Musical Discoveries

Many people simply want to hear and enjoy some great new music without having to waste time searching for hours. These Musical Discoveries collections aim to fulfill those needs.

During our journeys through Bandcamp, SoundCloud and other social media platforms for musicians, we have made many amazing musical discoveries. We are still making them and will be continuing to make them for a very long time. Probably forever.

There is so much great music being made around the world, music that is below the radar of the mainstream media. We wanted to do something to help bring it more into public focus, albeit very little. We are one tiny solitary voice shouting in a wilderness of deafeningly noisy corporate domination.

We decided to start building compilations of the best music we found every month at SoundCloud, because that platform allows us to do so easily. We have been recommending the musical discoveries we have made and the artists responsible for making it to our followers on SoundCloud and on Twitter.

Lots of people love to hear great new music, but finding it can be a lot of work. With our Discoveries playlists, we’ve already done all of that work for you! Everything we’ve included is a track we liked or found interesting in some way.

A great many different genres are represented. Sometimes songs of a similar genre will be next to each other, and sometimes vastly different tracks will be together. If the track you are hearing isn’t doing it for you, why not click forward to the next one? We feel sure there will be something for everybody somewhere in each month’s playlist.

When you find something you like among these musical discoveries, please shout about it on your favourite social media platforms. All the artsits involved will be very glad of a word-of-mouth recommendation. It costs nothing and you might make somebody’s day. :)

Mainstream media has a very narrow remit and is largely concerned with censorship, big corporations and maintaining the status quo (but not necessarily the rock band). For example, BBC Radio One has an A list, a B list and a C list which are changed every week. To make the A-list, a five-figure sum is considered persuasive. Your ‘song’ needs to be 3:30 in length, have a 15-second intro, be concerned with the subject of romance/reproduction, and have the ‘right’ kind of sound.

Here is an excellent article on that very subject from The Guardian, dated 25th May 2014:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/may/25/radio-1-playlist-secrets-uncovered-battle-of-brands

If you watch mainstream music video channels, you will see that much of what is offered has more to do with soft porn than anything a trained musician would call music. Because the actual musical content of these ‘porny’ videos tends to be very minimal, titillating visuals are required to sell the product.

Most mainstream media music output follows the same format. To quote Rockstar Entertainment, the policy is “We KNOW what’s good! And we play it until YOU like it!” – meaning that if you hear a song often enough, it will become stuck in your mind’s ear, whether you actually like it or not, so you may buy it. It’s a musical Nanny State. They are trying to brainwash you, telling you what you should think and what you should like.

If the winners of X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent or the latest mainstream brainwash talent show released a version of Humpty Dumpty or Three Blind Mice after the series finished, it would chart and probably go top five. This is the level of dumbing-down that ‘real’ musicians are dealing with.

The rise of so much underground music on the internet and social media platforms has all the big players scared because they know the game is changing. Whilst their output continues to be ever more bland, cheaply-made, mediocre, dumbed-down muzak, by forcing it upon the listener they are still able to turn a profit.

How many bands have actually been developed in recent years? Muse, Radiohead, Mumford and Sons and Arctic Monkeys all come to mind. But they are a tiny minority compared to the ‘X featuring Y’ acts that have one track that charts.

Think about this as well. According to WKBN, around 300 people in the USA alone are struck by lightning every year. How many artists over the age of 30 are signed by a major label every year? It isn’t 300. You are FAR more likely to be struck by lightning than signed by a major label if you’re over 30.

Even if you are ‘lucky’ enough to sign a record deal with a big name label, the repayment terms and loss of artistic control will probably be massively restrictive. If you are involved in making music you really need to ask yourself if you want to compromise your craft and lifestyle to the extent that will be required before signing on the dotted line.

You don’t have to just take our word for it. Watch this fantsatic video by modern day philospoher, researcher, thinker, fan of Douglas Adams and YouTuber, Thoughty2:

If you’re still not sure, you can trust the late great Frank Zappa. He was a very wise man who knew a lot of things. RIP dude. It would appear that not much has changed.

We believe that small independent producers, musicians, composers and labels are the way forward. They are not concerned with shareholders and profits. They can concentrate on making the music that they want to make, the music they love. It’s what we try to do too. And we believe the artsts we have featured are trying to do the same.

All of the musical discoveries we have made and compiled have been collated by month. You can reach them by clicking the links to the left.

Here are some more links:
https://wudrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/wud-records
https://twitter.com/WudRecords