Today's Top Tune - KCRW

KCRW is a popular indie station out in California that is known for being the first to play a lot of great artists (they introduced America to the band mentioned in my last post). Subscribing to their "Today's Top Tune" podcast will prove to be a great joy for you as each day you will wake up to a new present uploaded to itunes. I have found that four out of every five days will end up providing me with a great song that i end up loving after several listens. Here are a few suggestions for making the most of KCRW's free gift to music lovers:

1. Subscribe to their blog here (I recommend doing it through itunes).

2. Each day, listen to your new song for about 15 seconds. If it sounds like something you will never listen to again, then go ahead and delete it right away. No need wasting hardrive space or more time listening to it.

3. Start a couple of new playlists to organize your "top tunes." I have "indie girls" for mid-slow tempo female artists , "indie guys" for mid-slow tempo male fronted groups, and "Run-eclectic" for uptempo stuff i can listen to as I exercise. Then, if i determine that i would like to keep the song, i can also go ahead and move it to the respective playlist which i will use almost as a radio station when i need some good background music. Over time, i will then move the songs that i find i really like into an "Indie favorites" playlist and delete the rest from my computer.

4. In your itunes settings, don't forget to highlight all the songs in the "podcast" menu and keep the artist (KCRW) and the Album (Today's Top Tune) all the same. Also make sure to check the box labled "no" for "skip when shuffling" and "remember position." This will allow you to play the songs from your playlists or the artist "KCRW" without having to listen from the podcast menu which can prove to be annoying (There are probably some of you out there that know how to completely remove the song from the "podcast" section all together. That might be very helpful. If you would like to inform us how to do that below that would be great.)

This might seem like a lot of work, but it is well worth it for anyone interested in good, free music. I've discovered tons of great artists here including Adele, M.I.A. ("Paper Planes" was free there about two years ago!), Sia, and Thao to name a few.