In Continuum.

Liking non-mainstream music has its pros and cons, and I have just listed a couple of cons, though I am sure there are more. Things become really difficult, though there are methods which I have found to be useful when it comes to music discovery. It is rather exciting, personally, to come across a band no one else has ever heard before. I dare say that you'd not find anybody in your own social circle to have heard of bands like Rachel's and Clogs. It's not an effort to boast on my part or anything, but it's just that not a lot of people are willing to dig deep enough I suppose. There isn't anything wrong with that, of course, music as a passion should be effortless in nature. I suppose you don't need to be deep in the Amazonian jungle to appreciate the beauty of nature, it's the same thing. I don't suppose you need to be deeply involved in finding new music to listen to in order to appreciate the greatness of music. Still, being a passive music lover just doesn't sit well with me, although it is definitely easy. You listen to a song on the radio, you like the tune of it, and you decide to buy the song off the internet or get the album from the local record store. This process repeats, and it is so easy. 

Perhaps too easy, at least for me. It is kind of like cooking your own dinner, and somehow it just tastes so much better when you make it yourself. The music I find just sounds better when I find it by myself, instead of just catch a song here and there on the radio at the workplace, you know? I don't want the radio station to tell me what to like and what not to like, what song is at number one on some countdown or to be spoon fed to me when they feel like playing the song over the airwaves. It is their job, of course, but I just don't really like it. Besides, most mainstream music tends to be over-produced and were produced to sell records. When you are under the influence of money and popularity, art then becomes compromised. Just a few nights ago, I listened to The Jonas Brothers for the very first time on MTV, and I died a little. Given the choice of listen to them for the rest of my life and Hannah Montana, I think I will drive a screwdriver into my ears. Anyway, I am not saying that there are no non-mainstream horrors out there. I am just saying that the chances of me hitting a gold mine when I look for it myself seems to be higher than if I just sit at home and wait for news of it to arrive at my door. I love the adventure, and every discovery just makes me so happy. 

I agree with how music is a good way to define somebody out there. It is easy to put a group of people with similar musical tastes together and expect them to get along in other areas. It has been researched before in regards to how much a person's character is affected by his or her music taste. It has been found that people who likes a certain type of music has a certain characteristic or trait seldom present in people with other music taste. I suppose it just makes it easier to strike up a conversation for the most part, but I think there is more to it. I like how the obscure music defines who I am, you know? I mean, there are so many artists and bands out there, and there are only so many combinations of bands and artists for you to like if you restrict yourself to mainstream radio. If you open yourself up to the world that is underground, however, you are being exposed to millions of other artists and bands, and the number of combinations then multiplies by the thousands. The truth is, I like how I am defined by the combination of music I have chosen to represent me as a person. I like how, when someone visits my profile on Blogger or Facebook, a part of my first impression is going to be based upon what music I listen to. Really, it is nice to know that in terms of my musical liking, I am well defined like a fine marker on paper. 

However, the process is definitely not an easy one. Without the radio and the record stores, your options wear thin. You have to first discover the music first, then you come to talk about trying to find them - which is hard enough by itself. There are a dozen ways in which one can try to uncover these hidden gems, and you really only need to know how. First, the iTunes Store is a great place for you to start. Near the bottom of the main page, you will find a column of indie bands and artists with new albums being released. This list is being updated rather often, and it is a great starting point if you want to find new music (I did find The Broadway Project like that). From there, you can branch out by looking at the list of recommended artists and bands in the right column, to see what albums other users have bought. I usually skip from one band to another, and another, and another, and this process usually can continue for hours before I actually hit one that I like. It is tedious, but infinitely rewarding at the very end. iTunes 8 (the latest version of iTunes) has a neat little feature called Genius, and it automatically fetches songs that you may like from iTunes, based on your existing iTunes library. So everything that it recommends is automatically filtered, based on what type of music that you love already. From there, you branch out to find new music, so on and so forth. 

Amazon.com provides a similar method to find new music, and it could sometimes be a lot more useful. Amazon.com provides a lot more selections when it comes to recommendations. They provide you with an extensive list of what other albums and bands you might, which to me is very important information. I tend to trust the reviews on Amazon.com a little more, since they usually feature the best reviews on the front page, and their ratings are usually lower than those on iTunes Store, which kind of means more objectivity. Besides, albums bought on Amazon.com are DRM-free, and you know what that means. Everybody hates DRM, nobody ever likes it. Let me explain a little bit here. DRM-free MP3 files follow you everywhere, and they are yours for life once you buy them. DRM-locked MP3 files tend to be erased or not work at all if you change operating system or if technology advances. If you try to keep the DRM-locked MP3 files, you will be a criminal under the law (DMCA 1201) - it's true, check it out. So, we all love DRM-free MP3 files, and Amazon.com provides them. Everybody wins. 

Next, record labels are great places to look, especially when they are not big labels like Warner Music or Sony. Go for the lesser known record labels, because they tend to sign artists and bands that have similar musical themes for the most part, at least as far as I have observed. You are not going to find a boy band in a record label that has a bunch of death metal bands - that's not going to happen. Personally, I have been keeping an eye on Arts & Craft, a Canadian record label that has bands like Broken Social Scene, Feist, New Buffalo, and Stars. Most of them work with one another, which pretty much means they have a similar musical genre for the most part, perhaps just a bit of variations here and there. I have also found great bands from other labels like Labrador Records, a Swedish record label that offers its fair share of good music. So, if you are looking for bands and artists that belong to the same genre, you could find them under the same label. If you like one band from that label, chances are you will like one or two more, and that is more than if you decide to look around blindly on the internet. 

Lastly, I'd like to introduce Last.fm to the readers here. Last.fm is like Facebook, but purely for music. You create a profile there, and you download a program that automatically records the songs that you are listening to on your computer and portable music player. Once there, it puts everything into perspective by showing you your top songs, top artists, and people that share the same music taste as you from all around the world. I found a dozen bands from this website, including My Brightest Diamond, which I found from a stranger I have never met before. This website has been extremely useful in helping me find new music, though I haven't actually explored it as deep as I'd like to. Perhaps in the holidays, but for now it is definitely an exciting place to look the next time I come around. 

I suppose you could also be like me, at times, and download music only because the cover of the album looks good. Sometimes, you can judge the book by its cover, and in this case an album. I like to be the sheep that finds a hole underneath the fences and goes underground in order to get free. Instead of being bounded by the fences around and be fed everyday, I'd much prefer to go out into the wild and see what it is like out there. It is a lot harder to survive out there but, at least I know it is more interesting here. The grass may not be greener here, but it sure tastes sweeter.