Finding Music
July 18, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites
Finding enjoyable new music is hard. [Is that "is" of predication or "is" of identity?] Radio gave up the ghost years ago due to industry consolidation. Now all we have on the dial are programmed playlists driven by payola. I can drive for hours and hear the same manufactured songs over and over regardless of the city, state, or region. So let's agree: Radio is a cultural wasteland, only slightly better than TV. Yes, there are exceptions, especially around colleges, but even then a lot of them suck.
The iTunes Music Store is a bit better, if only because I can drive my choices, and I can bail out of the 30-second preview whenever I want. Plus you get the browsing-helpful "customers who bought X also bought Y." And, one-click instant gratification. What's not to like? Well, Apple's DRM I suppose, but it hasn't gotten in my way so far, and the terms are reasonable IMO.
Today comes MusicLens a graphical dashboard which allows you to set musical parameters and then returns a list of songs that match your criteria. You can preview the songs, and I suppose there's some way to buy them. I like this better than Pandora because I can change the settings, myself, on the fly. Worth playing with.
Update: Fred Wilson posted today about music discovery too. Must be in the air.
Comments
Michael - I am fading fast, and have gotten only this far in an attempt to reply to kind support including yours. More later on that, but in the mean time, I hope, I'm sure, I trust that you are familiar with wxnd.org 107.3 and the salvation of dying radio as we know it.
Sound is important.
Regards,
Kim
Posted by: Kim at July 18, 2006 11:22 PM
Hello Michael J.
I liked your post on finding music. It's funny how more options means more hassles. But here's another way to find new music. Have it come to you. My name's Kevin Griffin. I'm a singer songwriter out of Boston. I noticed you like Paul Simon. He's been one of my favorites for many years. My music's even been described as if Paul Simon and Johnny Cash were sitting around a campfire singing eachothers songs, that's me.
Anyway, I'm still not good at this self promotion stuff but I have a new song that was just named a semi finalist in the International Songwriting Contest and I'm trying to get new ears to hear it. So here's my link to Itunes so you can check it out.
Here´s the link to ITUNES and the lullaby.
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=157683341&s=143441
Thanks and I hope you like the music. If you do, let me know.
Kevin Griffin
Posted by: Kevin Griffin at July 21, 2006 11:57 AM
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