Here’s what works for me. At my birthday or Christmas, I request as my only present that my kids, nieces and nephews burn me a disc of their favorite music in the last year, or so. It is an easy gift for them to make, and a great learning experience for me. The few tracks I can’t stand, I just delete. The stuff I love I seek out on iTunes to purchase more of. From this I get the fashionable tunes.
This trick actually works even better with kids not your own. When I am traveling overseas I ask students who befriend me to burn me a CD of their favorite local tunes, and boy does this beckon forth some great unknown stuff. [From Radio David Byrne]
Oh, but wait. He uses these tracks as a way to find and buy these artists’ other work. Huh. No one could have predicted that this would happen.