Managing the Floodgates: The Discovery of New Music

As technology continues to shrink the world and music becomes more and more accessible to the masses, what's the best way to find the new music that you love? It's a task that can seem overwhelming at times, and presents unique challenges for those in the global music industry. To help answer the question, we asked some industry pros what their strategies were for discovering the latest gems, and we present their responses here.

Erich Ludwig, Senior Director of Operations at MediaUnbound (www.mediaunbound.com), a company that provides recommendations services to other media companies finds the question particularly interesting since he is in the business of music discovery. He also works as a consultant for artists who are trying to get discovered, and speaks to the question from these two different angles. Here are his responses:

1. What are your top 5 sources for finding new music on the internet?

On a personal level, my answer is as follows:

a) email from friends/colleagues
b) IM's from friends/colleagues
c) last.fm
d) music blogs (primarily African music oriented)
e) Google news feeds (using appropriate key-words)

The best source of recommendations has traditionally come from friends. Especially for those of us in the "snobby about my music" category. Even though I work for a recommendations company, I don't use personally (or even in my consulting business) any of our companies' clients on a regular basis to discover music. That is likely due to change...I'll explain more once we go public...

Anyway, personally I find most discovery engines not able to capture my diverse interests, although I certainly play around with them for competitive analysis and for testing our own products. There are also some problems for recommendation services for international music, whihc is primarily what I listen to. These problems have to do with tagging and naming, as well as with actual usage data. These 2 things are large components of a recommendation system, and one can see the problem here easily on last.fm just by entering any artist whose name has accesnts or is easily misspelled (try Ramata Diakite for an example. Her last.fm page is http://www.last.fm/music/Ramata+Diakite/). I'm Ramata's manager, and have linnked up all the other permutations of her name on her page:

Ramatou Diakité
Ramata Diakité
Ramatou Diakite

There is no easy way to get around this, and it severely affects the discovery of international music. International labels & managers MUST be sticklers for tagging and labeling tracks and albums to take advantage of the recommendations systems being built into many new web sites.

2. Do you have any other sources for finding new music? If so, what are they?

My network is really very good at helping me find new music. Usually that involves someone in my network contacting me to ask about this project they are working on, and asking me various questions about that project - how to market, promote, distribute, book, license, sign to label, etc...Through this process I sometimes find music that I personally enjoy, and other times, find stuff that is great, but that I may not love. And of course WOMEX, SXSW and a couple other festivals are great places to load up on new music.

3. How do you  manage the overflow of music that comes across your inbox, desk, and ears? Please give specific tools, techniques, and philosophies.

I try and have music on all the time, and if stuff grabs me from my other tasks, I can tell it's worth listening to. Because this is a fairly passive approach, I may have to hear some stuff repeatedly for it to stick. I have a 20GB iPod, a little 2 GB mp3 player, a 2GB card in my phone, and my wife has  4 GB iPod. The mp3 players (including iPods) can all attach to the car/home stereo through mini-to-stereo or mini-to-mini plugs ($7 at Radio Shack). Between all of these devices at home/car/gym/plane, we can get through a bunch of music. When clients give me music to listen to, I put on the good headphones and listen for real.

(Erich also provided another link that might be useful...)

Here is what Todd Walker, booking agent from International Music Network, had to say:

1. What are your top 5 sources for finding new music on the internet?

a) Aurgasm.com
b) Said the gramophone
c) Idolator
d) iTunes
e) Radio Change
f) IMEEM

2. Do you have any other sources for finding new music? If so, what are they?

The insane amount of emails I get from friends, labels, etc--I am part of a very extensive network and have an addiction to new music.

3. How do you manage the overflow of music that comes across your inbox, desk, and ears? Please give specific tools, techniques, and philosophies.

My assistant has incredible ears for most that is sent to me. So, he listens to much of what I am sent--all depends on how I am approached.

And finally, here are responses from Eric Herman, Co-President at Modiba Productions:

1. What are your top 5 sources for finding new music on the internet?

I don't find new music on the internet, personally. I research music on the internet a lot, usually through MySpace, Youtube, or iTunes. I discover new music either by going to live performances/concerts/festival, hearing about it from friends and associates, or being contacted by artists or promoters, directly (which often happens online but I don't believe that constitutes "finding music on the internet").

2. Do you have any other sources for finding new music? If so, what are they?

Pandora is a cool resource for discovering new music, but to be honest I haven't been on the site very much.

3. How do you manage the overflow of music that comes across your inbox, desk, and ears? Please give specific tools, techniques, and philosophies.

If music makes it to my desk I will listen to it. If it arrives in my inbox as an e-blast I probably won't unless I've already heard from a colleague or friend that it's something in which I might be interested. I find myself judging groups on their MySpace and Youtube activity--are they getting many plays/profile views? Do they appear to be organized with touring, branding, promoting, etc? These issues will seriously affect my personal perception of a group's ability to thrive in the American marketplace.

Comments

[Jamie]

You should check out new World Music artist Omega Bugembe Okello. She is from Uganda and sings some of the songs in English and some in Lugandan. Its an amazing album and you should really check it out!
www.omegaworldmusic.com or myspace.com/omegaworldmusic