Where to get it?
Like most bboys (or dancers in general) I’m addicted to music. Music in an unquenchable hunger that must constantly be fed new content. With that in mind I thought it would be fun to make posts every now and then about the music that I’m into at the moment. Hip Hop, House, Funk, Soul, New, Old, doesn’t matter. Luckily, we live at a time when music is more accessible than ever. The rest of this post will be dedicated to how I find my music. I’ve been “diggin” for music online for about 10 years and lots of sites have come and gone. No matter, there are still plenty of ways (paid & free) to get those tracks onto your ipod…or zune. Just kidding…lol zune. Anyway, let’s get started.
XM Radio & Pandora
I have SIRIUS XM in my car and a subscription to PANDORA. Sirius requires special hardware for your car and there is a yearly fee, about $13 a month. Pandora offers free streaming music from your web browser or phone app. There are ads though, about $30 a year for the non ad version. Frankly its worth it to not have the ads. Both of these are great places to hear music you’ve never heard before. Both will tell you the artist and song title so all you have to do it write it down and save it for later.
Amazon.com
Another great place to waste hours of your life is Amazon. The online shopping giant has a huge music collection and you can listen to samples of most of it. The thing I like most about this site is that it will give you similar artists and show you what other people bought. You can easily spend hours here hopping from group to group listening to what they have to offer.
Soulseek & YouTube.
So by now you have a list of songs that you want. The obvious thing to do is goto iTunes and buy it. If you have the money to spend on songs and have apple’s equipment then this a fast way to get what you want. But like most of us, I’m broke and frankly I just don’t like paying to download songs (sorry music industry). So the best thing i’ve found is a site called Soulseek.
Soulseek is a P2P (peer-to-peer) client just like Napster, Kazaa, Lime Wire ect. But unlike those this one has managed to escape legal trouble for the past 8 years or so. There are a lot of bboys who use this service so there isn’t much you can’t find here. Just download the client, install and you’re on your way. I feel this is the best way to get high quality versions of the tracks you’re looking for.
Help keep Soulseek running by making a donation with in the client software.
Now that YouTube lets you upload higher quality content, it’s become a great place to share music. There are several channels dedicated solely to bboy music that are updated regularly. All you need to do is find a youTube ripper (there are several available in Firefox) and download the songs you like. I don’t feel like YouTube offers the quality of a P2P solution and you don’t always get correct artists or titles. But if you can’t find the song anywhere else it’ll get the job done.
Let us know how you find your music, comment below.
Also check out the FED’s music page. www.bboyfed.com/music
