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IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD AN ALBUM, SEARCH THE ARCHIVE FOR THE ALBUM OR ARTIST NAME AND "MEGA" OR "ZIPPYSHARE" ETC., LIKE SO, OR READ THIS PAGE. PLEASE DON'T MAKE A THREAD ON /mu/, ASKING FOR SOMEONE TO GIVE YOU A LINK TO AN ALBUM, OR ASKING FOR ANY GOOD PLACES TO DOWNLOAD MUSIC FROM.

/mu/ IS NOT A PERSONAL MUSIC REQUEST SERVICE.

Discovering New Music

Last.fm

Last.fm is a service offered that tracks what you play through your media player (scrobbling) and records it to your profile. This is then used to determine recommendations for you based on your most played music. Last.fm actually does a decent job of making recommendations by seeing what you've listened to the most and then comparing that to other users with similar top artists, then making recommendations based on what artists the other users have listened to that you haven't.

Last.fm also features something called a shoutbox, which allows you to leave 'shouts' (comments) on other people's profiles. You can use this to discuss music on a more personal level with friends that you meet (in real life or on the internet), ask for recommendations or just make general small talk. The final major feature of last.fm is the radio. The radio allows you to listen to music based around any classification you see fit, be it a genre, artist, album, song or another last.fm user, though it is currently a service that has to be paid for via a subscription in most countries, with only a 50-song free trial being available in most countries. The subscription also gives other various benefits, such as the ability to see who visits your profile.

Last.fm Tools

Rate Your Music

From the FAQ: "Rate Your Music (RYM) is an international metadata database where musical albums, EPs, singles, videos and bootlegs (collectively referred to as "releases") are added, rated, and reviewed by users. This data is then used to generate automatic music recommendations for users, create lists of compatible users, and to create lists of top-rated music albums. Weighted averages are used to calculate the ordering for these lists; regular members who write reviews and rate more albums have a greater weight applied to their ratings.

Because users can add, rate and review any album they know of without site approval, RYM can be used to quickly and easily to rate any music collection. A welcome side effect of this policy is that the RYM database is extremely diverse, limited only by the collective knowledge of its users.

RYM is also a community, with extensive message boards and the ability to send private messages and music recommendations to other users."

Discogs

Discogs is a website that is mainly for cataloging music. As a music listener, it can be an invaluable tool for finding correct tags for your files. Discogs also provides comprehensive information on album editions (useful if an album's content varies over time or different formats), release formats, band member history and side projects, label catalogs and much more. Discogs also features a recommendation system, which consists of a list of recommended albums at the end of an album's page, but it's more useful really as a music catalog. Discogs also features a very large user-run marketplace, where you can buy and sell physical formats of music. Sellers and buyers have feedback scores and ratings as well as user stores, and items are graded on their condition, much like eBay. Music is also available in digital formats, if that's your thing.

Review Sites and Blogs

Review sites, aggregators, blogs, share blogs, /mu/tant blogs, and so on.

Record Labels

Looking at the roster of artists signed to a record label is an option that a lot of people overlook. By looking at what record label an artist is/was signed up to, you can find new artists that are/were also signed up. A lot of smaller record labels tend to specialize in certain genres, and they can tend to try to maintain a particular style or quality amongst the musicians they sign. Some suggested record labels include:

/mu/ Essentials and Flowcharts

Use these resources as an entry-point into various genre, allowing you to gain a basic understanding of what a genre could have to offer. It is recommended that you explore genres on your own after having listened through some of the recommended music

Streaming Sites

Despite the continual legal pursuit of music file-sharing "criminals" by the RIAA, the ability to find great music and create a significant music library on Last.fm at virtually no cost is still quite feasible. So we'll start by dividing this into categories and giving a few examples of what we know.

A number of the sites in this list do not directly support scrobbling to your Last.fm-profile, some workarounds are:

On-demand

Radio

  • /mu/tant radio Radio station with /mu/tants DJs and /mu/core playlist.
  • 8Tracks native scrobbling.
  • Accuradio
  • Good Radio Map Google map with student radio streams from across the world (but mainly just the US).
  • Earbits commercial-free, independent artists only. A decent coverage of genres & subgenres, though. Available for iOS & Android, too.
  • Intergalactic
  • Jango creates stations from genres or artists. Commercial. Scrobbles via scroblr.
  • Musicovery has a nifty 'play your mood' feature.
  • Pandora restricted to the US only - however it is also available as a unofficial stand-alone client called Saver2, which packages a proxy for users outside of the US, as well as allowing scrobbling, skipping ads, unlimited song skips and more, making it highly recommended even to US users.
  • Presto.fm
  • Redditunes it's basically what it looks like. But it can be really good if you use the appropriate subreddit.
  • RadioTuna
  • Shuffler.fm
  • SomaFM commercial-free. Especially decent for ambient music, but it does have a decent mix of stations. Plays a lot of deep cuts by artists you've heard of. Scrobbles if you play it via Clementine.
  • Songza specialist playlists. Commercial-free. Scrobbles via scroblr.
  • Stereomood specialist playlists. Definitely worth trying at least once, though it tends to play more independent artists nowadays. Native scrobbling.
  • The Hype Machine
  • TuneIn online radio stations from around the world, for when you feel pleb.
  • You Are Listening to Los Angeles indie ambient music, played alongside an actual LA police radio stream. Works better than you'd think. Also has a New York, Chicago, Montréal, San Francisco, Boston, San Diego, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, Minneapolis, Portland, Austin, Baltimore, Denver & Phoenix stream.

Obtaining Music

Start Here

Note: what.cd doesn't exist anymore, but it's unofficial successor is Redacted (https://redacted.ch/), which has pretty much the same rules as what.cd (to get in follow the instructions from the following site: https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html)

1OBxn

Supplementary Guides

Music Players And Other Useful Software

Many people wonder what the best music player is for their OS. The best way to find a music player for you is to try several for 2-3 days and choose the one you like the best. The Well-Tempered Computer is a website that can be used to help with choosing a media player, as well as giving background on various other aspects to setting your computer up for music listening. A good website for finding alternative software choices is alternativeto.net.

Popular Players

  • AIMP Windows, Linux, Android. AIMP is a full-featured music player designed with sound quality and wide, customizable functionality in mind. Thirty audio formats are supported. Audio is processed in 32-bit for crystal-clear sound. The player features an 18-band graphics equalizer with extra built-in sound effects. You can extend the existing functionality by adding Input, DSP, and Gen plug-ins from Winamp. All local and global hotkeys are customizable. Full Unicode support.
  • foobar2000 Windows only. Feature-packed, lightweight media player. HIGHLY customisable. Fantastic file support - what it doesn't support natively, it does via a plugin. A bit imposing for casual listeners. Scrobbles with numerous plugins.
  • iTunes Windows & Mac. Clean, straightforward media player. Only really recommended if you own newer Apple products (older ones, such as the iPod Classic, are supported by the other players in this list) and it has bad filetype support. On Windows it's insanely bloated. Kept on the list due to it's popularity, but avoid it if you can. Scrobbles with numerous plugins.
  • MusicBee Windows only. Light on resources. Somewhat customisable. Good file support. Active development, with a developer who is very receptive to new features. Native scrobbling. Also features a browser, allowing you to /mu/ within your music player. What more could you want?
  • Clementine Unix-like, Windows & Mac OS X. Lightweight media player, with a LOT of features. Native scrobbling. Even allows listening to, and scrobbling, many different internet radio streams. Foobar for those who can't use Foobar.
  • Winamp Windows only. No longer the first choice in music player, but a solid enough one. Fairly customizable and extensible. Good file type support. Updates come rarely, nowadays. Scrobbles with numerous plugins.

Other Music Players

Lyrics Services

  • musicXmatch Available on almost any platform, or distributed through extensions (e.g. Spotify). As of 2014, it contains over 7 million lyrics in its catalogue. Other than having a great availability in terms of lyrics, its clients usually display synchronized lyrics with the music. Users are allowed to submit new lyrics and to synchronize them. (Arguably there's no AI doing that. Humans' brain are used instead.)

How to /mu/

Sharethreads

Sharethread Ettiquette

1357148739634

File Sharing Sites


Please check the archive before asking for a specific album: http://rbt.asia/mu/


3x3 Threads

Shareingiscaring

An example of a 3x3 thread

First, you need a last.fm account and a history of scrobbles to start. Then, head over to www.tapmusic.net/lastfm, type in your last.fm account name, and it'll generate a collage.

What does (a)/(b) mean?

  • (Number of albums you enjoyed)/(Number of albums you've listened to)
  • Don't be confused if the number is less than 9

What does + (band name or album), (band name or album) mean?

  • These are the albums in the 3x3 that you've liked
  • e.g., 3/3 +MPP, Cross, Sung Tongs

What does - (band name or album), (band name or album) mean?

  • These are the albums in the 3x3 that you did not like.
  • e.g., 0/2 - De-Loused, People Who

The end result should look something like this:

4/6
+ Souvlaki, Cross, Deathconsciousness, On Avery Island
- Hospice, Is This It

Or, if you prefer, simply this:

+NMH, Strokes, HANL, SY, Justice
-Burst Apart, Brand New

*Note: there is some use of ~ instead of a + or -, which denotes only partially liking an album. This is the equivalent of 0.5 of an album when giving numerical ratings.

Chart Threads

Chartthread

Chart Thread

Chart threads consist of users posting their top 40/42/100 or collage of their favorite albums which are then rated or given recommendations upon.

Charts can be made at neverendingchartrendering.org.

This site automatically saves your charts as cookies the moment you create them, so you can update them or import/export them for safe keeping at anytime.

Rules:

  • Make sure to respond to other people's charts when you post your own.
  • There is no hard and fast rule about when to make a chart, but if you've only listened to <100 albums and can't fill a top 40 it's a good idea to avoid posting a chart.

Listen-along Threads

Occasionally /mu/ will listen to albums together at the same time. Usually when an album first comes out or on an anniversary of an album release. The OP of the thread posts a link to the download of the album and a time to start at (xx:15 would be at 15 minutes past the hour) Everyone then syncs up with http://time.is/New_York and presses play when the time comes. An example of a giant listen-along is muchella.

The Dicklick Brigade

Equipment Guides

Headphones

Turntables

Musicmaking

Instruments

MIDI Controllers/Keyboards

Music Theory Resources

DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations)

Picking a DAW

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