Question: What Are Your Favorite Sources For Reading About New Music?
While my musical appetite is omnivorous, my tastes in reading about new music are comparatively spartan.
Here are my favorite sources for reading about new music:
- The Wire
- The Quietus
- Bleep (especially their weekly email roundup)
- Boomkat (ditto)
- Bandcamp (also my favorite place to buy music)
- Pitchfork
- Friends (like Joe Surdna, Stephen Mejias, and John DeVore)
What are your favorite sources for reading about new music?
Love Bandcamp. Roon and Tidal are very fun tools for discovery. I do read Pitchfork. Oh, and the next big thing in hifi? Music 😉
The next big thing in hifi is such a silly question, isn’t it 😉
Old guy with old ways: I still watch Rolling Stone for new reviews and like the paper/ink version of Q Magazine. Q has lists of “if you like ‘this,’ you might like ‘that’ and I go with it. I also read Vinyl Factory’s articles and recommendations. I think Vinyl Factory might catch your fancy in a big way! My audio friend, Alan, gives me a list of “things to check out” and then I roam The interwebs reading.
I also use audio gear reviews to see what the reviewers used and commented upon.
Strange confession: After reading about a record, I typically buy it rather than listen in the web. Listening to snippets or being too quick to judge with an online listen has not served me well, and I like supporting artists. Buying makes me a more ‘committed’ listener and I enjoy the cohesion of album listening. Sitting down with a disc or LP makes my relationship to the music a bit more formal and perhaps I am more attentive when entering into a new listening relationship that way. I realize it is a bit odd…but it makes my wife chuckle when I load up some physical medium and announce that ‘we have never heard this before!’
I have learned to stream Tidal, but even that seems less intimate.
Confession endeth
I love Vinyl Factory! I should have put it on my list so thank you for adding it!
Anton, thanks for the tip on Vinyl Factory I am listening to one of their Spotify playlists right now.
I also like Uncut and Mojo (Mulvey’s Playlists at mojo4music.com) and NPR.
No Friday morning is complete without checking the week’s new releases on the Boomkat site. Apart from a great selection of left field titles to buy or download they have a preview facility so you can listen to snippets.
There’s so much choice nowadays that the importance of human curation has never been greater. So though I do play from time to time with algorithmic recommendation tools, I find my time is much better spent following the recommendations and suggestions of people that I trust:
* Alex Ross, NY Times, author of The Rest is Noise, etc. – @alexrossmusic
* Gramophone mag’s monthly choices
* Jason Serinius, Stereophile – for his record recommendations rather than hifi reviews – https://www.stereophile.com/writer/119
* Tom Service – music critic on The Guardian etc. – e.g. 50 Symphonies series
* PrestoClassical is also good place to start when looking for the “best” version of multiply-recorded works