I am always looking to add tunes to my 'faves' playlist (a playlist strictly limited to songs that rate 9 or 10/10). I'm not talking about hipster 'no one's ever heard of this before' stuff. Just solid, well played, well made music from any genre or time period.
My best sources are:
Friends recommendations Pandora KCRW WFMU
any hidden stations/services/anythings?
For me its usually via people/DJs whos taste or genres I like eg Giles Peterson Worldwide show on BBC (download at alldj.com) or Stinky Jim on BFM - they find the gems, and publish tracklists for their shows so its then easy enough to find & get more music from the artists that appeal...
Check out Radio Nova. They've been broadcasting out of Paris since 1981 and always play a nice eclectic mix. It's a good way to discover new music. Ledjam Radio is another very good website-based radio station, though unlike Radio Nova they don't have a feed that plays through iTunes so you have to listen through the browser. But it's a cool station with lots of good old and new tunes. I also use Spotify a lot and often discover new music by browsing through other peoples' playlists.
There's nothing like a well-curated radio show. Plus, it seems like every radio station on the planet is online now. Some places I go for things I never knew I never knew:
WKCR (wkcr.org) - Phil Schaap is a walking, talking jazz-cyclopedia.
WFMU (wfmu.org), Beware the Blog, and the Free Music Archive
WFUV (wfuv.org)
Even though the free service is crammed with ads, I like searching Grooveshark for keywords. Like, how about every song ever made about socks. "Oh yeah, I haven't listened to King Missile in forever!" This can last days...
-david
No matter what genre of music you listen to, you'll find something here:
Aquarius Records in SF has a great weekly email and they always provide samples to playback on their website: http://www.aquariusrecords.org/
KEXP Seattle. You can stream all of the DJ's shows but my personal fav is John Richards. Independant radio. No commercials. Wide variety.
Two well-known,free resources for a wide-variety of music: Youtube and ITunes Radio
Cheers!
I fell down an internet rabbit hole one day and wound up at http://wefuckinglovemusic.blogspot.com/
While I'm not entirely hip to having to download a mediafire .zip of the album to listen (I would prefer that they stream and offer a way for you to buy), it's a great jumping off point for adding some new artists to my collection.
The Hype Machine is pretty good, it's a music blog aggregator. It's mostly on the eclectic side, but found lots of good artists there. http://hypem.com/
Pandorra is nice since they suggest music on it's content's not it's listeners.
Youtube - any good music channels. (like this excellent bass music channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/NeurofunkGrid) Youtube has a nice algorithm for their suggestions - always nice finds, but always more of the same too. There's people posting their vinyl collection on youtube too.
Sharity used to be a nice way to find rarity/oddity and niche stuff. http://www.kwsnet.com/music_weblog_sharity.html
Social Media - When working in sound desifn / music you'll most likely have many people in your friend list (if on a network) with a good taste in music. Plus a passion for it, which often means they post about what they like. (in my experience anyway)
One of the two radio stations I listen to here in New Orleans is WWOZ. They stream their shows @ http://www.wwoz.org/ . It is a jazz and heritage station/blues + New orleans local musicians. Really cool station great DJs that bring in their private collections of vinyl/tapes/live recordings etc. It is listener supported with a couple fundraiser drives per year so you do not get the BS of top 10 playlists that just repeat like 90% of the current radio stations . It is really cool because each DJ has their own show/style/genre and love music so you get some out of the ordinary groups both past and present and sometimes you get interesting did you know facts about the musicians.
Sadly, I am down to having two people who's music opinion I can always trust and get suggestions from them from time to time. The third and fourth source are some of the mixes by DVNT of Darkfloor, who canes the sort of twisted darkness I prefer... then there's the odd accidental shit I come across on my own during my increasingly rare chances for musical based explorations.
I'm a huge fan of 8tracks.com
It's a website full of user-generated playlists, searchable by artist or tag. I've found a handful of fantastic playlists I listen to as I'm falling asleep. I dig it better than Pandora because it does not utilize the music genome project, but instead is completely user generated. Sure there are plenty of strangely constructed playlists, but the mystery is part of the fun!
Have you tried Ping? Might be a good way to find artists on there... I don't use it myself, but it might be worth checking out.
"Dear Pandora Visitor, We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative. "
– Bill Mellow May 04 '11 at 18:34