If you're anything like me, or Damon, for that matter, you need to find new music all the time. And it's a pain, because good music is hard to find, and even worse, free music is harder to find. But, alas! There are ways of doing it, easy ways.

1. Amazon.com. Oh, yes, I use the "People who bought this album also bought:". Why not? It's fantastic. I've found so many groovin' tunes that way, and it's dead easy. Just look up an album, like "Brushfire Fairytales" by Jack Johnson, and you'll see what other people bought as well as that album, which usually include music inside the same genre, style, and fanbase. Some common hits for that are Coldplay, Donavon Frankenreiter, Ben Harper, and John Mayer. This is especially good if you're looking for a little guidance, but want to dig the rest of the way yourself.
2. Pandora. Now, we've discussed Pandora and its awesomeness before on LovetheMusic, but we do need to go over it again. Pandora is a free internet music radio, that creates stations based on what music you like. Example: I want to create a station based on John Butler Trio (surprise!), so I put that in as my first choice. Later on, I can add more music to the station. It'll play music based on musical qualities found in JBT's music, but if I add more music, like Jack Johnson, Michael Franti and Spearhead, and Blue King Brown, it'll play music similar to all those artists, as well as using the unique qualities of each artist to find more. You can't skip tracks frequently; I believe your limited to 5 skips per hour, but it's a radio—get over it. One of my favorite features is the Bookmark Song feature. If I really like a song, and I want to follow up on it to find more, I'll bookmark it and its automatically saved to my profile. Later on, I can view all my songs that are bookmarked, hear a 30-second or so clip, and remember what song it was and look for more on the net. Yay!
3. iLike. I found this one through Lifehacker. It works through iTunes, so you have to have that to be able to use it. The program is still in Beta, and requires a download and installation. Basically, it generates recommended music based on what you're playing in your iTunes, through a snazzy sidebar that you can shrink at anytime. The other awesome part, is that when it generates that list, perhaps of 5 recommended songs, it provides a small play button to the left of each song, so you can stream a preview of that song in your sidebar. Fast, easy, and well-done with recommendations–I'm in love.
4. Last.FM - I use this service primarily to generate the feed you see in the sidebar, that way readers can see what I've been listening to. However, last.FM does offer charts of the music you've listened to, as well as recommended radio and neighbours, or people who listen to similar music. You can view these people's playlists and perhaps explore artists they like that you've never heard of. Also, for the more popular artists, last.FM generates a radio station based on their music, similar to Pandora, but less interactive.
5. MP3 Blogs! - Like LovetheMusic, there are tons of mp3 blogs out there. Tofu Hut has a HUGE list, one that I'm looking forward to digging through to find some goldies. Some other common, large ones are: 3Hive, Pitchfork Media, Aurgasm (my personal favorite), and I just discovered this aggregated source of MP3 blogs, called The Hype Machine.

Well, I hope this helps on your path to discovering new music. Don't feel overwhelmed; take it a step at a time, thats what I have to do. A lot of this requires a little legwork, but its worth it in the end. When I'm rocking out in my Jeep driving down the road, I think "Wow, thank God I found this stuff!"

love yourself, Jen

P.S. If you guys have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!