There’s an interesting discussion going on over at Drowned In Sound’s new-ish sub-site Discover about how people go about finding new music and bands. I expected to be intimidated by the time and energy that the commenters devote to hunting down new stuff, but I was actually suprised by what a lot of them said. Most have sites they check regularly or rely on friend’s recommendations, but a lot also said that they have to keep their searching narrowed down to a few places to keep from being completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new music available.

I feel the same way and, while I’d love to be able to spend even more of my time surfing around for the Next Great Thing, I usually have to limit my regular searching to whatever I have time for right then. A lot of people on DiS mentioned that they try to check out support bands when they can. Tam and I do that too, but we don’t get the decent support bands around these parts that are often found in the UK, for example. It very rarely pays off. But every once in a while, you get lucky. We expected Final Fantasy to be just another guy we’d have to sit through but he really blew us away, left us speechless. And this coming weekend, we’ll get to see Cold War Kids support Two Gallants, though we had no idea they were touring together when Tam bought the tickets. It’s doesn’t happen often, but sometimes support acts can be a goldmine.

Tam herself is probably my favorite source of new stuff. She and I constantly share our finds with each other - we even make each other mix cds from time to time of our recent favorites. Yup, mix cds - we do it old school up in here. If it wasn’t for her, I may never have known about The Kills, The Black Keys, The Decemberists, Two Gallants, The Fratellis - the list could go on for a very long time. By combining our, um, powers, we manage cover a lot of ground.

If I talked up emusic any more, I could probably be their pimp, but they are a fantastic way to try out something different. The cost of using emusic is so outrageously low, I’m happy to use my downloads on something I’ve never heard before, or an album I’ve read about but I’m not sure I’d like, or just something that has a cool cover. There’s almost no risk and they have a massive amount of music available. Sites like the previously mentioned Drowned In Sound, rockfeedback, and playlouder are pretty much the only places I’ll dare go to for reviews. I don’t always agree with them, but I’m not looking to read my own opinion. I trust that they’ll have a point to make whether I agree with it or not.

But everyone’s ultimate source has to be the insane amount of music blogs out there on the Interweb. I have a huge folder of bookmarked blogs, which I try to go through once a week. That rarely happens, but I always have a look at what they’ve got going on at Badminton Stamps, my all-time favorite music blog. Those guys over there are fantastic - they’re funny, smart, always post something interesting, and, most importantly, are never snobby about any genre. They’ll post Public Enemy, Arcade Fire, and Billy Idol in the same day and seem to appreciate them all for what they are. I’m also a big fan of The Daily Growl and Good Weather For Airstrikes, among too many others to mention. I suppose I look for like-minded bloggers - if someone’s posted about some bands that I already like, I’m likely to take their suggestions on the ones I haven’t heard of.

So, using a magic combination of all this stuff, and whatever else I can squish into my, ahem, busy schedule, I’m just able to keep my head above the constant flood of new music. I’m glad to know that it’s not just me that can get overwhelmed. Geez, how on earth do some people find time to do more than this?!