Now that we know all the wonderful things MP3s do for the independent musician/songwriter, let's have some fun. Let's go looking for some great music on the web.
First, let's get some software that will allow you to play the songs we find. I use WinAmp, which can be downloaded for free from http://www.winamp.com . For personal use, it can (and should) be registered for just $10.00. It's a great program. Get it. Pay for it. Enjoy it. Another new player (figuratively and literally) is RealJukebox. While I like most Real Networks software a lot, I'm not crazy about RealJukebox because it tries to dictate the way I organize my music files on my hard drive. After downloading several MP3 files, only to have them lost in my Temp folder, I went happily back to WinAmp. I imagine I could configure RealJukebox to work like I want it to, but if it's this much trouble, I'm not interested. If you want to check it out, it can be purchased at http://www.real.com .
Now that we've got the software, let's go find some music!
As many of you know, my music tastes runs from folk to insurgent country. That's where we'll focus, but there are all kinds of MP3 songs out there. With a little digging around, you can find almost any kind of music.
By far the best music I have discovered during my MP3 surfing is the music of Bert Fonte. He has a page at MP3.Com, http://www.mp3.com/artists/22/bert_fonte... , and a web site at http://www.angelfire.com/de/bert . If you can find me a better song that Louisiana Cajun Belle, I'll devote an entire article to your music finding acumen! Bert writes wonderful songs and is an incredible musician and vocalist. Listen to his delivery of the "Silvertone" line in Louisiana Cajun Belle for the kind of voice I (and every one of my prior bandmates) wish I had.
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am a huge Neil Young fan. So anyone who creates songs that sound like Neil Young songs I've never heard is doing great by me. Well I came across a band that sounds more like Neil than Neil himself (and I mean that in a good way)! Check out Nadine at http://www.mp3.com/artists/11/nadine.html . All three of the downloadable songs are awesome. Think of Neil with Son Volt backing him up. They have a record, which I promptly bought at Amazon.Com. Any time you see that a band is from St. Louis, you can be assured that they are good. I've never heard a bad band from St. Louis.
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