Article: Learning To Love Music You Don't Know (NPR)

 Oh how I miss working at a record store…

We Get Mail: Learning To Love Music You Don't Know : All Songs Considered : NPR

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the piles of new CDs and holiday cards from local merchants are many smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, ways to delve into unfamiliar genres."

 This is part of why the disappearance of so many record stores is such a shame: Like good fans, good record-store clerks love it when people ask for tips on new things worth trying — if you ask for interesting recommendations in good faith, most record-store clerks will be reluctant to let you leave the store at all. But there are ways to cobble together a similar experience online, from algorithm-based services like Pandora and Rdio and Songza and Spotify — where you can wander down rabbit holes based on the recommendations of sources you trust, or simply get a quick crash course in what's popular at the moment — to, and you knew I was going to do this, NPR Music, where curators are there to lead conversations and point people in the direction of artists worth discovering.

(Continued... We Get Mail: Learning To Love Music You Don't Know : All Songs Considered : NPR)