Finding New Music

Finding new music is always an interesting subject, no matter what type of music you listen to. There's no right or wrong way, but every method will get you slightly different results. You will always easily find the most popular bands in the genre but it's all the other bands that you don't know about.

When I was first getting in to metal, I found a lot of new music through Last.fm. I found a band I liked and looked for similar bands. Easy enough. But there gets a point where Last.fm gets kind of wonky. It constantly recommends bands that I don't like or are from a genre that I already listen to too much. If I wanted to listen to more power metal, I could easily find some power metal bands, I don't need some snotty website recommending 20 bands that sound the exact same! This is where Youtube comes in. It's great for finding similar-but different bands, if that makes sense. I have found some of the weirdest crap on Youtube. Smaller bands like The CNK, Ajattera, Le Grand Guignol, etc. are all strange bands that I somehow found from clicking related video after related video. I have no idea what video even led me to these bands, I just know that there's no way in hell I found have found out about them anyway. Especially since they're unlike anything else. Honestly, listen to this:



Too bad they've since split up. Really interesting music can be brought back from the bowels of Youtube. It's especially good for finding new genres of music, since you can just click until you find something you like. There's also some youtubers like InfidelAmsterdam that give great recommendations. I've also subscribed to a few record labels' accounts which helps every so often.

I don't have too many friends who listen to metal, and even less who like the same types of metal as me, so it's unfortunate that I don't get too many friend recommendations for bands. I'm sure it's pretty nice, since they can filter out the bad music for you. I'm usually the one giving out recommendations though. And I try to spread awesome music *cought*Wintersun*cough* as much as I can.

So currently, my favourite method of finding new music is through Youtube. I also like to expand out into new genres every so often since it gives my library a fresh coat of paint. I'm a firm believer that you can like any genre as long as you find some good bands in it and listen to them enough. Never stop searching.

-Zombie Viking