Sadly it is not hard to see what went wrong in the music business. The power of the people shifted into a narrow focus where almost all radio stations were bound to the control of dictatorships through the conflicts of interest known as corporate conglomerates.
Look up almost any hit song from 15-20 years ago on YouTube nowadays, and you can read comment after comment lambasting the music business today, dismissing it altogether as if no bands today are worth our time because they are very secondary to Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, and other actor/actresses pretending to be musicians.
If you think all new songs are overplayed on the radio until they are stale, then I implore you to seek out fresh new music. You can even start at Amazon.com, believe it or not. Download their free sampler albums, they ROCK! Amazon has them for every genre of music, even a few comedy albums.
I stumbled upon these samplers myself a bit over a year ago when I saw that the label which signed What Made Milwaukee Famous had a free sampler album with eight tracks, so I downloaded it on a whim thinking that maybe three songs would grow on me. But I never listened to it on my computer after I downloaded it. It wasn't until I was burning a new CD-R where I was 45 minutes short of a full disc that I recalled that I even downloaded the Barsuk Sampler album. I put it on there thinking if any of the songs were ever going to grow on me, this CD-R would be a better opportunity.
Sure enough, I started digging 2-3 of them almost immediately, and within a week, I started loving all eight tracks! Inspired by these new sounds, I found Barsuk.com where I could download even more tracks (each album has one or two tracks to download for free directly). I had never heard of bands like Ra Ra Riot or Say Hi (To Your Mom) but this sampler album was even better than the music I had purchased for which I was burning the CD-R initially.
About six months ago, I started to branch out and I bought another couple Amazon sampler albums (well, "bought" for free). This time, it was Dangerbird and Merge Records. Another strong set of compilations, and these labels even had bands that I already knew (like Silversun Pickups) and bands I at least heard of (like The Clientele and Spoon). In fairness, Barsuk had Deathcab For Cutie so it was not as if I was clueless to their names.
This week, I tried it again. I downloaded the Burning Building Fall 2010 sampler and two Sarathan Records samplers. This new CD-R has been moved to my car, where the songs are slowly growing on me. Truthfully, only one track stood out immediately (Speaker Speaker) but now I find a LOT more of them are growing on me. I don't even realize it until I get inside and find myself humming the song, so I find it in my home collection. Now, I have to wonder how The Purrs "Loose Talk" wasn't an immediate favorite.
If you want recommendations, here are the ones I have downloaded and enjoyed:
- Barsuk Records: 2009 Amazon Digital Sampler
- Merge Records 2010 Digital Sampler
- Dangerbird Amazon Sampler
- Sarathan Records Indie Sampler
- Sarathan Records Sunset Sampler
- Burning Building Fall 2010 Sampler for Amazon
