My Current Three Methods of Discovering New Music

I currently have three ways of discovering new artists and songs. I still have no persistent way of getting all of this music. I would only buy DRM-free digital files. Therefore, I sometimes struggle a bit to find these songs. However, as long as I have all these songs written down, I have a peace of mind knowing that someday I can add all of these songs to my collection. If you are familiar with David Allen’s GTD (Getting Things Done) system, then this method may sound familiar. The system works for collecting music, as well. First, you clear your mind by storing all the artists and songs you want (never worry about these songs, again). Then, when you have time and money and are in front of your favorite music site all you need to do is pull-up this list and go down the list and grabbing songs you have pre-selected.  Really, no rocket-science here… : )

These are my current three methods in which I found new songs (or artists) to add to my “want” list:

1. Sirius Satellite Radio:

While driving, I am continually going down the dial through my preselected Sirius stations. When I found a song that I want I press a “memo” button on the receiver. By pressing this button, the song title and artist gets recorded into the system. My biggest surprise since listening to Sirius Satellite, is my discovery of blues music. I never would’ve imagine myself spending hours listening to blues. I liked a few blues songs before purchasing Sirius – and that was that. However, I have found that this type of music is one of my favorite music genres now. I am constantly pressing the “memo” button when listening to this station (Sirius Channel 74 “Sirius Blues”).

2. Megamixes on the Internet

Several DJ’s record their mix sets (usually half-hour to hour sets of music blended one after another) and make it available for free all throughout the internet. The key to some of these mixes is that the playlists are often provided. Therefore, when you listening to the one-hour mix set of a certain DJ and you bump into a song you want, all you have to do is reference the playlist and write one more song to your WANT list. Here is a sample of sites where you can find mix-sets such as these:

• Party Ben’s Sixx Mixx: definitely my favorite. They are no longer active. Party Ben used to publish one 1/2 hour mix set per week. These were the mix sets that have been very close to my style. I truly miss these mixes.
• Zebramixx: a close second to Party Ben is DJ Zebra. Again, any of his mix sets are a sure bet. I have found several new songs and artists in his playlists.
• DJ Z-Trip: his mix sets are harder to come by. You really have to put your google skills to work to find them (oh yes, they are out there – i have found a few). All-in-all, one of my favorite DJs.
• Other DJs on top of my head: (again their mix-sets are harder to come by, but you just have to linger a bit on their web pages or search google a bit to get ‘em – they’re worth it): DJ Moneyshot, Paul Devro

3. Pandora and Slacker

These are internet radio services that play songs according to your taste. Both services have a “bookmark song” feature that lets you store the name and artist of what is currently playing. I have also discovered great music using both of these services.

Again, since I only buy music from DRM-free sites, I often have trouble finding the music I want. A service that has helped me get many of these songs is LaLa.com. I have a huge collection of CDs and I have traded many of my CDs for very great ones.

Baby on Nirvana’s Nevermind Album, now 17

The baby on Nirvana’s, history-making, album released on 1991 is now 17 years old.

Here are a few random comments from digg.

“heheh I’ve seen your pee pee” – MikeonTV

” Who would have thought he would grow up to be a skater kid?” – Anrkist

“I wonder if he’s still chasing the almighty dollar…nude..” – mediaspree

… and my favorite comment:

” That is crazy. Must feel cool to be on the cover of a generations most influential album.” – joel8x

Erase personal information from DRM-free tracks purchased on iTunes

Privatunes – Software that will remove all your personal info from DRM-free tracks purchased on iTunes.

5 reasons to erase private information from my legally acquired iTunes Plus library:

1. Am I still a child who needs his pencilcase and schoolbag tagged with my name?

2. I bought the damn tune, but someday I may want to sell it (hey, how is it more stupid that selling old CDs ?).

3. I just have a thing for privacy. Is it dirty?

4. How the heck do I know it’s not gonna be shared on P2P networks by my 6 year old step sister???

5. I thought good customer-seller relationship ment something like… how do they say, “trust’ ?

World expert of Classic Rock explains how Led Zeppelin “borrowed” practically every note of their first record from other artists.

Denny Somach, the world’s leading expert of classic rock, was one of Howard Stern’s guests today. He explained how Led Zeppelin took other artists’ songs, remade them, and put themselves as the authors of some of their songs. He goes in further detail on his website: www.classicrockcentral.com. I heard the whole show. They would play Led Zeppelin’s songs next to the other songs and both songs would sound the same. Hopefully, one day, this issue would get settled and the original artists be compensated, appropriately.

Add Jazz to your Music Collection

If you don’t like Jazz, you can still admire Buddy Rich’s unsurpassed talent. Add him to your music collection.

legal P2P, finally ?

Qtrax, a new, legal, P2P service. They are set to launch very soon. They’re list of companies that they have made deals with, is very impressive: Universal, Sony/ATV, Warner Music Group, The Orchard, EMI Music Publishing and EMI Music, TVT Records, Go Digital, ASCAP and BMI.

According to the New York Times:

For years, music labels have been trying to prevent fans from downloading their songs on peer-to-peer filesharing networks. Now, some of them would like to encourage people to listen to music that way — provided they view some advertising first.

Many questions still open:

• Are these DRM-free files that we will be downloading?
• Are these files ours to keep or are they “rented” as Napster and Rhapsody allows users to “rent” songs ?
• Will there be a limit on the number of songs one can “download” ?

update: launch date is sometime in October of this year.

The Best Scratch Session Ever – DJ QBert (The King of Scratch)

If you don’t like hip-hop or don’t care for any scratching, watch this – you will still admire DJ QBert for his stupendous musical skills.

A Great “Business” Model for Artists

This band is offering their music for people to download without restrictions. If you like their music, then you can donate money to them. It is a great idea to get as many people to listen to your music as possible. In my opinion, this is one of the best ways for up-and-coming artists to promote their music. It is an “investment” – if you will. You are putting your initial work out there for “free” – you are not getting paid much, initially. However, if you have great music then slowly the donations will come. Later on, people will be interested in seeing you live and will buy tickets to see you perform and buy your merchandise. Once you have recognition and a following, then you can start selling your music without DRM and your fans will be more than happy to spare with some of their hard-earned money to buy your DRM-free music. Simple formula, ha ?

By the way, their music is not bad. I especially recommend: “Everything I Need” and “Not room for both of us”. Go and take a listen, it doesn’t cost you anything : )

EMI’s DRM-free music sales are strong

“The initial results of DRM-free music are good.” — Lauren Berkowitz (EMI)

full article here.

Compare 60GB of files in less than 10 secs!

A few days back, I posted about my backup process. In that post, I described how it takes approximately 2 hours to do this backup. The reason why it took this much is because I would first delete the whole contents of the backup hard-disk and do a complete copy from the first to the second. I always wanted a tool that will compare both directories for differences and allow me to only copy those new files from the main disk to the backup disk.

The first software tool that I tried was Araxis Merge. I had this tool already installed because it works great for file content comparisons. So instead of trying out new software, I decided to try what I already have. I found out quickly that I wouldn’t be using Araxis for my music collection because it was taking a long time to do the comparison – it took so long that I had to cancel the process. After a quick Google search, I found Compare Advance . Compare Advance compared the whole 80GB of my music file directories in less than 10 seconds. I have found a keeper. The price is not bad either – $24.95.

From the above screenshot, we can see the analyis that was done on my collection. Folder 1 (my main hard-disk) contains 10,008 files and folder 2 (my backup disk) contains roughly 300 less files. This means that since my last backup, I have added about 300 files to my collection. The size of the folders compared are roughly 60GB and 57.5 for folders 1 and 2, respectively. The process of backing up my files has just been curtailed to a few minutes from a couple hours. I no longer need to copy 60GB, instead I just need to copy 2.5GB.