QUESTION & ANSWER

One of the questions I get most often is, "Where Do You Get Your Music From?" The real answer is, multiple sources. I've been known to special order vinyl from all over the country, and even out of the country. I wonder if the question they're really asking is where do you find your music?

I listen to a number of podcasts, not all of them musical in nature. But that's still a great source of free, new music. You can download music podcasts (DJ mixed, or otherwise) from iTunes for free. I also have a few music blogs I frequent. And I also watch BET, VH1 and (my personal favorite) MTV Tr3s. (That's channel 63 for those of you on Direct TV.) You don't have to watch TV all day to get the inside scoop on new tunes. Each of the channels I mentioned has one (or more) programs highlighting new artists and new tunes. While less effective than other methods, it is nice to actually watch music videos. So few "music" channels (MTV and VH1) show music anymore. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to see music on VH1.

But the most reliable source for discovering new music (as far as I've found) is the internets. Simply going online to the iTunes store (via the application itself), and sampling the new music offerings is pretty simple. And, there's an option where you can have an email sent to you every week. The site offers 30 second previews of all tracks, so its pretty risk-free. Another great (and cheap) site is Go Music.

There's no international body governing web-based music buying, so (for now) this is a great option. They actually have a wider, more diverse selection of albums and singles, and don't have digital copying protection on the music tracks, so you can burn copies, move it to your MP3 player and multiple machines across a network without restriction. You also have the option of selecting what MP3 tags come with your downloaded tune. The drawback? You have to set up an account via a credit card, and the anti-theft measures take a couple of days to set up. After that, it's all music, all the time.