[LAU] OT: how do you follow your favorite artist's releases?

[lau at kudla.org]

On 2013-10-29 22:58, Bearcat M. Şándor wrote:
> I've been looking for a website that is not label specific that will 
> notify me when a band or other performer releases new music.  I would 
> love it if i could go on to Amazon or discoggs or even lastfm, select 
> Porcupine Tree, or Cat Jahnke or Meshuggah and say "send me an email 
> when they come out with a new album."

I haven't found such a thing. I have a number of strategies:

I have Google set up for my favorite artists. Sometimes they catch reviews
of old albums and stuff, but for exampl, that's how I found out about Kate
Miller-Heidke's crowdfunding campaign that just finished.

If they have their own mailing lists, I join them. One of my favorite bands
has a Yahoo group where four out of the five members respond to questions
and talk about stuff in general. Others have their PR firms handle it and
it's a one-way street, but sometimes news is news even when it's wrapped in
a sales pitch.

I follow them on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. On Facebook I set it up so
their posts show up in my new notifications, at least until they go on one
of those "here are 100 pictures of us from 15 years ago" binges that
artists who do their own Facebook pages (or hire fans) often do. Twitter is
a lost cause for me because it's just a big firehose, with no way to be
selective about what you see (eliminating retweets, categorizing the people
you follow, etc.) G+ is somewhere between the two.

I also subscribe to some lower-volume music news sites for specific genres,
such as Global Progressive Rock Weekly (that one has basically
become an "'80s metal with odd time signatures" fan site, but it's the only
one with new articles as I type this so it's my example).

Finally, I use Yahoo Pipes to create RSS feeds from music review sites
filtered by keyword. Pipes is also handy for tracking various free software
related topics in non-free-software-focused media; for instance, I have one
set up to give me any article on liliputing.com that mentions Linux.

Rob