Weird ways that you've discovered new music

In what unusual ways have you come across new music that you liked?

• I first caught the video for Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" on CMT Pure Country. A country music TV channel, and they played Adele. And yet my local pop station won't touch her with a 39½ foot pole. (No kidding — I once listened to them for four hours the week she hit #1 on the Hot 100 with that song, and they didn't play it once. And yet the played that piece of crap "Tonight, Tonight" by Hot Chelle Rae at least twice. And they still freaking play that song every day.)
• "This Afternoon" by Nickelback. Easily one of their best songs, simply by merit of not being another sludgy ballad. I heard it on some random station when just playing with the dial, and thought that it sounded like a country-rock song. (Turns out CMT Pure Country also had its video in rotation, but I never caught it there.)
• More out of curiosity than anything else, I started looking up "Weird Al" Yankovic videos on YouTube, since I already knew a couple of his songs. Every time I hit a song, I would also look up the original (or, in the case of his style parodies, a song by that artist) to see how the two compared. The exception is Greg Kihn's "Jeopardy", which I heard in a Goodwill recently, even though I had known about "I Lost on Jeopardy" for years. Through my YouTubing, I've discovered that I like the aforementioned "Jeopardy", "Whip It" (which I also heard in a Goodwill only a few days later), "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and "Lump" to name a few.
• I used to listen to a country radio station online that somehow had "The Adventure" by Angels & Airwaves programmed into its song rotation by mistake. I must've heard it about five times in two weeks, and once I could figure out the lyrics, I decided that I liked it.
• I caught random mentions of Barenaked Ladies on TV Tropes and bought their Greatest Hits Album when I saw it in a local flea market. I still haven't listened to the whole thing, but I know that I like "One Week" and "If I Had $1000000".
  • Similarly, I bought Hootie & the Blowfish's Cracked Rear View entirely on a whim at the same flea market, just to see what Darius Rucker was doing before his country music career. Some of their stuff, like "Let Her Cry", could totally pass for country now.
• A few country stations were playing Mumford & Sons's "I Will Wait", causing it to enter the Top 40 at country. I listened to the sample on iTunes and really liked what I heard, so I clicked "download" without hesitation.
• Sometimes, when Todd in the Shadows mentions an act that he likes, I look them up too if I like what I hear. To wit:

1. When he did the dual "We Are Young"/Somebody That I Used to Know" review, I already knew about the former song because my sister played it on her iPod on a trip to Wisconsin two years ago, and I didn't care for it. However, I didn't know about the Gotye song, and I liked what I heard in the review enough to look it up. I just loved how minimalist the song was, compared to all the overproduced party jams I'd heard in the past couple years on the radio. He later mentioned fun.'s "Some Nights" as one of his favorite songs of 2012, and just from that chorus alone, I knew it'd be a song that I had to listen to all of.
2. In the "Gorilla" video, he showed some animated character near the end that I didn't recognize. When I asked someone else, they told me it was Noodle from Gorillaz. I looked up "Feel Good Inc." online, and liked the song, the video, and the whole "virtual band" concept. Then I realized that Todd had dropped some lyrics from that song in a previous review and I didn't catch it. All of this helped me get a clue about Gorillaz on Jeopardy! right back on the 27th.
3. He's repeatedly sung the praises of Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams' "Get Lucky". I liked the parts of it that I heard, but there is the small problem that I haven't liked any of Daft Punk's previous output that I've heard ("Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" makes my ears bleed).

edited 7th Feb '14 8:32:24 PM by Twentington

A whole lot of new music I listened to a couple of years ago I was exposed to solely because Proton Jon used it as background music in some of his Mario ROM Hack Let's Play videos. This included the soundtracks of FLCL and both Jet Set Radio games (and, subsequently, got me to watch the show and play the first game, respectively).

Seriously, Proton Jon has awesome taste in music.

I first heard The Residents because I had them mixed up with The Replacements. The album I brought home from the used CD store (Not Available) was a lot different than what I expected, but it came to me at a time when I didn't have a lot of music and just a little allowance money to buy cds, so I kept listening to it until I started to "get" it.

I first heard Prefuse 73 because a friend of mine thought the music I made was similar, so he burned me a cd.

I somehow had never heard Sly & The Family Stone's "Hot Fun In The Summertime" till Eels covered it when I saw them live.

edited 7th Feb '14 10:51:33 PM by MikeK

This seems to be a bit of a badge of posuerdom in the metal community... but I seriously got into metal after playing Robot Unicorn Attack Heavymetal. I had listened to a bit of Hammer Fall and Dragonland before that, but that's it.

Good. The more fans The Residents have, the better the world becomes.

Personally, I got into Deerhoof while reading Questionable Content, in which Jeph Jacques at one point really starts recommending them through the comic and his side comments. Now they're one of my favourite bands. This is also how I came to love Azumanga Daioh.

I got into Cardiacs after my father started listening to them a fair bit again after Tim Smith sadly had his stroke.

Roughly half the music I like is just music that Radiohead have at some point expressed appreciation for, and I have therefore gone and listened to.

I got into Fela Kuti after being given tickets to see the musical Fela, which was excellent.

• A few of my favorite songs I discovered through AM Vs and fanvids.
• Clicking around randomly on You Tube has led to some accidental discoveries on a few occasions.

Going randomly through You Tube is a great way to discover new stuff.

I've also discovered new genres of music through a gradual process of searching. I think I started off listening to novelty music, then going into R. Crumb's band, the Cheap Suit Serenaders, and then I realized "Hey, this Crumb guy seems to have really great musical taste. I oughta buy anything he's involved in." And from there I now have a love of any old-timey, wacky music.

I am a fan of an extinct band (1980-1990) Cook Da' Books. Trying to get all the info on them possible, I bought a book called Post-Punk Diary, which supposed to have something on them. Turned out, the book was a very simple collection of release dates of records with brief description (the harsh criticism of Zenyatta Mondatta was most undeserved). But what I did not know is that the book came with a CD, which was a hour-long audio rockumentary with interviews and song clips. One of those clips was Eye of the Lens by The Comsat Angels.

I am not a fan of one more ex-band (although they did a short reunion tour in 2010).

Welcome To Night Vale is a pretty, um... Interesting source of new music through the weather.

edited 15th Feb '14 8:53:21 PM by MaxwellDaring

Seriously, most of the ways all of you've discovered new music that are mentioned above are far from weird. It's common not to be introduced to music via TV, radio and movies. Nowadays, we have people putting songs in their video game walkthroughs. We have people mentioning their favorite bands in their novels and comics. Not all that unusual.

edited 16th Feb '14 6:31:54 AM by tropeslave

That's a bit of a persnickety assertion.

Discovered Overclocked Remix through some Let's Player that used one of their songs during a timelapse.

Strangest I can think of is the times I was browsing at a brick-and-mortar music store where they let you listen to albums before buying. Several times I would grab something I've never heard of because it had an interesting cover, give it a spin, and fall in love. Bands I found that way include: Stereolab, Miwa Gemini, A Hawk And A Hacksaw, and The Jazz Mandolin Project.

I discovered Tom Lehrer through some book about mathematics.

Haha. Well, I'm a fussy person. It sure is persnickety but definitely not an assertion. It's just that it's not weird for me. Key word: me. Not everyone. In my opinion, a weird way to discover new music is going to Google to search the lyric line of an unknown song sung by a random stranger for a few seconds on the street. Or, looking up songs by a band whose name appears on a graffiti in a library bathroom.

See, to me (especially the first one), those seem like normal everyday things I don't think twice about doing.

Discovered Fleetwood Mac through an MST of a really bad fanfiction where a battalion of National Guard sang along to Tusk. Which is probably one of the worst songs to sing along to ever. It's like singing karaoke of Revolution Number Nine.

edited 17th Feb '14 5:54:44 AM by Jinxmenow

You are one odd person.... Can we be friends?

My handle isn't exactly a misnomer Certainly! *hugs new friend*

*Do the awkward dance with Odd1 to the tunes of Beyonce*

I hope you like Beyonce. Who cares what you think of her though? Let's dance!

edited 17th Feb '14 9:12:07 PM by tropeslave

I discovered Purity Ring when they came on a friend's laptop shuffle. His entire library is basically made up of K-Pop and rap.

Oh God no, not Beyonce O_o *no longer friends*

Technically speaking he is an odd one person

Back when I was almost exclusively a metalhead, I found a CD in the metal section of the record store I shopped at by the band Das Ich. Fully expecting it to be some black metal band I'd never heard of, I bought it and took it home for a listen. Turned out to be Dark Wave, very electronic-influenced music. Yet I found myself gradually taking a liking to it after my initial reaction of "damn it, someone didn't put this CD in the right section!" Then I started to buy more Das Ich albums, then I looked for bands that sounded like Das Ich, and nowadays I'm much more into electronically-influenced goth/Industrial than metal as a result of that one misplaced CD.