TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Music Discussion
-- How to find good stuff ... again

How to find good stuff ... again

Soooo, we had a few more of those things where one of us doesn't like a track another person started to talk about, which then progressed into one of those "everything new sucks" comments, then people started calling each other minimal hipsters and complaining that nobody filters out the crap tracks and the market is dulited with samey crap so its impossible to find quality anymore and blarblarhrobbblerobblerobble.

Anyway, I thought it would help to share, once again (we have gone over the topic many times, I know), how people find the stuff they like. Not so much list out tracks or DJ's or what have you, but more the "teach you how to fish" rather than the "give me some fish, bish" type assistance.

Sooo, here is how I do, I consider this the lazy way of finding the good stuff, and if I find something super special, it 80% of the time gives me enough info to get the track that I want. The remaining 20% I just pull reccomendations off of TA's/other forums and then look the tracks up on youtube/beatport or some shit like that. Easy steps:

1. Go out to a lot of parties -
This means, don't sit on your ass and be an arm chair raver all the time, find yourself a nice weekly, go to it EVEN WHEN THE HEADLINER IS SOMEBODY YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF (and dance ffs, you get a totally different appreciation for edm when you actually dance to it). Most every person is within reasonable travel distance to some sort of regular event that covers a diverse set of genres. It doesn't have to be the international headliners either, its fine if its a bunch of locals, you just want something that gives you access to wide assortment of different people playing relatively recent music of different genres over time. Unless you're one of those insider dudes that gets promos of stuff before release (and really even if you are one of those insider dudes, because nobody gets promos of every friggin' genre), the first place you are likely to hear a good new track is at an event.

2. When you like what you are hearing, remember DJ's name -
You will like something eventually, keep going out to different places until you do.

3. Pull up DJ info on the thing you liked, leech free mixes from said DJ regularly -
If he is some local dude, just wait until he stops mixing and talk to him in person, if he is a celebrity then get on the interweb and pull his site up. 90% of the DJ's have some sort of podcast or have a crap ton of mix cd's in their bag or some sort of mix recordings you can get from them for free on a regular basis. If you are ever into somebody's selections, you can usually get a regular feed of mixes of all their shit for free with very little effort, just hook it up. If you do this with more than 15 or so DJ's you will probably have more mixes to listen to than you have time to listen. Almost all of this stuff includes track listings.

4. Explore "connections" between the stuff you like to find further likable stuff -
Several ways to do this, stick the track you like into pandora/last.fm, look up the label the track is on and see if the label has other good stuff, pull up artist bios and such to see if they mention any influences on their sound or have links to others, sometimes this will even give you a new source of free mixes to leech. Look up reviews of the thing you discovered, if you find a critic that likes the same thing you do, maybe the critic likes some other shit that you should also give a try.

Of course, if you are a DJ or have an obsession with finding tunes before everyone else does, you have to go to the record shops and filter all the releases by hand. No single human can filter all the new releases though, there simply isn't enough time, nor enough sanity to filter through all of it, unless maybe you are the guy that works at the record store, or DJ'ing is your full time job. As a fan though, you don't want to do like a DJ and stick within a few genres (unless you are aspiring to become a DJ, then you gotta start doing something like that, I guess).

I am perfectly happy with discovering tracks through a second hand release filter most of the time.

Anyway, if you do differently and find good tracks regularly, share methods plz.

Re: How to find good stuff ... again

quote:

Originally posted by Zombie0915 Anyway, if you do differently and find good tracks regularly, share methods plz.

1. Be at home and sit on a couch

2. Go to web

3. Preview bunch of tracks

4. Select fav tracks

5. Burn onto cd

I don't find it hard at all to find good tracks tbh

cmon man, helpin other peoples, passing out candy bracelets and putting stickers on each other and drawing hearts on their arms with highlighters

here take a whiff of this vicks inhaler

help them find goof stuffs

LOL. Seriously, Beatport makes it really easy to find good stuff if you already know which producers you like and the labels they put out their stuff on.

Just don't get everything that sounds good at first. Make your initial selections and sit on them for a little bit. Listen to samples every couple of days, and if a week or two have gone by and you still want to buy that track, then you go for it.

Labels are what guide me to good music these days.

If I like a track by someone I check out their discography then I check out the catalogs of labels they have released on because you invariably find stuff with a similar aesthetic.

Everything I listen to also goes through a heavy cannabis haze filter

quote:

Originally posted by woscar LOL. Seriously, Beatport makes it really easy to find good stuff if you already know which producers you like and the labels they put out their stuff on.

true in general, once you're already familiar with a (sub)genre. in this case, it's pretty easy to search on beatport.

however, if i'm trying to explore a new style, i don't think surfing beatport is the best way to go, at least for me. i'd agree with the OP that finding good dj's is a great way to begin exploring a new genre. from there, you get their mixes, and from mixes, the tracks, artists, and labels as well (and more tracks, artists, etc.)

i always like to surf beatport with a gameplan instead of blindly looking around. i find that my standards get lower and lower if i do this, and i end up with a lot of tracks in my bin that are actually just mediocre.

one question though is whether a track becomes more appealing if another dj you like has played it before. there's a thing to be said for having someone else screen your tracks beforehand, yet at the same time, it doesn't make the track unique to you anymore. i do find though i'm more likely to buy a track that i know others have played rather than an apparently good(?) track from an obscure artist or label.

quote:

Originally posted by Clovis Labels are what guide me to good music these days. If I like a track by someone I check out their discography then I check out the catalogs of labels they have released on because you invariably find stuff with a similar aesthetic.

Yeah, this is what I was getting at. Ever since I started taking this approach, my runs have become more productive

quote:

Originally posted by Clovis Labels are what guide me to good music these days. If I like a track by someone I check out their discography then I check out the catalogs of labels they have released on because you invariably find stuff with a similar aesthetic.

Agreed, I've been taking advantage big time of the ability to save a list of favorite artists.labels on Beatport. I'm really glad they increased the limit from the original 100, since I now have way more than that. It's a good way to make sure I don't miss out on anything, and at the same time, like you said Clovis, find music that is of a similar nature.

quote:

Originally posted by cherrybarry i always like to surf beatport with a gameplan instead of blindly looking around. i find that my standards get lower and lower if i do this, and i end up with a lot of tracks in my bin that are actually just mediocre.

Thats weird, for me I feel like I always find the most interesting tracks in my collection and the most surprising stuff while wandering around beatport aimlessly. I just follow a few producers onto different labels and end up somewhere really far (and oftentimes a few years in the past) from where I started and end up stumbling onto something great.

I get bored of just checking the usual labels and artists all the time, particularly since they don't always deliver anything good.

for me, a few years ago.. i was bang up to date with everything that came about. i knew who my favourite DJ's were.. so id tune in to the likes of ID&T radio, and listen to live streams of DJ sets at festivals, id be able to Id most of the tracks, but the rest of them would be ID'd by other people in the 'tracklisting section' of this forum, so id find out about tracks from there.. and from that i'd see track by producers id never heard of, then id stumble across a live set recording by this person, and download that, and search for tracklistings for the set, and so on and so forth.


also, knowing your preferred labels, and artists for them labels helps.. most artosts will make stuff for other labels also.. and from that you can assume that if your fave producer makes a track on this label that you have never heard of, the label that you never heard of must release stuff of a similar vein to the stuff you like, so you can focus on their releases aswell, and also focus on the artists that produce on that label will likely make shit for other labels, and so on...

I do the same, and also with artists. Often they release a rogue gem on some obscure label that you could miss.

quote:

Originally posted by Clovis I just follow a few producers onto different labels and end up somewhere really far (and oftentimes a few years in the past) from where I started and end up stumbling onto something great.

Yeah, this happens to me too. Following the "Users also bought" links don't give good results most of the time, but sometimes I end up listening to some amazing stuff from like 1997.

Another thing to mention about Beatport - it's good to know which releases are also on vinyl - I find that there's a greater percent of quality releases in that pool. A lot of those usually use a scanned picture of the record's label, so often it's easy to tell.

I usually rely on Juno for my random browsing. A lot of times I'll think, "Hm, that cover looks interesting...", and check it out. I've discovered some really great stuff that way, like Ultimae Records.

Alternative methods:
Browsing Discogs
Browsing Last.fm
Browsing the local stores (sadly a rarity with so many closed now...)

quote:

Originally posted by Sykonee Browsing the local stores (sadly a rarity with so many closed now...)

yeah man, i recently vowed to get back into buying vinyl after as 5-6 year break... went into nottingham [my local city] armed with a few hundred pounds, couldnt find a record shop in which to blow it. the money has since been spent on pizza's, beer, and socks :S

this whole digital thing fucks me of to no end, sitting on my bastard arse on juno listening to 1 minute samples is tedious and downright annoying as fuck. theres no better feeling that hitting a record shop on a saturday, clutching your weeks wages and picking out a bundle of records from a shelf.. going to a single 1210, picking up the headphones, and listening to them in a shop , amongst other young guys all doing the same thing, with their mates, everyone happy as larry saying "omg this tunes fucking immense" etc etc

It's cool and all, but not too practical.

quote:

Originally posted by woscar It's cool and all, but not too practical.

Fuck practicality.


Still, Amazon's a decent enough alternative to blow wads of coin on music.

find anything between 1995-2002

last.fm, join a group and just browse what other people are recommending.

I go on youtube and search clubs that I like such as Watergate. I've found lots of great stuff by just going on youtube since you can get a feeling of how the track will work on the dancefloor or on a good soundsystem even if they sound quality on youtube is shit most of the time.

I also try and search of radio stations from other countries and listen to a live stream. I get discover lots of awesome tunes that are only being played and are popular in certain countries like France and Germany for example.

Another way is to go to a CD/record shop and I just listen to some CDs that I've never heard of and if I find a good tune I'll take note of it in my Blackberry and search it up when I get home.

I feel like searching Beatport is just tedious sometimes.

quote:

Originally posted by [N]�k|��[Z] yeah man, i recently vowed to get back into buying vinyl after as 5-6 year break... went into nottingham [my local city] armed with a few hundred pounds, couldnt find a record shop in which to blow it. the money has since been spent on pizza's, beer, and socks :S

Go on the Yellow Pages website before you set off. I went looking for record shops in Leeds yesterday and could only find one place, but when I looked online afterwards there were two pages of results. Lesson learned.

One thing I did notice was that in-store prices are much higher than online prices. The small record shop I found was charging ridiculous sums for things I could have ordered online for much less. Physical record shops are probably going to become extinct very quickly at this rate, because as much as I want to support them, I'm not paying over the odds and neither will most other people.

As for Beatport, I can often find half a dozen good tracks from an hour or two's browsing. Generally I just look by genre and trawl persistently. I note down good artists and labels and look at who they collaborate with, who they remix, who they share labels with. Note down everything that sounds good and cross-reference.

Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.