Most folks like the comfort zone where complacency meets safety. There are no worries and you have more certainty but at what cost. Exposure! What am I talking about? Changing your music choices to something you may not normally listen to even if you love the classics in your music genres, there is an artist you haven't heard.

I have spent much of my free time between full-time work school to continue exploring the Zune Social to check out all of the music my friends and my friends’ friends are listening to. I have found quite a bit of good music and most of the people that I have met through the Social have sent me messages with recommendations.  Thanks everyone!

Here are a few ideas for finding new music artists:

  1. Explore the Social. You may be amazed at the stuff people are listening to, no really amazed. It can be nothing like your personal taste, you listen to it long enough to like it or you stumble across a rare find. Adding people to your social is easy and with the constantly growing features of the Social online or in the Zune software.
  2. Find new artists or independents. Sitting in a café on Miami Beach over the weekend listening to a live singer perform or just visiting the Starbucks Music store on Lincoln Road. You can help but hear music all around you. Most restaurants and clothing stores have something playing or their own CDs, stop in and ask what song is playing. There are also the online Indie Feeds such as Indie-Music.com, BeatPick.com, AllMusic.com, AudioFeeds.org and even looking at the Billboard.com Charts songs for what is playing on the radio. You’ll be surprised at how often music changes.
    Also try muxfind.com or muxtape.com (thank Jonathan Flowers for the last two.)
  3.  Strange Online Services. Pandora (Radio from the Music Genome Project©) is a great example of a service designed to better understand your music listening habits. Of course you should try to stay within some guidelines for your new music selection but don’t go from one extreme to the other like the difference between Acapella and Zydeco. Exploring what others have contributed brings me to the next idea.
  4. Browsing the web. Where do you start and what do you do? Start with browsing your Zune Marketplace, Amazon Music, various radio stations online (recently played list) and any other idea you can think of. Remember the Internet is limitless, although I think I did reach the end of it once or twice.

I leave you with a quote to keep in mind with your music search and everyday life.  Happy hunting and enjoy music more.

“If you do what you have always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” - unknown