Comments on: Top 5 music discovery tips for the unhip, unmotivated

Senior Editor Donald Bell offers five tips for easily finding new and exciting music online.

[tstarn04]

I use playlists on the local independent radio station's website, xpn.org, to check out new and emerging artists (as well as tracks from older, established artists). Best of all, XPN, in Philly, isn't just about indie music, but all forms/genres. The place has great taste in music, base on past experience.

[jmiller2032]

Another vote for Zune Pass. "Owning" music just doesn't make sense after having a subscription service. I'd much rather have the freedom to download thousands of songs a month (for $15) than to have the right to "own" an album and a half. Even my friends who are locked into iTunes (because they own Macs) acknowledge that subscription services are the only way of going if you love music. Eventually this is the model that will win out. We just have to kill the iPod first.

[amghorn]

I second the motion on satellite radio; I check out XM 20 daily (20 on 20) which does a popular vote countdown several times daily, which will include a little rock and rap with a mostly pop mix. XM 16 (Highway 16) keeps up with current country trends, and you can scan through rock, urban, and rap (not to mention other genres). I have friends who want to stay stuck in the era of their youth, and you can listen to your favorite decade on XM also, but I like to know what's new, and so does my eleven-year-old (even if that does mean listening to a little Miley or the Jonas Brothers).

[benjaminxx]

Pandora is great, but its going to be shut down soon thanks to the high royalty rates.

Founder Tim Westergren says the company is facing a "pull-the-plug" situation.

Too bad, I liked it.

[embaptist]

I found lots of great new (to me) music on download.com but oops they don't have it anymore.

[-Madhava-]

Maybe it's just how this whole thing is pitched to us. But I read this article as 'how to try to be passionate about something you're really not all that passionate about'.

Which, by the way, is exactly the routine that many of the so-called-voracious 13 to 21 year old 'music lovers' act out. For many young people, feigning passion for music culture (*not just for the music alone) is a rite of peer-acceptance. Not trying to seem harsh here; most all of us tried our best to act like the people we weren't, when we were young & didn't know better.

But why perpetuate this into our adulthoods?

People who are passionate about music, the arts, sports, what have you, will continue to engross themselves with their fixations. If people aren't exposing themselves to music when they're thirty, then this probably means they didn't love it all that much when they were seventeen.

I'm thirty-five, I've got more on my plate today, & less free time, than ever in my life. And my appetite for music has never been more ravenous, nor has it ever been as well-fed, as it is today. And I'm not talking just from the ever-helpful internet (live music venues, record shops, or if all else fails, even Borders... remember these things? if we all still have lunch breaks, then we all still have a little time to treat ourselves, yes?). Also, I've little interest in sports, and I haven't feigned interest in sports since I was a teenager (& I'm not about to start again). Very simply, we make time for what's important to us. For people like me, new music is -still- everywhere.

Let the people with their same tastes from their early 20's keep on rocking what they rock. Maybe these folks just never were the aficionados that they'd thought they were. And there's not a thing wrong with that.

[xapdal]

indiemuse.com

[Rádi Pál]

1.FM blues radio!!!

Hey, why not discover music by listening to mixtapes your friends make you? We created a new service called 6tunes: You can share playlists of music video's with your friends and discover new music.

Check out: http://www.6tunes.com/player.html