Keeping Up with Music

I love music. (Consider it my alcohol, drugs, gambling, cheating, stealing, adrenaline, anger and lying all rolled into one addiction.) My passion, however, is hampered by the inability to keep up with all of the musicians I like.

For example, Death Cab for Cutie has a new album coming out tomorrow. I happened to find out about it while researching allofmp3 alternatives for a friend, but it was merely by chance. I could have run across a blurb saying the band had broken up and I wouldn’t have known the difference. This doesn’t mean I enjoy their music any less, mind you – I just can’t keep up.

The information is out there, of course – but I don’t want to visit hundreds of websites every month to find out when new albums are released, concerts are scheduled, or free music download promotions are launched. I also don’t want my inbox filled with hundreds of musician and label newsletters. So, what do I do? I plod along, keeping my eyes open and hoping not to miss out on that next killer Mars Volta album for too long.

It just doesn’t make any sense. The world is shying away from the big, bad record companies and looking to the Internet for their music. What site will step up and provide an easy way for fellow audiophiles to keep-up? Google or AllMusic, I’m looking your way and hoping for something free, sleek, simple, and RSS based.