These Chickens Are Fish In A Barrel

There’s no shortage of ways to find new music.  There’s the old traditional standbys of TV and radio and banners ads on the internet.  Then there’s services like Pandora and the like—things that diagnose the elements of various music that you select, and give you recommendations based on similar sound patterns, etc.  While something like this is fun, new music by algorithm has never sat quite right with me.  I hate math.

I’m more inclined to give something a good listen based on the recommendation of someone I trust or respect.

One of my favorite albums I’ve bought recently is When I Pretend To Fall by The Long Winters.  I don’t really like to play music critic, so I won’t.  I’ll just say it’s good, smart, melodic Indie pop.  Every time I listen to the album I think two things: 1) how damn good it is straight through, and 2) I remember how I found it.

I’m a fan of The Decemberists, and I’ve followed lead singer Colin Meloy on Twitter for a while.  One of the things I like most about Twitter is that you can easily find new and interesting people, especially when paying attention to other people you “follow.”  One night Colin Meloy made a reference to John Roderick.  I clicked through saw he was the guy from The Long Winters.  Now look, The Long Winters were part of that big group of Indie bands that somewhere in the back of my head I had heard good things about, but had never listened to (if I should have recognized Roderick’s name immediately, or have a copy of his albums somewhere on my hard drive already, I didn’t).

So I make my way to The Long Winter’s site and start poking around.  Soon I discovered that they have a whole zip file of songs that you could download for free.  An instant sampler pack.  Not a “fill out this big form and when you’re done you’ll get one track” type of deal.  No, this was one click, and you had a folder of MP3s on your desktop—easy.  It was late at night, and I started listening to them.  I really liked what I heard.  I must have listened to those MP3s three or four times in a row sitting there messing around.  I was a fan.  The mp3 worked.  Next thing I knew, I was on iTunes at 2am buying When I Pretend To Fall.

What’s the big deal about that?  Nothing really. It’s just how it’s supposed to work, or how—I imagine—that you hope it does. John Roderick is on Twitter.  Seems like a funny dude.  He’s the type of musician I enjoy the most in a format like that.  Just there to shoot the shit and interact with people, not to necessarily pimp his own stuff.  I’ll tell you what though, there’s a pretty direct line from me seeing him on Twitter→going to his website→sampling the free mp3s→buying his album.  Sure I’m one guy, one album purchase, etc. etc. but something about the process sits well with me.  It may have started with CNN’s favorite buzzword social media tool of the moment, but the end result was me making a purchase that felt authentic, and memorable.  On some level, it makes me like the album even more.  There’s a story there.

Postscript

Lately I’ve had this phrase running through my mind: “the internet is small place.”  I couldn’t help but laugh when a few weeks after going through this process and listening to the album a bunch, I’m reading a long and excellent essay by Merlin Mann (who fits neatly into my other main area of interest—the Apple/web/tech nerdery world) when three-quarters of the way through the piece I click on one of his links, and see who he’s interviewing.  Small place indeed.