Where to find new rock songs

A common complaint by many is that there are no new good rock songs anywhere. Wrong. I'll tell you where to find them...

...but as to whether they're actually any good or not? That's up for you to decide.

A few warnings before listening to what's out there

Warning #1: The categorization (tagging) system is awful.

I blame this on both the places that offer new rock music to listen to and the bands/artists themselves.

All places that offer the ability to upload original songs give you the option to categorize what genre suits the music best. What happens however is you find this ginormous swath of people who assign the generic "rock" tag to their uploaded songs. Being that "rock" can mean anything from "soft rock" to "grindcore", your ears will be assaulted with all this garbage that you won't be interested in.

You can simply search for the genre you want to listen to, but that's not a solution because so many bands and artists don't take the time to tag their music genre appropriately.

Note to bands and artists: SEARCH MATTERS. Search has absolutely nothing to do with your music and everything to do with text. Regardless of how great you think your music is, if you're not using proper text in the form of tags to be found, you will never be found.

Warning #2: "Top" artists are sometimes those with deep pockets.

Some music upload places that offer artist services will of course also offer "premium" services where a fee is paid so you can "be seen more easily".

This is basically a not-so subtle way of saying "paid customers always get seen first".

I tell you this because sometimes you will see "top" or "hot" artists in the new listings that really suck, leaving you wondering how they got such a high ranking in the first place. There's a chance they may have simply bought it.

Warning #3: "Top" artists are sometimes those who game the system.

The other way that some artists get ranked high in the "top" or "hot" listings is by cheating. How one cheats depends on the music upload service.

Site administrators are always battling cheaters. It's been that way ever since music upload sites appeared, and that's not going to change. Every time a web site admin team plugs up a hole to stop cheating, someone else will discover a new hole and exploit it, guaranteed. That's just the way it is.

One thing cheaters can't escape however is if their music sucks. Stuff that sucks means nothing when it's ranked at #1. In anything, it will draw the attention of the site administrators real quick and get the song kicked off the site fast.

Don't get angry

Let your ears do the decision making for you concerning what music you like and don't like. If you come across an artist who bought and/or cheated his way to the top, don't bother leaving angry comments. Let other people do that. Focus on finding music you like instead.

Some ways to find new rock songs

SoundCloud: New & hot songs in Rock genre, All Countries

Please know that SoundCloud loves to switch around how their site works a lot. If the above link goes dead, let me know.

ReverbNation: Nothing (unfortunately)

The closest thing RN has to an honest way of finding new rock songs is "Discover", and it's not good. You will be first be given "spotlights", then after that scrolling waaaay down you see "Trending Tracks" and "New Finds" for just 4 measly tracks with no 'more' link. All this stuff is picked by RN staff, so it's all what they think you would be interested in.

There is no way to filter by latest upload on RN. Not possible. You take what they give you, and that's it.

Pass.

IndieSound: Filtered by ROCK tag, newest first

From what I can tell, this appears to be an honest list of songs by new bands and artists. Somewhat similar to SoundCloud but the interface is actually faster, which is nice.

YouTube: Depends on search type used

With YouTube, you take your chances because what's returned from a search varies wildly.

What you do here is using a combination of search term and search operator. It sounds complicated but it's really not.

An example is new song guitar, month. This will search YouTube for any video with the title and/or tag and/or description matching 'new song guitar' in any order that was posted in the last 30 days. If I wanted to expand the search to show everything with 365 days, it's new song guitar, year.

With the country music genre, I always get these stupid "top" lists on YouTube from search, so I specifically use a negative search operator to omit the word from results. Example: new country song -top, month. The use of -top eliminates most of the garbage I don't want to see. It somewhat works. Better than nothing.

I totally admit this is not a good solution, and I am trying to find a better one where YouTube is concerned. The bulk of results returned will be dopey playlists and music lessons you're not interested in. At the time I write this, I can't do anything about that.

The problem is similar to warning #1 above, bad tagging. Not by YouTube itself but by people who post new song videos...

...which yet again brings up the point that SEARCH MATTERS if you're publishing your own songs and want them to be found and heard. The text you use in your titles, tags and description areas is really important. Use it wisely.

What did I miss? Do you know a better way?

Let me know. Remember that for whatever you suggest, make sure it's something anyone can use for free.