Introducing New Music

Six weeks ago, BBC 6music first broadcast a new show called Introducing. The idea behind the show is fantastic, as articulated by Tom Robinson:

For one show let’s bypass CDs, pluggers and record companies and play new tunes by unknown artists as heard on their own web pages. The sound quality might not be the same as compact disc, but so what.

The standard of the music on the show is amazing, beyond anything I expected. Each week, without fail, I am entranced for two hours.

My modus operandi when listening is to have the track-listing open and open the pages of the artists whom I like (URLs accompany the track-listing). This week I had eleven tabs open in Firefox before the end of the show. Then I listen to each and bookmark my favourites on my “music+bands” del.icio.us page. The show is broadcast on Saturday at midnight so I tend to “listen again” on Sunday; the del.icio.us page tends to increase in size rather each Sunday!

This is also a reason for my recently increased love of myspace: there are so many good bands with pages there, bands I would be very unlikely to find otherwise. Especially for small bands playing gigs locally, the chance to listen increases the chance I’ll go to see them exponentially. Small bands are no longer such a shot in the dark; sample tracks are available instantly. Myspace has changed the world.