The Different Approches

Amy's latest post here on Music Hounds, Free Music got me thinking about the different approaches people take to finding music. From her post she indicated her delight in sampling music from all over the web for hours. I do not share the same delight; I have a much shorter attention span.

I will work backward in the music hounding process:
Listening to a song. When I come across a new song it better catch my attention quickly - within the first 30 seconds or less; regardless of whether I am familiar with the band or not. It could be one of my favorite bands, but I'll disregard the song if it hasn't grabbed me immediately and I'll move on to another. I do not like radio stations in general, but it is because of this short attention span. I wouldn't mind internet radio if one could move through songs one does not like; if Pandora, for example, allowed such a thing...well I guess it wouldn't be much of a radio station.

Finding a song. I generally do not like recommendations from music recommendation sites. I have blogged about this in a couple of posts, the most recent being Signal Patterns Music Survey, mostly because they never seem to get it right...for me at least. I usually have something in particular I'm searching for and broad genre categories are often not represented properly simply because the sites hosting music do not allow much inclusion of different music styles without just grouping in "OTHER". This is a shame. Reverbnation is one such hosting site that comes to mind. So I wind up searching large amounts of music under "other", for example, with a strategy of crossing my fingers and hoping I like what I hear (for the first 30 seconds). I hate that. Pandora is a good example to use here - they make recommendations for their users based upon similarities to an entered "favorite band/artist". This seems a good way to find music, provided that Pandora accurately identifies "similarities". Its popularity suggests that it may have that down. However given the 30 seconds "rule" I have (see above), Pandora is frustrating to me. As I mentioned, I'm usually in the mood for a specific type of music. If I stumble across something that sounds good, I'm excited and have found something new (to me), but oftentimes it takes many, many tries with little or no success (part of the reason I get impatient with NPR's Second Stage). Perhaps I do not have entirely mainstream musical tastes, but I do like music that falls under the general categorization of a whole host of "genres".

What's the solution? To my knowledge (and I'd love to be proven wrong - so write if you have input) if I do not have a band name/artist name/song name/genre that I'm searching for, no such solution exists other than painstakingly clicking with crossed fingers and toes. I am building the Hounds to the Music search function because of my short attention span when it comes to finding new music. There is a ton of new music posted every day, but how to find it efficiently? I certainly do no think that Hounds to the Music will be the Holy Grail of music hunting, but I do hope that it will take a small step in that efficiency; ultimately one will always need to click and hope, but if the frequency of success can be increased, that will be a benefit I think.

How do you hunt for music? What sites do you use? Do hunt like Amy or me?

So, will Amy, who loves to poke around free music for hours on a weekend afternoon benefit from the music search function of Hounds to the Music? I hope so, although she may use it in a different manner than I plan to.

Hounds to the Music. What's the status of Hounds to the Music you ask? We are getting there...closer and closer each day. We plan on a limited launch to indie musicians/bands/labels and other interested parties around mid to late summer this year. We will also be entertaining investors starting in April.