Exciting new music can be a tricky thing to find. Especially if you aren’t satisfied with finding the same three new songs everyone else is finding through the radio and Apple commercials. Luckily, the Internet has made it a lot easier to listen in to garages around the world. My favorite place (and I think the easiest place) to explore new music is MySpace.

When I signed up for MySpace I didn’t actually think I was going to use it much. I already had a Facebook account and did not know too many people using MySpace. Eventually I found the music section and the rest is history. Through MySpace I’ve become more familiar with the local music scenes both in the CU and in Chicago. I’ve also gotten into new bands from across the country and a few from different parts of the world.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all the bands and random people that decide to friend you on MySpace. I usually like to listen to at least one song by a band before accepting a friend request, so sometimes these requests pile up in my inbox for months at a time. After a while I felt like I was friends with all these bands but couldn’t remember what half of them sounded like.

The solution I came up with for this problem has provided me with some of my favorite mix CDs to listen to. A lot of artists put up songs for download on their profiles, so I usually grab the ones I want as I come across them. Every so often I accumulate enough to burn them onto a full-length CD. I’ve made three of these MySpace mixes to date. The only rule for these mixes is that the songs on them have been made available for download by the artist, whether I found it on their MySpace profile, their Web site, et cetera.

I’ve discovered some of my favorite new bands this way, and I’d encourage any other new music hunters to give this a try. I put together my third mix during spring break and I think it’s my favorite one so far. Check out the tracklisting (some of these are still available for download):

1. “Robinson” - Learn to Fly (Charleston, Ill.)

2. “Khalil” - New Black (Chicago)

3. “Dance Dance Revolution” - Agents of Change (Chicago)

4. “This One” (live) - Headlights (Champaign-Urbana)

5. “Even in His Youth” - Children’s Masterpiece Theatre (Chicago)

6. “Sh*t a Brick” -  Alleyway Sex (Champaign-Urbana)

7. “To Him” - Noah Harris (Chicago)

8. “This is Life Krukid” - Curb Service (Champaign-Urbana)

9. “Bronx Dance Party” - Daly’s Gone Wrong (New York City)

10. “Antonymity” (live) - Elsinore (Champaign-Urbana)

11. “Scalliwag” (Simlish version) - Gaelic Storm (Los Angeles)

12. “Please Come Back” - Catfish Haven (Chicago)

13. “Dead Man’s Hand” - Tritone (Champaign-Urbana)

14. “One of a Kind” (live) - Lorenzo Goetz (Champaign-Urbana)

15. “Explain” - The Scarlet Harlots (Birmingham, England)

16. “The Very Last Messenger” - No Torso (Oslo, Norway)

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 9:32 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.