Touche Maestro

Back in the day, one had to go out and physically search for new music, either at the store or at a live show. That method is obsolete. Today, you can find all kinds of new and unheard of music at the click of a mouse. The music store is out and online shopping is in. There are many websites like Bandcamp and Beatport that offer downloadable content at the same price as an audio CD. The advantage here is that you don’t have to waste valuable time and money getting to the store and you don’t have to worry about your purchase getting damaged in any way. Each site has its own search engine if you are looking for something in particular, and you can browse through a number of categories such as release date, genre, etc.

Another advantage of downloading music from the internet is that these websites will show you albums that are related to your search in some way or other. It could be by the same artist, or it could be the same genre, or it could even be a completely different artist and genre that happens to have the same name (This has happened to me by the way). In this spirit, you can sit at your computer the entire day, just exploring all the related albums the website throws at you. Most times, you may not find anything that will interest you, but when you do, you will feel that all the wasted hours were worth it.

Popular social networking sites are also good sources of new underground music. Every major artist, and therefore every small-time artist, has a Facebook page, a SoundCloud page, a YouTube page, a MySpace page, a ReverbNation page and possibly more pages than I care to know about, though Facebook and MySpace should not be taken too seriously; Facebook, because everyone is so lost in their own pseudo personal virtual lives that any music on the site usually falls on deaf ears, and; MySpace, because of the file size and format restrictions – No one wants to hear low quality MP3′s when you get loss-less audio on SoundCloud.

YouTube and SoundCloud are, in my humble opinion, the most reliable sources for good, unique music simply because that’s what they were designed for – media sharing. When someone logs in to one of these sites, you can be sure that their only aim is to look for music.

SoundCloud even gives you the option of downloading directly from the website. If the uploader has enabled downloads for his upload, that is. Many DJ’s are using this to their advantage by uploading their live sets for promotional purposes. Independent producers, as well, are uploading their original music and enabling downloads, as a kind of gift to their listeners on SoundCloud for supporting them and spreading their music. You can also find ‘buy’ links to some tracks depending on whether the uploader has inserted one or not. This will probably lead you back to the popular pay sites like Beatport or iTunes.