For those born in the mid-to-late 80′s, our formative years coincided with those of the Internet. Days of hearing a catchy tune of the radio and jumping to your feet to see if the DJ would announce the artist’s name were replaced by P2P networks like Napster and KazaA. The model for music discovery changed all the time. This is something I was good at, I think.

Here are 10 ways to discover music on the Internet today:

1. Online Radio Stations like Pandora or Last.fm are a great place to start as they provide many different ways to find and discover tunes. Check out Last.fm Discover and Pandora’s revolutionary Music Genome Project, which breaks music down into some 400 attributes by tonality, tempo, vocals, and beyond, to make educated suggestions about music you might like based on your feedback. Streaming services like Rdio and Spotify also have radio functionality that’s worth checking out given the tremendous library of music they’ve licensed.
2. Music Blogs most often stay up on newsworthy happenings in the musical universe, whether on mega pop stars or up and coming independent artists. While Pitchfork will surface all things pop-culture, other blogs, like L.A’s Aquarium Drunkard give you great editorial coverage of awesome music spanning many generations. Many of today’s blogs come with embedded players so you can hear the tunes right on site.
3. Music Aggregation Sites like, The Hype Machine and We Are Hunted, crawl the far reaches of the Internet for top-of-discussion tunes on music blogs, streaming sites, and more. Discover what’s hot and listen to it directly on site.
4. Live Playlist site, Turntable.fm, is an interesting animal in the world of online music. It provides for a platform through which DJ’s can battle each other. Tunes are uploaded on behalf of the user so, depending on what DJ you’ve tuned into, you might end up hearing something you’ve never heard before.
5. Bandcamp is a wholly different animal. It is for the artist–a platform through which artists can post their albums for consumers to listen to and purchase. Following Bandcamp on Twitter and Facebook should turn up some great music!
6. Google Groups: Perhaps you’re a weathered audiophile yourself; but, so are your friends–inevitably some of the greatest resources out there. Create a Google Groups account and open up a perpetual discussion about music, shows, upcoming album releases, best music streaming sites, and more.
7. Amazon Lists: As I posted back in late September 2011, Amazon is one of the best places for user-based recommendations. Amazon’s been around forever, and reviews and top 10 lists have been written about most any product you can think of. This is no different for music. Amazon features terrific user-curated lists written by actual fans of the music–a rare asset in these days of licensing and marketing from the big name record labels.
8. Social Media Outlets, like Facebook and Twitter, sometimes tell you what some kid you knew in the fourth grade ate for dinner. They are also a terrific line to today’s artists, music blogs, music venues, and music-loving friends. Go down the rabbit hole and see what’s there.
9. Identify Music Apps: It’s not until you see a human being operate a device like this that you really believe it. Apps like Shazam, MusicID and SoundHound will actually identify a song being played. Many will offer artist bios and iPod integration and so on. No more waiting for the DJ to tell you what artist they just played.
10. Live Shows: For goodness sake, go outside. Leave your laptop at home, and go outside. Sidewalk saxophone players await! Search for a few local venues by you, and see who’s playing tonight. Chances are the venue’s site has a link to the band’s homepage, where you can give a listen to see if you’d like to hear them live. Get there. Mix it up with some strangers. Crowd surf. Come back and tell Grovo how you ended up screaming at some stranger about how Kid A is Radiohead’s best album and changed music forever. We’ll support you. Use the Internet to get there with sites like Ticketmaster and Live Music Blog. For New Yorkers: The Bowery Presents, Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn Vegan, Free Williamsburg.