How do you find new bands (specifically nerdy ones)?

markblasco

I'm wondering how everyone here finds new bands to listen to.  I know that there are some people who have been involved with JoCo stuff in the past (Paul and Storm, Marian Call, Molly Lewis, etc.), but other than those people, who seem to be some of the big names in the geek/nerd music realm, how do you find new nerd bands.

I know there must be a lot of them, but when searching I always seem to come up with the same lists over and over.

Is there a good place you search to find new (or new to you) bands which are in a similar vein to JoCo and friends?  Do you have podcasts that you listen to who play this kind of music?

Angelastic

I discover a lot of funny and often nerdy bands via The FuMP and its sideshow, and some some through last.fm recommendations. Also (though these are not necessarily nerdy) through the Song Fu, Songfight and SpinTunes songwriting competitions.

Are you interested in how we find other music as well, or just nerdy bands? I've found a lot of good music through zunior sampler albums, and much less through various free music podcasts from radios.

markblasco

Mainly I'm interested in nerdy bands, partially because I'm looking for more of that music myself, and partially because I'm going to be releasing an album in a few months which has a geeky element to it, and I'm wondering how to get people to know about it.

Angelastic

Well, you could submit a song or two to The FuMP sideshow, mentioning that it'll be on your upcoming album. I guess the songwriting competitions I mentioned wouldn't be much good if your songs are already written.

St_Trousers

I hang round nerds, when convos like this start I check out bands that are mentioned to see if I like them. 

Also my first point of call is often spotify to see if they are there. It has a 'also like this' thing that highlights similar bands and I often jump around through that. I've also found twitter to be useful in its way. A few people wo I like on there follow other bands and you can sometimes find odd things that way too.

For your own music spotify might not be an option, they have some 'interesting' ideas about indies and small bands, like wise with twitter. So all in all not much help from me then!

Angelastic

Oh, you know what I forgot? A big source of nerdy music for me initially, and the way I discovered JoCo, was the MASSIVE database of maths and science songs. If your songs are specifically about maths or science, you could add them to that.

Oboewan

You can also check the Other Music- Gasp thread for some ideas. I met Paul and Storm through Da Vinci's Notebook and JoCo through them and things just kept piling on group after group.

autojim

I'm REALLY late to the JoCo party. Similar to @Oboewan, I found Paul & Storm first via their appearances on The Bob & Tom Show (syndicated morning radio show based at Q95 in Indianapolis) back in the da Vinci's Notebook days, and continued on through their duo status.

Then I heard about w00tstock through Adam Savage on Twitter. Upon learning that Adam, Wil Wheaton, *and* Paul & Storm were partners in this stuff? Geek fanboy overload!

Found YouTube videos of prior w00tstocks. Discovered Molly Lewis. Marian Call (side note: Marian was my gateway to Zoe Keating and 1/3 the gateway to Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman being a 2nd third, and Zoe being the 3rd third, and it's the creative geekery Circle of Life. Or possibly we're heading to a creative geekery quantum singularity. But I digress), Mike Phirman, The Doubleclicks, Felicia Day, Stepto, etc. that way.

And one Jonathan Coulton. Which lead to also learning about JCCC1 too late to join the fun, but a dogged determination to join up for JCCC2 (and now 3). Which lead to watching all the videos of JCCC1 and getting involved in the forums here and learning about more performers.

If I was to try to diagram all this, it would end up such an indecipherable mess due to all the cross-connections.

Which is to say, quite probably the best way to build that audience -- and you'll need to build it, it won't just spring magically into existence -- is just to get it out there, and court those connections. It'll take time, but if the music is good, the audience will build.

melagee

I get all my geeky music recommendations from friends and associates. I don't go looking for music (geeky or otherwise), I just listen to the stuff other people talk about and end up loving it. I am just lucky, I guess, that my friends have such good taste.

Coulton was probably my introduction to nerd music. Several years ago my then-boyfriend sang Code Monkey to me and I was all "whaaa?! That is adorable!" I think it's kind of interesting that I am in no way a code monkey, so the song appealed to me solely on the sweet story level.

Coulton's music, and geeky/comedic music in general do something that I really like, which is tell a story. Stories are my most favouritest thing in the world, and I greatly prefer music that follows a story format (as opposed to music that maybe conveys an emotion, or other types of music), which I think is why I am so much more interested in lyrics than I am in melodies.

skyen