Music from the 'Net
compiled by Eric Van Orman

Collecting records and CDs is great, but getting free music from the internet sure has become popular among us college students! I have put together a list of the more popular music websites that I know of (many about which students have informed me), as well as my favorite record blogs, and a brief description of each site:

allmusic.com
Allmusic is a popular database that contains information about most distributed music. The "similar to" links for many artists are often a little arbitrary, but can really help one come across some new jams! The "album of the day" on the homepage is usually pretty cool too. Yeah, surfin' the net!

last.fm
In my opinion, last fm is not a good way to find music, but I doubt if many people sign up for it expecting to discover. The artist descriptions are typically not particularly helpful or interesting, because any dude with a backwards cap can submit information about a band. For those who haven't used last fm, once you sign up, the site keeps track of the mp3s you play on your computer, and compiles them into charts. If you care to, you can browse other people's habits. The "suggested artists" that you can eventually listen to on your personal radio, based on the data the site has collected from what you have played, are usually bands you've probably already heard, and about which you have likely not listened to much because you don't like them.

pandora.com
Maybe this site will be good once it includes more artists. Searching it for more music was like talking with one of those "conversation" computers in the early 90s! You could type in questions like: "Why is the sky blue?" and the computer would reply by evasively repeating your question in answer form and then asking a question: "I do not know why the sky is blue…How are you feeling today?" Still, the concept of automatically giving you music to hear based on one band you like seems cool.

bedazzled.blogs.com
I love Bedazzled! Many different guys post on this blog, mostly about cool videos, graphics, ephemera, and even erotica from the 60s and 70s. They specialize in psych, soul, and pop from those decades, and especially adore Scopitones (French music videos, designed to exhilarate teens). This is not really an mp3 blog, but it can really enhance one's appreciation of how cool music was in the 60s.

recordrobot.blogspot.com
The guy who writes record robot is really funny! I enjoy reading his descriptions of vinyls he buys for cheap at thrift stores and yard sales. He has an uncanny ability to find a lot of stuff that seemed like garbage to one owner, but then turns out to be some great music that the blogger is nice enough to share! You can tell that he loves finding music and researching the story behind each record and its artist.

waxidermy.com
Waxidermy is worth checking every so often, because they occasionally put up some great tracks. The main negative aspects of the site are: they tend to appreciate some records for their unusual or vivid cover art alone, and posters to not always include mp3s for download. However, pretty much everything Waxidermy posts is kind of cool, and they archive all of their records by category. They usually like to post exotica and weird stuff the most.

blog.wfmu.org
WFMU should inspire WCWM djs to strive for awesomeness. Their webpage is a lot of fun too! They offer internet yokels the most bizarre and new music from all decades of sound. Besides mp3s from records, WFMU also offers archived radio shows, and a super-duper random song generator with tracks taken from a bunch of WFMU shows. The playlists generate really quickly too. The guys at WFMU even host ftp space for ubu.com, which, for anyone who enjoys culture at all, makes the internet really worthwhile!

Now that the weather is getting nice, I hope we can all enjoy some sunshine, but if you are ever bored and indoors, please keep in mind that the internet really has a lot to offer for people who want to discover new music!

This list mostly expresses my musical tastes, which may not please you. Luckily, editor Matt Blair has provided a link to a page that lists a whole bunch of mp3 blogs.