Looking for new music or old favorites? Check the Pitchfork 500

Dave DeAngelis, an awesome researcher and great friend, recently showed me the Pitchfork 500 playlist on everyone’s favorite Internet jukebox, Grooveshark. The Pitchfork 500 is actually a 500 song review from the music geniuses at Pitchfork.com; Grooveshark allows users to create and share playlists, so people have taken the review and created the accompanying playlist.

For the past week I’ve been listening to the 500 song playlist that covers virtually every musical style from 1978 to now. I’m deleting roughly 1/2 the songs, but I’m discovering a lot of great new stuff, old favorites, and deeper tracks from bands that I knew little about. If you’re looking to find some new music or you want to enjoy a wide variety of old favorites, give it a listen.

Get notifications when concerts come?

Does anyone know of a website or method to be notified when your favorite artist is coming to town?

For example, I’d love to see Mike Doughty, Ben Folds, and They Might Be Giants in concert, but I always miss the ticket sales. I’ve tried to check their websites periodically, but I forget for a few months then miss the show. I’ve listened for announcements on the radio, but I do not listen to the radio consistently enough. Most recently, I’ve subscribed to RSS feeds from my favorite artists and this method is working, although I feel it is suboptimal.

My brother just mentioned a similar experience where he missed seeing the guitar-thumping virtuoso Andy McKee. (If you don’t know what I mean when I say “guitar-thumping virtuoso,” check Andy out below.)

While not the pressing issue in the world, not receiving relevant and timely updates for artists seems to be a common issue. Is there a solution? Show your 1337ness and help me out. Any tips would be appreciated!

Sample new music for free!

I’ve been using Internet radio/social music for quite a while now; I didn’t think much of it until I noticed a friend using iTunes’ 30 second clips to sample new music. There’s no need for that! There are plenty of websites that provide the entire song for free. How do they do it? Some aggregate the plethora of mp3s available online (try searching google for your favorite song + mp3 and you’ll see what I mean); others pay royalties for all the songs they offer; others are magick. In any case, you can enjoy the rewards risk-free.

A few examples that offer music for free over the intarwebz are Last.fm and Pandora; these are great places to find new music because they’ll play/suggest new music based on what you’re listening to.

If you know what you want to hear, imeem and Seeqpod allow you to create your own playlists. I’ve had very good luck finding songs I want to hear (I’ve found 90% of songs I search for). imeem even allows you to export the player similar to embedding YouTube videos; here’s a sample of a random playlist:

Enjoy! And if you have other suggestions, I’d love to hear them!