.: "If you don't know, now you know..."

You heard what Biggie said...so alright kids, here are the basics:

Blog aggregators / search engines:

I swear I was one of the first people ever to use hypemachine. Say I'm wrong and I'll punch you in the face.
I actually found elbows before hype, and I still think it has better search capabilities.
Skreemr isn't exactly a blog aggregator. It's more of an "all of the music on the entire interweb" aggregator. It's not pretty but it gets the job done.
You might be surprised by what you find on Alta Vista. It's probably better for sound clips / voice clips than full mp3s.

Find new music:

Pandora still does the trick. If you don't know pandora, you've been living under a rock and you should probably stay there.
Virtual mixtapes allow you to peep other people's current playlists (or whatever they want you to think they're listening to). OUTdependent has one, but it's not often updated.
Blah, blah, blah social networking. Blah, blah, blah username. Blah, blah, blah. Thanks to these things we're all socially inept and creepy. But it's okay, because now we can all bond over the internet and find music. IMEEM and Last.fm bridge the gap between social networking sites and music sites. What better way to help us through our social failings than by streaming sweet tunes?!

When all else fails:

Use youtube.com. I don't care if it's kind of unreliable and bootlegged. Occasionally, I use youtube to find songs I haven't bought or downloaded yet. To pretend it's on repeat, I keep clicking the play button before the song stops. Don't judge me.
Use a free Rhapsody trial for a couple of days. Again: not caring about the "bottleggedness" factor. It works, and better yet, it's renewable. Sometimes, if you stop a song before it finishes, it doesn't count as one of your 25 free listens in your free trial and you can squeeze in more listens!
ORRRRR *gasp* buy it from a local record store. I support Soundfix and Other Music. Not because I'm pretentious or a jerk (the verdict's still out on those, actually) but because they have free concerts and events. I'm jobless and broke. Freeness + brokeness = a match made in heaven. Plus, when I was younger, (even) dumber and played the "stump the guy who works at the record shop" game there, I felt more accomplished.

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