the comfort of your own armchair at home. Nowadays, there are a mind blowing number of options for doing that via the Internet, so I’ll share a couple of my favorites.

What is your favorite method for exploring new music from your armchair?

One method I have used, and still use to some extent was the website Hypem.com or the HypeMachine. This website is basically aggregates music lovers blogs, allowing you to search for and find new music. It is pretty cool because if search for a song or artist you love, often you’ll find quite a few bloggers out there that may have very similiar musical interests as you do. So then you can just explore what they have posted on their blog for groups, artists, and record labels you haven’t heard of before and give them a listen. I have come across an amazing amount of new music this way, and I still use hypem.com to explore from time to time.

Another method I use a bit is Youtube. I believe this is a popular method for musical exploration. People (fans, labels, artists) upload music and while the service was designed for video, many times a simple picture is used for a visual while the complete song plays. This works pretty well, and you can also quickly share a song with others using social media or just copying the URL to the video and sharing it via email.

One of my favorite aspects of Soundcloud is that it is used by a large number of artists and labels to upload their own music, as well as interact with the music community at large.

One of my favorite methods right now for exploring new music is Soundcloud.com. Soundcloud has a few unique aspects, though perhaps they are duplicated by other music services that I just don’t use.

One of my favorite aspects of Soundcloud is that it is used by a large number of artists and labels to upload their own music, as well as interact with the music community at large.

So I can follow a particular artist or label, perhaps listen to what they are working on, but even cooler is the ability to see who they are following on Soundcloud. Some have even put together a play list or two of their favorite songs. It is really cool to perhaps understand a bit of the inspiration that lead to the creation of the music that you love. You can also find your favorite artists remixing your favorite artists on the Soundcloud.

Cool local ambient project I discovered on Soundcloud:

All of this, you can listen to in full length, at pretty good quality. The uploader can make the music listen only, available for purchase, or sometime available for free download.

Fans such as myself can also build playlists and share them out. Like the Hype Machine, you can find fans of similiar interests and see what they are listening to. There is also a messaging platform, and a feature that recommends “who to follow” based on what you have listened to.