Back when I was first getting into punk and indie, allmusic was my best friend. I haven't gotten stuck in a really long time. You hit a point eventually where you become so open minded/accostomed to so many sounds that almost any band somebody digs, you'll fancy to a good extent.

I'm all for researching bands before you get them too. Theres nothing worse than finding someone who thinks Pavement sucks because they picked up a random album by them, and it happened to be Terror Twilight.

Definitely. Sometimes I feel like I've lost the capacity to be blown away by an album like I was when I was in my teens when most things I encountered were fairly new to me. The more music I've been exposed over the years, the harder and harder it gets for me to find something that sounds really groundbreaking and fresh to me. It's not that I don't enjoy hearing new stuff. I love it. I thrive on new (or new to me) music, but these days I find myself merely liking music that fifteen years ago would've completely rocked my world.

You go through phases. sometimes i am completely bored by music, then I come across a band on here or a blog and then that leads me onto a whole new bunch of bands. I have been getting into Einstürzende Neubauten which in turn has given me pointers to similar bands. It does help if you listen to virtually every genre though. It definitely broadens the scope of what you can listen to.

You've just descibed my life. :D


Another allmusic tip; go to the album search page and type in random keywords ("highway," "ocean," whatever) and check out whatever comes up. This method is really hit and miss (obviously) but if you have the time and the patience (and the stomach) it can pay off.

I still find myself being impressed by really good music. It happpens a lot rarer now but that love and passion is still there. You just have to search a lot more if you have a big collection.

A few quick and easy ways I sometimes use:

last.fm recommended artists, try and filter through it to get to artists you haven't heard of.

RateYourMusic.com - Such an underrated tool for exploring music 9apart from the dreadful forum). It is so much more than a site to list your music collection. Once you have listed what you have you can then:

See who else has similar tastes to you and then browse their collection and see if anything grabs your interest.

Browse thousands of lists from 'favourite albums' to very specific ones. Aim to find the lists that have a note for each album, explaining why it is good or what it means to that person i.e. ones like this The albums every record collection should have:1965-2006 - Rate Your Music. not a bad place to start if your collection isn't big, but these little notes are more valuable than just a list of albums with no comments.

Click on the albums, read the reviews etc. At the bottom will be a list of other lists that the album appears on, try and view ones that look as though they will contain similar albums.

View the RYM top albums list, by all time or specific decade or year, or create a custom one by genre and other specifics.

The home page contains several well written reviews on random albums, a lot are even obscure and may interest you.

These are just a few of the ways this site can help you and I'm sure there are plenty of others I am forgetting off the top of my head.

Hope this helps in some way.

It does, most I already do, but perhaps tonight I will look more into RYM. There top album lists are the best iv seen.