Ramen Music

February 10, 2011 5:47 PM

"Ramen Music hand-picks the best new tracks from independent & underground artists, simmers on low, and delivers beautiful online issues every 2 months." Issue #1 is free, available as a sample.
posted by Memo (13 comments total)

Not really my style of music but a nice presentation.
posted by ghharr at 6:38 PM on February 10, 2011

You know, I always wondered how underground artists could sing sing with all that dirt that must get in their mouths.
posted by spitbull at 1:09 AM on February 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

ghharr: "Not really my style of music but a nice presentation"

Same here, the only song I really liked was The Ocean in the Clouds. But the presentation is very well done.
posted by Memo at 6:28 AM on February 11, 2011

Not really my style of music but a nice presentation.

Glad you guys like the concept! As a whole we are genre agnostic; the issues differ in style/genre are based on what is submitted to us and/or the issue theme.

You guys are welcome to check out my copy of Issue #03 which is more drum/beat-oriented.

-Sudara (founder of Ramen Music)
posted by sudara at 7:04 AM on February 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

Reminds me of CMJ from the 90s.
posted by Theta States at 7:53 AM on February 11, 2011

sudara: Glad you guys like the concept! As a whole we are genre agnostic; the issues differ in style/genre are based on what is submitted to us and/or the issue theme.

You guys are welcome to check out my copy of Issue #03 which is more drum/beat-oriented."


Ooh, that's much more to my taste.
I wish I had written a better post for this, it deserves all the exposition it can get.
posted by Memo at 8:20 AM on February 11, 2011

Mmmmmmmm. I'm liking this very much. A new subscriber for sure, but at what level?

I've been part of the "boiling a frog" experiment that has been eMusic over the past five years. It's unclear what the best music distribution arrangement is (by best, I mean connecting musicians with appreciative listeners who want to pay them). I liked eMusic's old method of giving folks basically unlimited access to the long tail -- presumably participating in the mechanism of connecting those artists with an audience. iTunes' model is absolutely not about discovering new music you like -- 30 second samples just isn't enough. Sadly, eMusic is now just iTunes (recently truncated the tail, and is focusing on the head) with slightly different pricing. Ditto amazon.

Ramen seems to fill the "discover new music" role nicely, yes, kind of like CMJ or a good radio station back in the day. Something that would make it even better (and I hope is in the hopper) is to streamline the process of getting more of an artist's work. I see links to artist websites, but from there, it's very uneven.

Sudara - thanks for doing this, and Memo, thanks for posting it!
posted by dylanjames at 9:56 AM on February 11, 2011

I don't know that I have the bandwidth (mental, not internetwise) to try this much new music at this point in my life, but this is a great concept, brilliantly executed. On the other hand, the Nightingale song in issue one is just breathtaking and I'm going to have to check the artist out. I hope Ramen Music catches on.
posted by immlass at 11:16 AM on February 11, 2011

It's sort of like Macheist for music.
posted by mecran01 at 11:31 AM on February 11, 2011

I'm enjoying this! Issue 1 I couldn't warm with, but issue 3 just finished playing. Nice one, sudara! Is it ok to semi-self-link a similar thing here...? If so, here's a website for discovering local bands in Scotland. (It could really handle having a bit more magazine type stuff like Ramen Music does, but has curated bundles for a pound apiece, & most of the revenue goes back to the musicians.)
posted by yoHighness at 2:28 PM on February 11, 2011

This does not appear to have anything to do with the music label Fueled By Ramen, which published one of my favorite bands of the early 2000s: the Impossibles
posted by cubby at 7:19 PM on February 11, 2011

Great concept and execution. Good luck.
posted by the christopher hundreds at 8:50 PM on February 11, 2011

Wow, thanks for all the positive comments guys! This is my first time playing around on meta-filter, blown away by the well wishes.
posted by sudara at 12:24 PM on February 12, 2011