Tune Glue

http://audiomap.tuneglue.net/

Good for looking at relationships between bands n stuff

Pure Volume

This looks decent in a discover new bands kind of way. And in a promote my band kind of way. The site looks a whole lot better than the overrated and totally awkward myspace.

Stream pad

The stream pad beta lets you remotely access any internet connected PC and play music from it. Sounds like a bloomin smart idea to me. It also lets you listen to concert material from a load of bands and download some of the live tunes in trusty mp3 format.

Nice!

Pandora

Pandora looks intersting in a similar way as Last.fm. It lets you search for stuff you like and then create customised radio stations based upon your tastes. You have to register to use it and it only lets US citizens join. So for us chaps in the UK we have to pretend to be yanks (I was wearing a camcorder round my neck and kept saying "awsome" as I registered) and enter a US zip code. You can get a US zip code here, just enter San Fransico and a popular street, lets say Market Street, the State code of CA and Bobs ya uncle and Fanny is a silly name etc.

Viral Video Chart

http://www.viralvideochart.com/

Does exactly what it says on the tin...

This Fake DIY

Has some worthy free downloads for your perusal

After the post rock

A Norum (nerd forum) for all things post rock

A Top 50 of Instrumental Albums - Decoy Music

I've recently been gorging myself on instrumental stuff such as EITS and Sparrows Swarm and Sing. I am about to embark on a listen through this here 50 greatest instrumental albums of 2005!! I can't as yet vouch for many of the suggestions on this list but if you have any reccomendations from the list or otherwise let me know.

ANyway here are the links to said top 50 pages.
Albums 1-10
Albums 11-20
Albums 21-30
Albums 31-40
Albums 41-50

Another good article on decoy is this here POST-ROCK TOURNAMENT.

Enjoy.

Google Torrents

Searh for torrents using a google mashup.

http://googletorrents.com/

Getting the most out of your PC for creating music

http://www.musicxp.net/ has loads of tips for turning off all the uneccessary $hite on xp that steals all your RAM. It means then that you get all your PC power for the important task of tinkering with music software such as nuendo and reason.

haleyxcore

Haleyxcore has a blog with links to loads of top albums for your perusal. Cheers Haleyxcore

Music Brainz

MusciBrainz is a useful site for making sure that your mp3 tracks have the right meta data (title, artist, etc).

Below is the bumph from their site

"MusicBrainz is a community music metadatabase that attempts to create a comprehensive music information site. You can use the MusicBrainz data either by browsing this web site, or you can access the data from a client program — for example, a CD player program can use MusicBrainz to identify CDs and provide information about the CD, about the artist or about related information. You can also use the MusicBrainz Tagger to automatically identify and clean up the metadata tags in your digital music collections."

Iceland Naturally

Having a bit of an Icelandic fetish as I do I thought I'd better blog the recent Icelandic Naturally festival in Seatte. I didn't get there myself as unfortunately Seattle is isn't a stop on the Merseyrail system but alas you can at least have a listen to some of the bands that played there. The Mugison and Hairdoctor tracks are worth a listen - which can be found on the official site.

Incase you get bored...

In case you are getting a bit bored onth net allmusic is worth a browse and can easily kill a dull moment - or hour - or day....

It is basically a database of every band/ scene/ genre with some pretty good descriptions.

Go on kill an hour!

Indie Radio

I've been listening to Radio Indie Pop for a while now but have completely forgot to blog it. It is well worth listening to for sources of good music - the only pity being that is doesn't scrobble onto lastfm.... doh!

Songbird - The Firefox of media players ??

There has been a bit of buzz lately about the songbird and how it is supposed to be the Firefox of media players.

It has a bagfull of features that are listed here

Seeing as Firefox is a zillion times better that IE, I'm gonna download it and give it a go.

Explosions in the sky

are boss and have some mp3's to listen to on their site.

Here is their Lastfm review

Indie Interviews

Take a look at the indie interviews website, which contains tons of podcst interviews with tons of bands - mainly american like but what the feck worth a look all the same.

A List of labels/ bands that allow you to download some of their artists tracks

In fact the last post has got me thinking it would be a good idea to create a list of labels/ bands that allow you to download tracks from their artists - obviously must be of a certain quality and contain at least some bands that could reasonably tickle ya ear drums.

To start there is:
Sigur Ros- an absolute must: if you only do one good thing today...
leaflabel
subpop (and then click on media)

If you have any suggestions please comment.

Long may the list grow and prosper

leaflabel

Just discovered the leaflabel label which have mp3s of stuff that may be of interest.

Have a listen tell me what ya think.

I personally like some of the Efterklang stuff in all its mellowed out electronic glory - haven't given the rest a listen yet.

But rest assured I damn well will.....

Splice music

Just seen this site, splice music, that lets you upload and listen to bits of music that you have created etc. It looks pretty good and the sort of Web2 thang that appeals.

As usual I'm registered as ActualAl.

Will post some sounds sooooon

Find those MP3's, vids or ebooks - the easy way!!

There are literlly tons of sites out there on the internet that contain music MP3's, it's just a matter of finding them.

Find music is a link that uses the advanced features of google to cut straight to the chase and find lots of lovely mp3s .

The following also do something similar

• http://g2p.org/ apparently does the same but I can't check it yet 'cos I'm in work and it is blocked :(


• http://www.tyoogle.com/ - Lets you find mp3's, vids, software (I think)


• http://www.goofile.be./

You can also use the advanced google features themselves (although it seems a bit more complicated that just putting quotes around the string and +mp3.

The following is lifted from marc and angel's blog site

The following is a Google search string for searching open web directories containing downloadable Nirvana music files. Substitute the term Nirvana in the search string for any other band of your liking. You can always bookmark the search result for future use.
-inurl:(htmhtmlphp) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wmamp3) “Nirvana”
With some very slight modifications the same search string can easily be used to search for ebooks in DOC and PDF format:
-inurl:(htmhtmlphp) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(pdfdoc) “george orwell 1984″
Or perhaps your looking for some specific video file:
-inurl:(htmhtmlphp) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(mpgwmv) “towelie”
You can check the official Google Advanced Search Operators page for further details on editing this search string to meet your specific needs. Enjoy yourselves!

Sorry for the delay - been real lazy on the blog front recently. Anyway - whats worth shouting about??

Basically hype machine still rocks the planet but everyone should be forced to use lastfm.

If you do use last FM and wanna check out what's been tickling my ears lately then look for actualal on lastfm.

Music I've had the need latley for lots of Sigur Ros (again)

and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

Girls In Hawaii

Yers - like these!!. Apparently of Belgian origin but far from flat (sorry). You can have a listen to 'em (for the tme being) on Culture Bully. Their official site is here (although it is a little anoying to get around).

Dunno when they are touring - I lost the will to live mooching round their website.

Rogue Wave - More love...

Rogue Wave - Anther Sub Pop Bunch (what a cracking label!) that deserve a mention - I haven't got the album yet but the songs can be downloaded for a listen at the above link.

Love to "Iron and Wine"

First up, I'd like to waft some Actaul Al love in the direction of Iron and Wine. These mellow chaps are playing at the Manchester Academy (supporting Calexico) on 21st April, which I am unfortunately not going to make as I'm in Cornwall.

The beards tell you all you need to know about the music. You can download their MP3's and that of other label mates like Band of Horses (worthy) at Sup Pop Records.