cf poll: how has your musical discovery process changed since the golden age of chickfactor?

we’re publishing a few of our polls that were left out of CF18.

photo by gail o’hara, new york city 2000.

daniel handler (lemony snicket):if I didn’t live near amoeba records and wander the aisles once a month, I would have absolutely no idea what is going on.
stephin the magnetic fields:without convenient access to record stores, it has become practically impossible to find anything I like from this century. on the other hand it has become much easier to find french baroque harpsichord music. 
sukhdev cf: I don’t listen to much american music any more. sweden, france, japan are more important to me. (perhaps that’s chickfactor’s influence.)
shawn belschwender:without chickfactor, I’m like a blind man groping an elephant. I don’t know what anything is. so I rush right back to the safety of NWBHM bands.
clarissa cf: in the early days of chickfactor, my musical discovery sources were equal parts kim’s underground, wfmu, going to shows by artists I liked and getting there in time for the opening acts, and people on whom I had crushes sending me mix tapes. these days, my main source of musical discovery is looking at joel whitburn’s top r&b singles 1942–1996 and then finding artists I’ve never heard from it on spotify. I’d also say going to starbucks, but for the past eight months the only song they’ve played is rostam’s “bike dream” on continuous repeat. also, the golden age of chickfactor, as well as everything else, is right now.
mac merge/superchunk:weirdly not much—though I throw away fewer tapes now that everyone’s demo is a soundcloud page. bandcamp is a great way to discover stuff which didn’t exist then, but there were more record store employees to recommend stuff back then.
gaylord cf/wfmu: it really hasn’t, though nowadays I can’t bend down to look at records without throwing my back out.
ashley cf: I’ve died a little on the inside. I just listen to NPR and podcasts now. I hear it’s much easier to discover new music now but it just seems overwhelming. 
michael white:  like everyone else, it’s mostly online now—which, of course, isn’t as romantic as, say, seeing something interesting looking in other music and taking a chance on it, but it also means I don’t waste $35 on some japanese import I subsequently discover is terrible.
evelyn cotton candy: I guess I don’t read zines as much, so new music is more word of mouth.
kevin the hairs: I feel a bit more out of touch. I see what friends are listening to or what reviews I come across or what bands my friends are listening to or recommend.
lisa levy: I still mainly hear about bands through friends, though pandora and spotify also occasionally come through with something interesting.
joe the pines/foxgloves: I’ve gone from listening to radio 1 to listening to radio 2 to listening to bbc 6music. the same disc jockeys eventually turn up on all three, and steve lamacq is still playing mega city four and kingmaker.
jeff drawing room records: hmm… well… the internet has sped up my discovery to ultra-fast light-speed. I tend to self-research more instead of seeking out the good tastes of friends and acquaintances. as I’m older too, I’m more open to lots of different sounds than when I was younger and stauncher in terms of music I enjoyed.
tom square cotton candy:being currently 28, my musical discovery process pretty much began around chickfactor’s golden age.