Freshening up - any suggestions?
 

Hi all,

I'm a new member to the forums and unfortunately a bit out of touch with the music scene. I'd like to freshen up my music collection, but I don't know where to start.

As far as my music taste, it's fairly broad. I do tend to shy away from most of the over played content on the local popular, teen oriented radio stations though. I like anything with a good beat or some kind of complexity to it. I'd say I mainly listen to rock, electronic and hip-hop type genres.

Some of the artists/groups I like are:

Anberlin
Bjork
Deftones
Falling Up
Gorillaz
Grits
Gwen Stefani
Missy Elliott
Mutemath
OMODAKA
Soul-Junk

I'm not really anti-mainstream or anti anything really, I've just been mostly out of the loop for a while. If anyone knows of any good artists or groups I should look into, I'd appreciate any advice.

I don't mind doing the research either, so if anyone knows of any good sites I should look into that would help as well. I was doing the online radio thing a couple years ago and I found a few good artists through there (like Mutemath) but I sort of fell out of that, too. Anyone know of any good online radio clients I should look into?

Thanks in advance!

In terms of this i'd heavily advise you check out Last FM if you haven't before.

Last.fm – The Social Music Revolution

There's great radio stations in that you can type in any artist and it'll play artists that are similar, and you can do it with genres as well. Also when you've listened to enough music it'll give you a reccomendations station which will just throw stuff at you that you should like.

Oh and welcome!

Have to say that last Fm aint really all that. I use that when I get bored of the same old but the Similar artists aren't really similar to the band you where listening to. I checked out some bands on my mates bebo or facebook pages! lol

Although I am scrobbled for Last fm, I never use their reccos. Not because they may be naff but I just cannot come to grips with some unknown face reccomending me music. I trust a few on MB and a tight group of friends and thats it.

Well of course you're not going to get artists that are massively similar all the time, but it's quite a task to make a station system like that in the first place and it would be bloody boring if it just spewed carbon copies at you, it works well at developing your tastes by giving you artists that are a bit different so you expand your horizons.

Im not knocking last fm, i do use it, but sometimes i think that if your looking for a certain sound that you have to trawl through alot of junk

I think it's probably one of the biggest influnces on my tastes developing. That said it wasn't hard when i first got it since i was a lot more close-minded.

All part of the fun if you ask me :D

im way too impatient! lol I need to hear something pretty decent quickly enough, although it did get me into bat for lashes