Let’s say it’s the middle of a regular school week. You’ve still got too many classes to get through before the weekend and you’re starting to stress out. To make matters worse, while looking for music to help you ease your nerves, you spend more time pressing the skip button than actually listening to any particular tune. If this situation sounds familiar, it sounds like you need a music reboot. Valley has you covered with our curated three of the best places on the web to find new music. Happy Listening!
The built in personal DJ: Spotify’s Discover Weekly Playlist
Mostly everyone has heard of Spotify, the app with a dizzying amount of playlists and radio stations that can make even the worst aux cord recipient feel like the best DJ in the world. However, a lot of people tend to disregard one special playlist that Spotify makes anew every Monday for each user called the Discover Weekly Playlist.
Based on other songs you’ve added to your other playlists and things you’ve listened to recently, the Discover playlist delivers some great tunes that will soon become your new favorite songs. These songs are often from artists you’ve never heard of or have just never given the time of day. Found under your ‘Playlists’ section in the app, all you have to do to enjoy is press play.
The free bird: Noisetrade.com
For those of you who absolutely despise paying for music, this site is for you. Noisetrade is made up of a bunch of ‘under the radar’ artists who want to get their music out to as big an audience as possible. To that end, they put their songs up on the site for listeners to download for free, although most do write a suggested donation you can make for the track next to the download button.
They have a ridiculously easy user interface with loads of information about each artist from what other groups they sound similar to, short biographies of the performers and where to find more information about them. You can sample the song before you download and if you do choose to download it, it’s as easy as ‘click and drag’ to add to your own private library of music. Sweet.
The dedicated explorer: Pitchfork.com
For those who care about the story behind the music and want to know what’s ‘freshest’ from artists they’ve heard of on the top 40 charts, this site is for you. Pitchfork delivers not only its own roundup of the best new albums, tracks and reissues, but it accompanies those lists with in-depth and well thought out and supported reviews of each track or album.
When you click around the site from section to section, more often than not they give you a direct link to listen to the song and they give the track or album a rating out of ten so you know exactly what you’re in for. If you’re a lover of all things music, when you visit Pitchfork you’ll receive not only a plethora of new track suggestions, but also music news, staff lists of their favorite albums, links to up coming music festivals, a radio station and more.
Let us know which new, fun songs you find on social media @ValleyMag.
