By Liz Lawson
With today’s technology, finding a new band or singer is easy. Go on Spotify, YouTube, or even Facebook, and you’ll encounter brand new albums, recommended artists, and you can eat up most of your time with the genres you already listen to. I could spend hours perusing Spotify, with one artist leading straight to another.
However, this process does take commitment. You have to have a curiosity for music. I like to think of it like networking. If you put in the time with one band, it will lead you to another—but you have to be able to give a listen and go through a couple artists you’re not crazy about. However, it will lead you to your next favorite song or album.
Another way of discovering new music is simple—going to concerts and festivals. Most of the artists you go to see will have openers… or maybe they are the opener! This is a great way to get immersed in music—not to mention it’s always a good time, even if you don’t necessarily love the other bands you hear. The other week, a friend and I were at a show, and the guys that came on after the band that we were there to see looked like a mixture of Guns N Roses and Rascal Flatts. We decided to stay and listen to the first song just based on principle.
However, it’s experiences like this that slowly round out your perspective on music, and potentially open your mind up to other genres or musical aesthetics that never occurred to you before. Recently, I was in Colombia, and I realized that I love Reggaeton—something that I may have never been exposed to had I not gone out to see live music in South America.
But you don’t have to travel the world for this type of experience. DIY shows happen everywhere—they could even be within a few blocks from your house. All you have to do is make the effort to locate shows and bands. Whenever I find a new band that I like, I check to see if they are touring.
A great way to do this is actually through PlaylistHQ. If you wanted to go to a show this week without knowing exactly who you wanted to see, you could go on PlaylistHQ and see who’s in town. Not all shows are expensive either—sometimes you merely have to pay a $5 cover charge for a night full of sensations… and who knows what it could lead to next.
PlaylistHQ 