I wish that living in another country was always a way to expand my horizons. Sometimes there is a bit of entropy that sets in after living in another country for a while. For example, you lose the slang and cultural references that people from your country make from time to time. You might miss out on minor details of life, or forget to keep up with something that you never needed to expend energy to do before.
For example, my college experience was full of a rich musical diversity that meant that discovering new bands or genres of music was as easy as meeting someone new or taking a trip down the hallway of the dormitory. When I got involved in the campus radio station as a DJ, I was getting exposed to a ton of new music on a weekly basis, some good, some bad. We even had one of the best alternative rock radio stations ever, WOXY located nearby as a neighbor. I had a friend that was a creative musician and would not only make music as we hung out with him, but would ask me on feedback on tracks he created. Finding new music was like breathing. So easy I never considered being in a situation where I wasn’t hearing something new all the time.
I don’t nearly have as many sources to discover new music. While I have a coworker in a band, they mostly do covers when I see them. This is good for live music, but not for stumbling on anything new. I don’t consider Korean music channels on the television to be sources of music, just like Mtv isn’t a source of actual music in the United States either. This leaves friends recommendations and anything I stumble upon on my own.
For a while, my mp3 player was fairly stagnant. I discovered so few bands that I really stopped listening to music for a while. There is only so many times you can listen to the same thing before it gets too old. However, one of my friends posted a link to his Last.Fm playlist. Intrigued but skeptical, I didn’t start using the service until recently. It seemed like it was a bit of a "Indier than thou" sort of social website competition. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone with my music playlist. I just wanted to listen to something new. It turns out that after you give it a few songs and tweak a few parameters, Last.FM spits out some new recommendations for you.
Right now I haven’t listened to my entire playlist for Last.FM to have an accurate portrait of my musical tastes. The bands it’s recommending at the moment can be adjusted to more or less obscure. Right now it’s recommending stuff so popular that it’s impossible to escape even on this side of the globe. However, it’s also tossed a few good bands unknown to me onto its list that might make their way into my current rotation. If a ramp up the "obscurity" I might find some truly rare stuff that will let me feel like a Radio DJ music snob once more.
