Let’s face it, pop music played on the radio is getting trashier and trashier, and the lyrics lazier and lazier. Popular music played on the radio is easy to find in your local Virgin Mega store. You can also generally find some old classics, albeit mostly greatest hits compilations, in these large high street chains. But how do you find out about alternatives to the mass produced pop? There is, of course, still good music around, its just a question of knowing how to find out about these artists in the first place.

Back in the day, the way music buffs used to find out about good music, was through hanging out at record stores, on moth-eaten sofas, whilst talking to other music enthusiasts and asking the owner to give some recommendations a whirl, right there on the stores’ record player. Nowadays however, try asking the staff at one of the music megastores to play a record, that you want to hear, to the whole store, and you might, at best receive a bemused look! Ok, there are those headphone stations where you can sample the latest releases – but more often than not the tunes selected for these stations are not the rare musical gems that the music enthusiast is looking for.

Although we may have lost the culture of going and spending a day down at the record store, the discovery of good new music can still be exciting. And nowadays we don’t have to rely on the knowledge of a couple of friends, but rather we have online sites which can recommend endless groups and songs based on your specifications of the type of music that you like or are looking for.

The two music recommendation sites which I consider the best available right now are “www.last.fm” and “www.grooveshark.com”. Last.fm allows you to type in the name of an artist you like, and it will play a continuous stream of similar music. You can skip any track which you don’t like. It also gives comprehensive information about endless different artists from the mainstream to the alternative, as well as opinions from users about particular tracks, and has an online community which you can join to meet people with similar music tastes. Last.fm is free in the USA, UK and Germany, but costs $3 in all other countries. Grooveshark, which has become popular since 2009, also provides a radio recommendation system for free. The difference between Grooveshark and last.fm is that on “Grooveshark” it is the users which have uploaded the tracks, whereas the last.fm company has its own music database; and on “Grooveshark” you can replay tracks and play whichever part of a track you want, as opposed to not being able to control this on last.fm. Grooveshark is free with adverts, or you can pay a subscription of $3 to remove banner ads.

Another method for finding good music in a certain genre or category, is to use “Amazon Listmania!”. Go to the listmania page (http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/toplists) and type in the type of music that you are interested in in the search box, such as “indie music”, “folk music” or “alternative hip hop”, and you will be able to find top ten lists written by amazon users on these subjects. Whilst browsing a list, you are able to see the overall rank of amazon reviews (from 1 star to 5 star) given by people that have bought the music contained within the list. You can then click onto the mp3/CD/record and read the reviews in full. You can also play samples of most, but not all, of the music on amazon.

Another way to find out about music you might like, is through facebook. Don’t worry, I am not suggesting that you join one of these annoying applications, where you have to tick a box allowing them access to all of your personal facebook information. All you have to do is use the basics of facebook, and have friends on there! Often you will have friends that have similar music tastes to yours, and will notice that it is more and more common for people to post links to “youtube” music videos that they like. You can click play, right there on the newsfeed of facebook to see if you like what they have posted.

If you already have a music artist in mind which you like, but are unsure on what songs are the most popular, you can search for the artist on itunes and look at the popularity bar for each song, or you can search for them on youtube, and see which videos by that artist are being watched the most. Youtube also gives a listing of similar videos which you might like.

One can see that the method for finding music recommendations has moved from the small local record store hubs in town, where people would discover through chatting and socializing, to the online arena where huge databases and online communities are today’s primary source of new music discovery. Although the modern day method of music recommendation might not have the same charm, it seems that it has the advantage of a far wider scope, which allows us to know a variety of music from all around the world. There are no excuses then for continuing to listen to bad pop music!!