If you want some access to some truly exciting new music you need this site in your life. Daytrotter is one of the most highly rated US music blogs out there, and currently rated in the Top 10 on music blog aggregator Hype Machine. What makes the site different is not the writing but the fact that every band that comes through Daytrotter's home of Rock Island, Illanois, records a few exclusive live tracks for them. And you get to hear them and download them for free.
You won't find a better mission statement for a music site than this:
There are so many music/entertainment websites that copy one another, scrambling so fast to “discover” or present something new to the world. And just because you get there first, it doesn’t really make you an explorer. We did poke a stars and stripes into the moon, but we could always see it. We knew it was there. It wasn’t new. We can always come along and say we did, saw, heard something first, but we’re never right. What Daytrotter is attempting to do is to not kid around with you and tell you that we found something that you never knew existed. We are going to contribute to the musical landscape, not just toss it around like a used book or a stolen pick-up line. We’re going to give you something that you truly have never heard. We are not giving you songs from someone you love’s record album, thereby stealing from someone you love. We’re giving you exclusive, re-worked, alternate versions of old songs and unreleased tracks by some of your favorite bands and by a lot of your next favorite bands.
These guys are doing the right thing, for the right reasons. This is very much in the spirit of the old John Peel sessions on Radio 1. I also love all the illustrations that go with each artist, making this site both aurally and visually stunning. They've had almost 2 million downloads of the tracks from the site since launch, which is no surprise considering the quality of the artists, even if they are not exactly household names. Recent sessions for Daytrotter have included: Oakley Hall, Sunset Rubdown, Deerhunter, The Magic Numbers, Emma Pollock, Okkervil River, Au Revoir Simone and The Dirty Projectors. Also worth checking out are sessions from the soon to be big White Rabbits, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Of Montreal, Shearwater, Willy Mason and the Maccabee's. All of the music is kindly archived on the site, so go and enjoy some new music. And if you like it enough go and buy their latest record release.
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