I’m a professional geek – I design computer systems in corporate America. But some of the geeky trends seem to pass me by and it takes me a while to catch up. For the third time now I’ve subscribed to eMusic.com. For the intertubes or musically challenged eMusic is a rights free digital music store featuring independent label artists. The first two times I used my 25 free downloads and quit because I couldn’t find many artists I’d heard before. This time I’ve started to explore a little bit more and have found some amazing new music (or new to me, some of the albums are 5 or 6 or more years old).
Anyway, sleeping less and less lately and looking for something to do I end up surfing eMusic’s library. I’m really a fan of the artists who end up in the “Americana” or “alt-Country” categories. We used to call them singer-songwriters. You can surf my blogroll for some of my favorites. There’s so much good and great music there my library has grown by about 1000 tracks in the last few months. A new mp3 player (NOT an iPod) is ecoming a necessity as soon as I can afford it.
Most of the artists on emusic are the ones you’ll find playing in your local live music venues, coffee houses, small theaters etc. The play for the music, sure as hell not for the money. So much so that you can hear it when they play. So give emusic a try – it’s free. Find somebody new, download their music, then go see them live when they come around. One of the best deals in the interwebs.
