How do you stay updated with your music?
Curious as too how every one stays up with current, pop, top 40, hip hop collections.
Part of the reason im asking is because the past two years of my life i have just been 24/7 eletronica. My pop collections have a few recent songs but they are lacking big time.
I do listen to MTV and the local radio stations but i need more sources.
find some guys that chart that you trust.
I go to Radio Station websites in big market areas and check out their playlists.
New York, Chicago, LA, etc…
Its a good way to gauge what the city is listening to.
for a Hip Hop example, a good place to start is New York’s Hot97.com
I have completely given up. Once a month or so I just head to Beatport or some other online seller and browse for a couple of hours, chasing up tracks on mixes that I enjoyed and listening to charts (not the “just released” pile, that’s an area of cruft for others to sift through). And I am ruthless about only buying tracks I adore. If it’s not a mindblowing-must-have I ditch it. That way, any track I pull out makes me smile and my collection becomes more concentrated over time instead of becoming more diluted. I spend less and I am happier.
Oh, and I highly rate friends recommendations. I’d never have heard of Ulrich Schnauss otherwise. If you ever liked Chicane, I recommend his albums for replay value.
I agree with Fatlimey. Same here.
There’s no better way to keep up with the hottest new stuff other than sites like the hypemachine! It may be a bit cheap but the fact is you can find all the hottest new tracks and remixes for just about anything on there and listen before you decide to invest some cash.
Other than that I dunno, buy top 40 compilations every now and again?!
Ulrich Schnauss rocks. Going to see him live here in a few days time.
Blogs, forums, and other peoples mixes. Hype Machine is is awesome for electro-house and odd-ball remixes. I read DOA and DnB Arena for my DnB fix. Then I download mixes of guys that I like as we probably have a similar taste is music.
As far as pop and top 40 though… just turn on the radio. Then turn it off.
A serious answer: let’s say you are a commercial DJ doing events, weddings, etc, and you need to have top40 tracks for your job. The best way to get them is to sign up for a Music Subscription Service - you pay your dues and every month (week?) you get sent a CD stack with all the upcoming DJ promos, releases and remixes from big name labels. The back catalogs are probably available too.
No idea what the good ones in the US are, we used two UK-based ones for sourcing music for the FIFA games at Electonic Arts, but here’s a starting point: http://www.promoonly.com/
I would go into a local record shop and just browse and ask the record shop keeper. In L.A. we have Amoeba!!!
Do they have vinyl listening stations there yet? Last time I was at the Amoeba in Hollywood, there was none. Same for goes for the Amoeba in San Francisco.
It’s annoying when you got in your hand what might be a cool record, but you can’t listen to it before you buy it. I don’t trust any DJ/Label/Shop keeper enough to just buy their music without listening to it first.
I also wanted to mention, GEMM is a good place to go if you already know what record/cd you want, but your favorite record shop/internet shop doesn’t have it in stock.
I’ve had HUGE success in tracking down new and hard to find records on this site.
If you looking for european dance news, an easy place to start is Radion 1 - Dance:
These guys do a weekly update on almost every dance genre.
Pete Tong also has his weekly Fast Trax TV, which you can check out here:
enjoy
My experience with Hollywood Amoeba is that it’s such a big and obvious place to go that it’s thoroughly picked over for anything worthwhile, and that anything really sought-after has been set aside for well-known DJs who come in, of which Los Angeles certainly has no shortage.
Since I’m a digital DJ, I’ve had much better success hunting down tracks with Google.
By making use of G2p?
Could I have that question in English, please?
By making use of Google to Person?
But judging from your answer, guess not. 
Since I still don’t get it, I’d tend to agree.
Competition is fierce in L.A. but you this why you have to be in top of the music. Yes its big but you just to have your dedicated to the music. We already started low and we have to find a way to get up
Also Agree!!
I avoid the “Jest Released” pile as well and just randomly sift through various genre pages
depending on the flavour I am looking for
another good site is also
the sister of beatport
email newsletters have semi-worked for me, i subscribe to newsletters from beatport, boomkat, kompakt-mp3 (when it was a bit more active), bleep, resident advisor and a few labels i love, kinda forces me to deal with new material.