Discovering New Artists

Five years ago I used Amazon.com to discover new music by clicking on the "customers who bought this also bought this" links. In recent years the iTunes music store has been a good way of listening to snippets of tracks by new artists - although of course I'd never buy from there as long as the tracks are copy-protected (which is fortunately changing now).

And now there are multiple sites on which you can indicate your favourite music based on which the database offers related artists that you may never have heard of but really like too. Pandora does not work if you are in the Netherlands due to licensing restrictions (when oh when will globalisation spread to music and film licensing?), but Last.fm still works for us Euros. It's great: you make an account, type in an artist you like and last.fm gives you a little player in which to listen to that artist and similar or related artists. If you like something, click the heart icon and if you hate it, click the other icon (don't know how to describe it but it's clearly a 'negative' icon). The system learns your preference. Perfect.

They also have radio stations that you can listen to based on tags (like Electronic, rap, alternative, new wave etc.) that other users have added to tracks. No need to buy any more music