What are the kids listening to today?

So, once upon I time I worked for this great startup called MongoMusic. They allowed you to make music lists and would then recommend music based on what you liked. It worked really well and I found some of my favorite music at the time there. Then we got bought out by Microsoft. Microsoft promised us that they wouldn't touch a thing about our online radio and then proceeded to not only gut the functionality of the startup but the people who'd they relocated from California to Seattle and proceeded to then fire when they started getting comfortable. (Disgustingly, this plan to "rehire" the people into other places at Microsoft-- because a music analyst is such a hot commodity there-- was announced on 9/11/2001.)

But the radio was still pretty good until they finally threw out the MongoMusic one (whose code, I am proud to say, was given a major overhaul by yours truly and then viewed by thousands daily) and then I left the country and didn't revisit the site since.

I went there today out of curiosity and found that the music radio that had been written by a startup and removed and replaced by some Microsoft creation had then been removed and replaced with code written by another startup. Makes perfect sense, don't you think?

So I've been sampling some of the music clips off Amazon to find something that's worth spending my money on and I'm pretty shocked to discover that all my favorite bands now suck. The Indigo Girl's new album contains not only recycled musical themes from Rites of Passage but actually contains recycled lyrics as well. The latest Sarah McLauchlan album is a *blah* Christmas Album! WTF?!? Even Suzanne Vega let me down.

Where I am going with this:
The reason that I went back to MSNMusic was that I was hoping that they'd finally turned on MongoMusic's recommendation service because I desperately need some new, modern, music. My old heroes have let me down. So please tell me, what are the kids listening to nowadays? If you were a fan of the alternative Cranberries/Sarah McLachlan/Melissa Etheridge type then please shoot me a line to let me know what the hell you are listening to now.