Tools
This section is to help out you, the reader, find music (both commercially available and hard-to-find) as well as give you places to get music information and news. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns based on what I’ve written here, just e-mail me at dougnunnally@balaramamusic.com!
Downloading
There is a bunch of ways to download & find music with all having their advantages & disadvantages so I’ll highlight some of them here. I will say that most of these should be used together. If you can’t find it at A, move on to B, then C, and so on.
Peer-2-Peer Sharing
Info: If you’re in the age-group of 13-25, you probably know all too well about the different P2P search programs, most of which use the Gnutella network to find files. Most people have their own preferred program too, but for it’s worth, I’ll go on record and recommend LimeWire. For its somewhat security & its integration with other programs, it’s one of the best out there. There are tons of others though some I probably haven’t even tried. If you know of a better one, you can always e-mail me & tell me.
Pros: This is the absolute best way to get popular songs, especially music that you hear on the radio. It downloads fast and most of the time, the quality is good. For just getting one or two well-known or recent songs, this should be your first and go-to method.
Cons: Of course, all of these programs have a risk for viruses so make sure you have some protection on your computer. This is also not the best place for getting hard-to-find/obscure music. Even more, getting full albums here is mostly a pain too as it would take a lot of time to search and you might not end up with the full album.
MegaDownload
Info: MegaDownload.net or MegaDownload.com are websites that search the two uploading/downloading websites MegaUpload.com and Rapidshare.com which both hold a wealth of material as it’s free to use. You will probably need WinRAR to be able to access some of the downloads though as most places zip files/folders together to cut down the size & number of files. Don’t fret though, WinRAR is free and I can guarantee you that you’ll need it somewhere down the line for your computer.
Pros: This place is one of the best for getting full albums as they are quick to find through the search engine.
Cons: Not the best for just getting a few songs as it would take a lot of time to go through all the channels. In addition, at times, Rapidshare and MegaUpload pop up wait times on you. The download time also can lag from time to time as well. One day you could download something in five minutes and the next day it might take a half-hour.
Torrents
Info: Torrents are also a really good way to find music (as well as other things), but they are way more complicated than your basic download slots. I would suggest leafing through this FAQ to get some basic information on it. Don’t go through all of it as some of it’s a bit too technical, but reading through the first couple of parts, you can get a good idea as to what it is. As for which Torrent program I use, uTorrent hasn’t failed me yet so I’ll lend that my seal of approval. Then there are the torrent websites out there which are extremely bountiful. Just typing it into a search engine will probably give you some sites I haven’t even heard of. I use Isohunt.com, however, and it seems to be pretty good.
Pros: Torrents are great for downloading full albums, full discographies (the catalogue of an artist), interesting bundle packs, et cetera. There are so many things you can find on torrents which makes it a great tool to have. Even more, if there a lot of seeds, a file that might take a half-hour on the previous two channels might take five minutes or less. Torrents can also run in the background of your computer too and not slow it down which you can’t say about other downloads.
Cons: Torrents are a bit too complicated & there are a bunch of websites to download from so it’s a bit time-consuming. Then there’s the download speed which is never a fixed speed so while you can be downloading 320kb/s one second (redundant, I know), the next it can shoot down to 1-5. It’s all based on outside variables that you’ll never be able to control making it something that might very well take a long time. It’s a good thing to look at the seed & leech numbers (the higher, the better) before downloading. I wouldn’t discourage you from downloading something with low numbers though; it will just take a longer amount of time to download. Patience is a big thing for Torrents here and that’s a huge con in the world of instant technology.
YouTube Mp3s
Info: YouTube is a great place to find and listen to music. Whether it’s a live recording or the album/studio version, YouTube is a great avenue for music to travel upon towards your ears. We have all been surfing random YouTube videos and seen a particular good performance or a rare track we never heard before. The trick is how do you get the music from the YouTube video page to an mp3 resting in your music library? There are many websites out there that can convert video links to mp3 downloads for you (and they work not only for YouTube, but for other video sites such as DailyMotion). I use Vid To Mp3, but I’m sure there are millions others like it out there that probably yield the same results if not better.
Pros: This is an awesome way to get certain live performances of songs on your iPod as well as extremely hard-to-get songs that you’ll not find anywhere else. It’s great that I now have the Dave Chappelle as R Kelly “Piss On You” songs on my iPod and I wouldn’t have gotten it without this method.
Cons: This is going to be the channel that takes the most time to get the music, but also can be the most rewarding. However, the quality on here often suffers, it often times converts it to Mono recording, and sometimes the files can be corrupted. If you don’t have an audio editing software, there’s really no way to fix it either so it’s a gamble at times. I will say though that there might be better sites out there that don’t sacrifice the quality, but since I have the audio editing software and don’t mind the extra work, I haven’t looked for one yet. Sorry.
Last.fm
Info: Last.fm shares a lot of features with Pandora Radio, but takes the concept a bit farther (and better) than Pandora. Last.fm is used as kind of a social network to link people’s musical tastes and what they are listening to. After signing up, Last.fm embedes itself into whatever music program you have & keeps a running tally of what you play & how many times. After a few weeks, it can tell you what you’re most listened to tracks and artists are. This doesn’t really apply to the section here, but the radio on Last.fm does. By signing up, you can access a radio where you can listen to songs at complete random, but it’s not like any plain radio station. By typing in a band you like, you can hear one song by them followed by an endless list of bands that are in the same genre, are associated with them, or were influenced by them. For instance, putting in the Chili Peppers came up with “Under The Bridge” which was then followed by this list of bands: Ataxia, Nirvana, John Frusciante, Bloodhound Gang, Aurélien Duval, Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, Foo Fighters, Incubus, The Offspring, Weezer, Lenny Kravitz, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, and more. Just by typing in RHCP, you get a radio track-listing of all of those and the beauty is, it won’t be till after the thirtieth song that bands will start to repeat. If you don’t like the song, you can skip them too and go through until you see something you haven’t heard or something you’ll like. Pretty good for a free program.
Pros: You can discover a lot of good music through the radio on here.
Cons: Big con here. You can’t download it after listening to it. You’ll have to use one of the above mentioned methods to obtain it.
Raiding Your Friend’s Library
Info: The best way to get music is by just leeching your friends. The question though is how to get it without burning CDs so you have a hard copy on your computer. Well, if you have an iPod or Mp3 player, easily done. All of these devices are basically portable hard drives and can be used as such. I can’t speak on regular Mp3 players, but for an iPod, just click on the iPod icon in iTunes. On the main page then under Options, just click Enable Disk Use. Your iPod will now show up as E:/ or F:/ and you can use it as a portable hard drive to transfer music. Sadly though, iPod Touches & iPhones can’t do this. Sucks, I know.
Pros: Pretty much a good way to get good music that comes with recommendation. Chances are your friends will have some good grabs too.
Cons: Annoying your friends…
That sums up all I can offer you guys on places to obtain music. If you’re reading this & have more to offer, don’t be afraid to send me an e-mail and let me know. If it works, I’ll definitely add it here!
Information
With the internet at your fingertips, there is a wealth of knowledge to be had on music.
I will openly use Wikipedia for anything & everything music and it is how I get a lot of my information & find out a lot. When I did Originals Week, half of the songs I had found there were because of Wikipeding certain songs. When used correctly, Wikipedia is a great website that will give you a slew of information on music. Now, I know the criticism on Wikipedia, but I am not sitting here saying to look up Obama on it and write a paper using that information. While I don’t think it is as unreliable as people make it out to be, I do think that it’s not the most reliable for things of a research nature. However, when it comes to wanting to know who were the session musicians on Cyndi Lauper’s debut album, Wikipedia is the go-to website for that.
This is a quirky little website that will give you song facts on a lot of songs. Most of the information you get on here though, you can find on Wikipedia, but some you can’t. There’s also not a wealth of content so the song has to be well-known to warrant a page.
Spin, Billboard, & Rolling Stone
These are great resources for music news so if you want to know if bands are reforming, touring, coming out with new albums, I would check the news sections of all of these websites.
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