1. Make sure all your clothes look like they came from Goodwill, Salvation Army, or conversely some overpriced thrift/vintage shop.

2. Listen to music wherever you are, regardless of circumstances. (Class, bathroom, when someone is talking to you, walking across a busy intersection)

3. Always wear the white headphones. Never wear earbuds or standard headphones. Your headphones should look either very big, very old, or both.

4. Read pitckforkmedia.com religiously, and take everything said there as holy writ.

5. If someone asks what you are listening to, don’t even bother telling them because SURELY they have never heard of the band before.

6. Never buy your music online, and if you do, don’t let anyone know.

7. Scoff at the idea of listening to any radio stations, unless of course they are some obscure college station or show that no one knows about.

8. Immediately stop liking a band the moment they go “mainstream.”

9. Be very careful to always be a non-conformist just for the sake of not conforming (like all the other non-conformists)

10. Use an ipod. Never use an iPod, that’s what the masses use.

11. Buy a bunch of obscure vinyls and store them in old paper boxes.

12. Get all your opinions about music from pretentious sources and claim them as your own.

Let me know which ones I missed. (I’m sure there are several.)

I just had to take some time and mention Animal Collective’s most recent album: Merriweather Post Pavillion. I’ve been listening to Animal Collective for probably 5 years now, and they are one of the few bands that consistently deliver some mind-blowing sounds. My first encounter with Animal Collective was on their fantastic Sung Tongs. It was a difficult listen for me at first, and I was close to dismissing it as another high-minded-audiophile only album. However, I soon recognized what the fuss was about and have been greatly enjoying Animal Collective ever since. If you haven’t yet heard any of their stuff, go pick up Sung Tongs, Feels, Strawberry Jam, or Merriweather Post Pavillion.

Merriweather Post Pavillion is very maturely executed, pulling together ideas and sounds from many of their previous albums. Its not as challenging a listen as Sung Tongs, but still presents some staggering and beautifully constructed songs that aren’t confined to your standard verse-chorus fair. I heard a fellow Tweep describe the song structure and sweeping transitions of “In the Flowers” and “My Girls” as ‘pure elation.’ I couldn’t agree more.

The album was highly anticipated and turned out to be pretty huge critical success. Check out in-depth reviews and thoughts on it at Pitchfork and Allmusic.com. Give them a listen, and follow me here or on twitter for more of my thoughts on music (and other stuff.)

One of the best sites on the web for music is Allmusic.com. It is a huge website with information on just about any artist and album that you can think of. Now, this can actually be a rather intimidating thing if you do not know where to start, but once you get going you’ll find it hard to stop.

I most often use Allmusic to read about bands I like, and to learn about their backgrounds and discography. To find an artist, simply use the search bar at the top of the website. If it is a very uniquely-named band like “The Boy Least Likely To,” you will be brought straight to the correct page. Otherwise it will list possible bands to choose from out of a list. The overview page for most artists has a lot of useful information on it, and you can go a lot of places from there: read the bio of a band, see the group members, explore similar bands, or look into the band’s style, mood, or genre. The great thing about Allmusic is that each of these subsequent links will take you to the applicable page with other artists and bands for you to explore. Its a fantastic way to find new music! The discography section shows all the band’s albums and the year of release. The reviews are generally informative, but I usually take the ratings with a grain of salt. (I’ll make a post in the near future about reviews and my views on them.)

As you explore Allmusic, allow yourself to click through various links. You’ll be surprised at the cool things you can find, the new bands you’ll uncover and the musical genres that you didn’t know you liked. Check out their extensive genre section at the top of the page to learn about the subgenres within pop/rock, jazz, classical, and more. For instance, do you know the differences between shoegaze and twee-pop?

YouTube, while primarily used for watching videos (of course) is also a great place to find music. Most popular songs, and even many less known, can be found by doing a simple search. Whether you will get a music video, a fan video, or something else entirely is often unknown, but if you have a hankering to hear your favorite song or artist, give it a try.

Search here to go directly to youtube results.

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management or sometimes Digital Restrictions Management. It is basically a way for retailers or music publishers to keep some control over the music they sell, and to dissuade people from copying and sharing music to others who do not purchase it. It has recently become an interesting topic as Apple has announced to change all of its music available through the iTunes Store to be completely DRM-free. Previously, most music downloaded from the iTunes Store was under Apple’s Fairplay DRM technology. This limited the music to be only playable on ipods, iphones, and within iTunes. With the removal of such restrictions, music purchased from the iTunes store is now unrestricted to be copied, shared, and used in or on other devices.

So simply put, DRM-free music is music that is free of restrictions. It can be used just as an MP3 that is ripped from a CD. Now, the legality of using the music however you like may be questionable…but the ability is there.