Neglected Nuggets: Finding New Music and Obscure Tracks

NeglectedNuggetsOver the weekend I stumbled across an interesting Twitter account thanks to the excellent podcast from The Rocking Vicar hosts Terence Dackombe and Magnus Shaw. Neglected Nuggets is the concept behind the @thelostrecord Twitter account, where they do exactly what you’d think: “highlight some quality tunes that have become somewhat overlooked & forgotten”. It’s all about finding new music…

This account features a variety of interesting folk – including the aforementioned Magnus Shaw – provide links (mainly YouTube) to some great songs that you are highly unlikely to have heard before. I recommend following @thelostrecord to find some cool stuff to listen to.

This, of course, is the big challenge for music fans – finding stuff! In a world where the Spotifys and co deliver you millions and millions of songs, working out what’s actually worth listening to is a real dilemma. More and more the streaming services are making their curated lists the key behind their pitch, which is indeed a great way to find stuff. I’m also a big fan of Pandora as their formula for delivering you related music that is actually related is very very good.

Whereas in the past my musical universe was centered on the 50,000 songs I have in iTunes, like many I’m increasingly using the streaming services as my “radio”. Quite frequently I’ll hear something that opens up a whole new path of discovery for me, which I find very cool.

I wonder where this will all head. Our access to songs has never been greater – as indeed has the ability for musicians to create, publish and distribute their material. I wish I could remember who said it, but I recently read someone saying that this ease of creation hasn’t been a positive – it’s just mean that there’s a glut of pretty ordinary amateur bedroom-created content (like my stuff!) clogging things up and making good stuff even harder to find!

Curation is without doubt the solution – as it has been across the entire online world where publishing has been a quantity rather than quality driven exercise. At the moment a lot of the curation is based around “expert opinion” – which is a great start – but in the end we still want to find what we like rather than someone else. When the tools to facilitate true personal curation come through then everything will probably change again.

Interesting times indeed.

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