Keeping up with the times

One of the aspects of electronic dance music that has fascinated me ever since I became addicted to it a couple years ago is how few producers release full-length albums.

Rather than releasing an album every 2-3 years like artists in other genres, they constantly pump out tracks every month to get playtime in clubs around the world. This sounds like a good idea- who likes waiting forever for an album to come out? Not many.

But this same aspect also makes dance music one of the hardest, if not the hardest, musical genres to keep up with. Producers release multiple tracks a year- sometimes several in the same month. So instead of memorizing one release date every couple years for an artist (like you would do with a full-length album), you're forced to memorize dozens per month for each track- if you can even find them.

One of Wikipedia's best, if least known features, is that it's a fantastic site for finding out album release dates. If there's a band you like- chances are that there's a fanboy out there who even likes them more to the point that they will update their Wikipedia page whenever a tidbit comes out about a future release.

But EDM is a genre that doesn't have that exposure that most of the musicians written about on Wikipedia have.

So where does one go if they want to keep up to date with the latest tracks being released by their favorite producers?

- Discogs lists what everyone has already released, but not what's coming down the pipes.

- Beatport always posts up new tracks for sale. But unless you're going to that site with a specific track in mind, it can be painful to casually browse.

- Internet radio stations usually only play what's popular, so most of the lesser known artists get snubbed.

The best place I've found for collecting all this information is actually Facebook and Twitter. Most labels have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that they update often because these sites are some of the most popular on the internet. According to Alexa (an internet trafficking company), Facebook is the second most visited site on the internet, with Twitter ranking 13th.

So take a label or artist, give a search, subscribe or follow them, and let them bring the information to you, not vice versa.