"Music in itself is healing"

Remember the post on Finding Inspirational Music? (If you haven't checked it out yet you sure have to). Well one of the tips I gave on there was to check out what your friends are listening to. Yesterday Jamie from The Inspiration Studio shared a compilation she made of nice, calming inspirational music in her weekly series called Life's Soundtrack Series. Here it is:

Music is a HUGE part of my life and I am always on a quest of finding great music. While we are finding inspirational music together I think it would be great for everyone to share their favorite artist/band that they like to listen to. So far I have not met someone that don't like listening to music, if you happen to be someone like that please share that too, it would be nice to get to know you. Here is a music quote to go with the great music.

"I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music."

-Billy Joel

Can't wait to hear the great music you all listen to.

 

5 Tips on finding inspirational music

Inspiring you to add more creativity in your life is what this blog is all about.  A great way to get inspired is through music, so I am dedicating this post on finding inspirational music to your life. Following are some tips from my own experience.

  

1. Get out of your comfort genre.  We all tend to stick to a particular genre that we really like. That is great, but if you are still listening to the same boy band from last decade, it might be time to change things up a little.

nuTsie has a series of Top 100 songs in different Genre, like a "Top 100 Beach Music" and "Top 100 Canadian Indie Songs".

For my US readers I highly recommend Pandora, there you can choose to listen to a particular genre or they can create a whole radio for you based on an artist or song. I used to use it all the time when I was living in the States, but it is only accessible there.

2. Check out what your friends are listening to. This can be as easy as just asking them. Other ways you can do this is by checking out what they are posting on Facebook or Twitter. There are also some people that use  Ping on iTunes, some post what they're listening to on Skype, while others blog about it. So keep your eyes (and ears) open to the music your friends are into.

3. Free iTunes downloads. Sites like iT's FreeDownloads lists all the songs that are free on iTunes. Occasionally they also have a whole playlist of free music that you can download. By downloading on iTunes you can put the music on your iPod and listen to it anywhere. If by any chance you really don't like a song, you can just delete it (it was free anyway). Subscribe to their e-mail list so you can find out about the free music as soon as it is available.

4. International music. Bob Marley, Adele and Shakira are all international artists that have become popular all around the world. There are many other that make great music but never get to be as popular. Some of them because they sing in other languages, while others because they never got that break. 

International or World music is a bit harder to find just because it is so extensive. National Geographic has a nice radio that highlights music from around the world. At Live365 you can choose International under Genres and find different kinds of radios. Generally though when it comes to international music it is about trying and finding out what is your type.

5. Grooveshark it! - After you've discovered all of this music you can search for them on Grooveshark and save them to a playlist. Grooveshark is not only good to listen to music for free, but it also let's you sign in and save your playlists. It is a great feature if you do not want to forget what you were listening to. 

These are some of the tools I use to find my music. Hope they are also useful to you. What are you listening to lately?

*I am using Digg for the first time so if you could show some love on Digg would be awesome