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

There's tons of free (and legal!) music out there on the interwebs...why not fill up your Zune with some of it?

I AM FUEL, YOU ARE FRIENDS has a new song from power-pop Canadian outfit Sloan

Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie hips us to Telekinesis! on Stereogum

Gorilla vs. Bear brings us a four-some of tracks from artists playing at Monolith this year

Good Weather for Airstrikes has two from Post War Years

WonderRoot Studios has two live tracks, one from The XYZ Affair and another from Jukebox the Ghost

And Nah Right has a new one from Little Brother, produced by 9th Wonder

And what the heck, another from Nah Right, this time Usher featuring Jay-Z (I know how you kids like that hippity-hop)

Enjoy!

From: Zune Thoughts:

Adam Krebs on Zune Thought recently posted his thoughts on a tagging work-around to help those with tagging woes.  Very effective especially if your wondering why your music doesn't have album art or show up in your "recently listened to" music in the Social.

His excerpt which references Shawn Oster's Blog is just another reminder that we are waiting for a Zune Software update that would put us back in control of our music libraries.  At the present time the software doesn't have the capabilities that we need to properly manage our music. "Make it your own" Without being able to provide any positive feedback for a solution, I revert to talking about temporary alternatives.

Shawn Oster points out how easy it is to hook the backend of the Zune marketplace into MP3Tag to get properly tagged and recognized files. He also points out that this could be helpful in getting Social to recognize the songs you play (though I'm not convinced of his argument that Social takes the album metadata from your computer--I'm pretty sure that comes from their servers).

He brings up another cool tidbit: "zune.net just made their 800x800 album art available via the back-end service I'm using so now you can grab full 800x800 album art even on tracks you didn't purchase directly from the Marketplace. Just download Marketplace.zip and extract the single Marketplace.src into your %appdata%Mp3tagdatasources folder and you'll be rocking! I'd also suggest you download the very latest beta of Mp3tag because the tag sources (what Marketplace plugs into) dialog is much easier to figure out for first timers, plus I always include the artist in the track listing and version 2.39n supports splitting this into the correct tags."

Source: Zune Thoughts

Amazon.com announced Thursday afternoon that Sony BMG Music Entertainment has agreed to sell DRM-Free music via it's online retail site.  This adds the fourth major record company offering music downloads just as its competitor iTunes.

I have been back and fourth with, where I get music downloads such as, Indie music artists, collecting Rhapsody points on my Wendy's combo meals, the Zune Marketplace and even Amazon.com.  I'm hoping for the day when all this media can be more centralized.  I find it very difficult to look for music in multiple places to get what I am looking for and am interested in what the future holds for Amazon.

Hopefully it won't become an online flea market but a pioneer of one-stop shopping.

Source: Information Week

That's right, The Best of YouTube Podcast now in the Zune Marketplace Podcast Section.

And a special treat for me is that my Podcast, the Mobility Site Minute, is now in the Podcast Section too. Now that gives me inspiration to get off my ass and do them more often. (go ahead Susan, Smile)

Zac from Zune-Life has put up 08 - thezuneshow : zune 8 tonight. He discusses the Zune 8 in great depth.

Im on my own, but I give my opinion on the Zune 8 which takes up most of the podcast. A little short of news and discussion this week, so the podcast is shorter.

In addition, I just did another podcast for my main site, Mobilitysite.com today too. It's longer than normal, but I had fun doing it. Mobility Site Minute #45

We are starting to see a lot of companies featuring big ticket bands in their PR efforts. At CES 2006, I had a chance to see the Killers at a Microsoft / MTV after party, CES 2007 brought 3 Doors Down in for a free 1 hour acoustic concert (which my video was removed from Soapbox for copyright violation recently. MY VIDEO THAT I SHOT. Oh well.), but nothing beats the event that Sandisk put on a few weeks ago. Linkin Park in an intimate envoirment was very sweet.

Well, the newest is Alltel Wireless and the Goo Goo Dolls joining up to offer a free concert for 2000 or so in Phoenix. Unfortunately, I will not get a chance to take up this invite, but I am sure others will have a blast. The Goo Goo Dolls are an awesome band. Read on for the press release...

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It appears that you can snag the preloaded content that is preloaded on the new Zunes over at Zune.net.

How can I restore the content that came preloaded on my Zune?

If you've deleted content that was preloaded on your Zune 4GB, Zune 8GB, or Zune 80GB, you can download it from Zune.net, add it to your collection, and re-sync it to your Zune.

Restore preloaded content to your Zune

1. Make sure you have at least 450 MB free storage space.
2. Right-click here, select Save Target As, and choose a folder in which to download the compressed WinZip file.
3. Double-click the downloaded file to open it.
4. Copy or move each of the main subfolders—Pictures, Podcasts, Videos, and Zune Gems (music)—to a folder that the Zune software monitors for each media format, adding the Pictures folder to a monitored folder for pictures, and so on.
   To view or update your monitored folders, go to the Zune software's collection settings.
5. Connect your Zune and sync your new content.

Souce: Zune.net via ZuneBoards