I prefer Indie music. Previously, I haunted the indie music section at Rasputins, would buy new bands at random by the stack and then would take back the stuff that sucked (which unfortunately was a rather high percentage). The few I really liked (The Black Keys, The Eyeliners, Calexico, etc...) I'd then start going vertical and exploring. I've stumbled across some really good discoveries that way just completely at random, and I've also had some phenomenally bad music experiences as well.

Now I get a *lot* of my Indie music directly from band websites. I find out about bands that I might like through podcasts and then follow the links in the shownotes or google the band until I get them straight from the band website. There's a ton of small podcasts that play really good music, or you can also get plugged on one of the bigger ones like Rock and Roll Geek Show (or his new indiecast feed) although there's a lot of good smaller ones that the competition for isn't quite as tough.

I have gotten some really good pointers to older stuff that I somehow managed to completely miss (The Angels, and his new band Red Phoenix) through RnRGS which is also good and I've also gotten some good pointers to niche stuff like Buddahead, Gidget Ga Ga, and lots of others. Like most things, though, I don't rely on just one source and I still make the occasional buying spree random run to Rasputins, although last time I ended up with this really really bad "Jon Spencer Blues Explosion" CD that I foisted off on a friend (no offense if he happens to be an empegger, heh).

I like garageband.com but to be honest, 99% of the stuff on there is crap and it's a royal pain to sort through all the crap to find the occasional gem. My taste generally runs to folk, acoustic, blues and harder rock (everything from Shawn Mullins to The Angels) and I don't generally go for the trendy mashups, hiphop or strange mushroom/acid jazz garbage my coworkers all listen to.

I guess to sum it all up, as a very prolific buyer/consumer of Indie music catalogs, I generally end up going straight to the band website. Of course, first I have to stumble across a sample of their music somehow, which I do the old-fashioned way: buy lots of returnable music at random and get recommendations from trusted sources.

-- Gary F.