More indie rock bands should play more covers and stop pretending like they're god's gift to songwriting. More people would go to and enjoy their shows.

The country, bluegrass, jam, americana and folk scenes have tons of fans that support a large number of pro and semi-pro pickers and singers. They play a lot of covers because people do like to hear their favorite songs played live. A lot of them get to the point where they're playing like half their own songs, but some will always play songs written by other people.

The pickers that can play lead on an instrument, sing, and write songs are called "triple threats". These guys are few and far between and end up being superstars. Jimi Hendrix, Merle Haggard, Jerry Garcia, Willie Nelson and Brad Paisley, just to name a few. They play lead instruments on other people's recordings, sing other people's songs, and write songs for other people. Notice the emphasis on "other people". That's kind of lacking in indie music, which instead has a philosophy of solipsism. It's built right in to the DIY ethic. Don't sing someone else's songs, sing your own songs. It's ultimately a losing formula.

I make more money, play to more people and have more fun playing covers to people down at corporate gigs or just down at the local bar than I ever did in whatever indie rock band I've played in throughout the years. It seemed like we were trying to reinvent music from a faded memory in every indie band I was in. Covers were uncool, and we had to define "Our sound". "Our sound" ended up being much shittier than traditional forms like country or the blues.

Oh well, indie rock will be dead in 10 years tops. I've got a lot of refugees from the indie rock scene learning to play more traditional music. Either that or they just hang up their guitars for good. The DIY ethos is just too alienated and embittered to for people who feel like making the transition to adulthood.

The crowd was biggest and most engaged for Max Savage. After hearing 10ish songs that I knew back to front, the next act of originals felt very flat, despite being the more well known artist.

It made me very keen to hear Max cover other full albums, even a festival of nothing but interesting covers. Not cheesy covers, but cross-genre tweaks, etc. I'd pay to attend that gig sooner than I would an event of purely originals that I didn't really know.

Then there are covers that reimagine the song, like "White Rabbit" by Sanctuary. Pretty awesome. And who can forget "Tamborine Man" by William Shatner (!)

I primarily am using Pandora and it really depends how much time I spend thumbing music up or down. Once I zero in a station it doesn't seem like I hear new artists or songs very often.

I'll also add that in my personal case, pandora led me to finding and buying more music. Spotify and smartphones over iPods (and buying a house) are why I don't by albums very often anymore.

a) Find some bands you like, go see them live.

b) Get talking to people at the gigs (this helps if they're smaller venues), they'll recommend all sorts.

c) See the support bands, odds on you'll like some of them, then go and see them, see the other bands they're in, it doesn't take long before this gets out of control :).

d) Make friends, go and see bands they like, it might not always be your thing, but if it's a social thing anyway, it doesn't really matter.

e) Go to festivals, listen to all the bands beforehand - i used to generated spotify playlists of glastonbury etc. Ok, listening to stuff on spotify doesn't make the artist much, but if you like them, go see them when they headline, buy merch, recommend them to friends etc.

f) I used to take photos, it's pretty much a dead industry nowadays but it puts you in touch with bands and helps get you kind of noticed which might lead to opportunites you might not get otherwise.

g) Be eclectic, you're spoilt for choice, if you're lucky enough to be in London or SE England or a decent sized city.

h) Follow bands on facebook, soundcloud... often this leads to other similar bands.

i) Personally i don't bother with large venues or bigger bands that much, i might make the odd exception, but there's serious amounts of really great music and musicians well away from the expensive/aircraft hanger venue/popular stuff and there's the bonus it might actually have some meaning because it's not trying to make money :).

Seems harsh to blame people for their personal tastes. Maybe the product is wrong or the genre limited. Surely blaming discoverability and the like is fairer? Beyond discoverability, I think repetition is very important which is where labels and links to radio/etc are useful.

This is the service I'm looking for:

A free service optimized at promoting new music, or just random radio. Medium bit rate MP3 ok if 320kbps can be sold for a low monthly fee instead. Spotify is way too expensive for this, use case.

An added value store for those rare gems I actually want to spend money on. For me, most importantly, high quality recordings in lossless CD-quality. For other it might be fan memberships to get pre releases or other bonus things.

To me the problem is he either or thing. Either I have to buy lots of insanely expensive downloads in iTunes or something, and then listen only to that. Or, I can get the opportunity to discover new things in Spotify or tidal for equally insanely expensive service fee, but have no option to keep discoveries besides keep paying said insane fee.

Bandcamp's Music Feed feature is basically the streaming radio bit you're after, and Bandcamp itself will let you purchase and download lossless copies of the music. I wish Bandcamp was even bigger than it is, because it totally deserves to be.

But I realized I left out the hardest requirement, which probably is the killer for most competition, i want to use the same service to listen to mainstream music (at least the old mainstream music I listen to)

Edit: OTOH it might be possible to get by with covers only. A search for Pink Floyd certainly didn't disappoint.