Top 5 Ways to Discover the Latest Music

Remember when emerging music just fell in your lap? Your best friend was a part-time DJ, your show-going roommate made you mixes, you'd occasionally spend an entire Saturday slackjawed in front of the internet? But the time we make for new music sometimes gets nudged out by the trappings of adulthood.

Fortunately, if you have a few minutes a day, it's easy to bring new music into your life. Here are five simple ways to find music that's actually new, not just new to you.

1. All Songs Considered from National Public Radio (NPR) is a podcast that gives you access to emerging music across genres. Hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton have eclectic tastes, as reflected in the program's blog, which is also an excellent place to enhance your music collection.

2. The Sixty One is a lovely way to pass an hour. New artists upload music and a background image, and listeners vote for favorites by clicking a heart icon. You can also create playlists, and connect your account to Facebook to share the music you find. As you listen, little blurbs about the artist pop up. Immersive, calming, and addictive.

3. New Arrivals is a weekly newsletter from eMusic, an online music store with a staff that spends a lot of time culling music. You can subscribe to receive updates via email, or you can just read entries on their blog.

4. SoundCloud lets anyone upload music, so it's become an online home for independent singers and songwriters. The community rates uploads, so the best stuff floats to the top. But! If you'd like to filter the experience even more try CitySounds, which organizes SoundCloud by city. You can support local musicians by entering your hometown, or just select from the most popular cities, which are displayed on the homepage.

5. We Are Hunted is a visual site that gives you a list of the day's 99 "most popular" songs. It tracks blogs and social media to spotlight what everyone is posting about, which gives it an indie slant for sure, but it's an easy, pretty way to stay abreast of that scene. Plus, you can get it as a Spotify app, and import the day's songs as a playlist.

It's worth investing a few moments every day to find the songs that, a decade from now, will instantly transport you back to this time in your life.

And let's not forget that there's nothing like crowd sourcing when you're looking for a little inspiration.