[MrGaryy]

Originally Posted by Shaun

My advice would be to look at what you like now, then look at who the greats of that kind of genre were. Pop - ABBA, ELO, Fleetwood Mac; Rock - Led Zeppelin...so on. As for contemporary stuff that you wouldn't really discover because it's sidelined in favour...of...Jason...De...twato... well, someone recommended Last.FM and I would agree. Their charts (overall charts) are a good indicator of what's good and what isn't: there're a lot of Radiohead listeners but that's about the only irregularity (at one point they had more than The Beatles ). However in terms of recent stuff - artists like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, White Lies, Bloc Party - they tend to have greater plays than more successful and mainstream pop acts than, say, Sugababes, Usher or Iyaz. So I'd recommend their overall charts.

Oh and I'd also recommend reading websites, magazines or whatever about music - Q in particular has a good hold on good new material. NME are a bit too pretentious to say the least. I get a lot of my new artists from this monthly playlist they produce - 50 tracks to download this month. In most cases, the songs will be available to listen to on the website.

ELO = pop great?
2baha/

And I'd really recommend getting a last.fm account so that you can get artists that are tailored exactly to your specfic taste and then the more artists you add to your library to more varied your recommendations become and it's a good way to discover artists you would otherwise NEVER hear of.