How Do You Find Obscure Music?

[Kwing]

I've gotten increasingly curious about how people find non-mainstream music, especially since I think the, er, quality of most songs that have reached commercial success are somewhat... Lacking in quality? I've noticed a lot of the bands I listen to I found by crazy coincidences, which is a real shame. This makes me curious about how other people find new bands, so list off some somewhat obscure bands and share how you found out about them. I'll start:

The Contortionist - Had a song on a free sample album
Metsatoll - Recommended to me by a guy on Omegle
Illidiance - Recommended from a YouTube comment
Planet X - Someone on the Newgrounds BBS linked to Poland
Kevin MacLeod - Heard one of his pieces in Straw Hat Samurai
Atheist - Heard someone with 250 subscribers reference them in a YouTube Poop, go figure
Voltaire - His song was featured in the game Deady
Lightning Swords of Death - Their album was featured in Undead Knights
Misanthrope - Was searching random shit on playlist.com
Moonspell - They were touring with Dimmu Borgir at one point
Nero's Day at Disneyland - Featured in PewDiePie's videos

[HipnikDragomir]

I browse through iTunes and find "related stuff" for the albums I look at. Obviously if I don't recognise a name from the telly, or radio, or whatever the hell, then it's not mainstream. Underground metullz for me.

[Painbringer]

Buy yourself a copy of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (and a Playstation 2) and listen to Radio Delmundo in a taxi cab.

[Rizy26]

http://noisetrade.com/

[SKHM]

www.billboard.com

[Oolaph]

Bandcamp is a great place to find new artists. I also frequent /mu/, and that leads to finding some under-appreciated music.

[rockereaper]

- Related Youtube videos
- in comments or recomendations of people

[JaY11]

/mu/ is a great board for finding new (and a lot of the times obscure) music. Last.fm is also a good tool but it will likely recommend you more popular artists.

[Slint]

yurgenburgen

[Jackdabomb]

In the midst of summer wearing my scarf, flannel shirt, tight jeans, fedora, and fake glasses I head to the closest music festival. Of course all the music there is lame and mainstream so I have to literally go underground to find it. Armed with an old shovel because there's something about the rust that makes it so much better than a new one I dig a whole in a totally non conformist way (I use the handle). Soon I've broken ground into the totally underground not lame hipster music fest. Once there I talk about how the majority of the bands here have sold out and buy anything made of vinyl. That's how I find obscure music

[SineRider]

At 55 minutes ago, ScaryPicnic wrote: Last.fm

Related Youtube videos

/mu/

Sometimes from other Newgrounds users in MuMu player or general sharethreads

This, but minus /mu/

[Murray]

Related YouTube videos do help but sometimes I do research on the band and if they happen to have related bands or have covered a song I've never heard of, I will look into those bands. For example, Slough Feg have some band members in Hammers of Misfortune and they have also covered songs by Legend (USA) and Manilla Road. All great discoveries for sure.

[MushookieMan]

I've found REALLY obscure music by typing random characters into Youtube's seach bar. Like 'awlk owei'. I usually get a few foreign songs.

[Peregrinus-Ferrum]

I found Mew on Newgrounds through a brilliant flash movie done by the genius flash animator Foxcato.

• Unpublished Submission

I also found the band Apparatjik through the same flash author.

[amplefied]

by following labels

[Fim]

The absolute best way is to talk to people and get them to talk music with you, that's how I've accumulated the majority of my music collection. Talk to people who know their music and recommend and share different shit with each other, as a general rule I think people who DJ or play instruments are usually more clued up on their music than people who don't, but that isn't always the case. Besides that, last.fm, forums and magazines like NME and the like are a good place to find new bands..