Where do you go for music?

[cured]

I'm curious where you lot go to find out about new bands, hear non-mainstream stuff, and get plugged in to some of the better albums as they get released. Forum communities, blogs, internet stations? People have been asking me for new stuff and I have no clue where to pint them

This query isn't limited to dance music or rock...

[Dirty0900]

A lot of the time i'll go through Myspace and look at comments people leave from bands and click on them and see what there like. Subsequently the whole pyramid expands. Best thing I ever found was an experimental artist called Sketchs For Albinos when looking at the artist We Show Up On Radar after seeing him support someone called Kid Carpet.

Dirty [sorry darktrain!] is good for stuff with KOS plug for an act called Pretty Lights being an awesome free release. For all my electronic idm/breacore and other annoying stuff I tend to look on the planet-mu label forum as the buzz is genrally quite good for upcoming stuff and supposed Aphex Twin copycat artists/impersonators.

Oh, and the blog I contribute to aims to do the same sort of thing which is push an artist who is either small or underground for a bit more attention.

[Leon]

I use Soulseek if I'm specifically looking for something.

I check forums like these to check out new artists. Nice thing about this forum is that the tastes are quite versatile.
Then there are some blogs I read and newsletters I receive over e-mail.
And last but maybe most important: Whenever I listen to an artist, I go to Discogs.com, check what lable he's on, check out other artists from that lable and so on...

[King of Snake]

forums like this one obviously, recommendations by friends, going to festivals where you can check out a lot of different bands. If I think I might like something I'll search it out on soulseek and once in a while I might actually buy cd's in the shop on impulse if they're on sale.
DJ mixes/compilations also make a good source for finding new and interesting stuff. Might also cross into really different genres, for instance Sasha's Involver2 had a remix of Ray Lamontagne, who is more of a singer songwriter/blues artist, but I did end up looking him up and buying one of his albums which is great.
also, bands supporting Underworld at live shows are usually worth checking out as well (The Errors are playing my town next weekend so I'm definitely gonna go see them again).

[dubman]

my friends are useless for this
so basically, a forum and blogs like bolachas, nodata, planetfurball, and captain crawl

[matt]

Originally Posted by King of Snake

DJ mixes/compilations also make a good source for finding new and interesting stuff. Might also cross into really different genres, for instance Sasha's Involver2 had a remix of Ray Lamontagne, who is more of a singer songwriter/blues artist, but I did end up looking him up and buying one of his albums which is great.

Which album did you get as he's kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. I haven't heard the new one yet but do own the first two

[matt]

The Hype Machine is pretty good for discovering new music. It's led me to some good blogs in the past where there's a host of great MP3's to download (for free)

I also scrobble all my music to last.fm and that site will come up with some pretty good recommendations based on your listening habits. You can listen to loads of tracks there too for free as you also can on Spotify

I used to get some great recommendations here but the headset forum is something of a ghost town these days. I use other forums and also sites like Pitchfork, Drowned in Sound, Resident Advisor, DJ History etc