Popular Music

At Wellington City Libraries we have a ridiculous number of CDs (well, over 20,000) for you to borrow at the altogether reasonable price of $1 each. Whether Matmos or Minogue, Strokes or Stockhausen, RZA or AWB you may very well find just what you were looking for in our collection.

Try these searches for the latest CDs in these categories:

• Popular
• Hip-Hop
• Electronica
• Compilations
• Jazz
• Soundtracks
• Experimental
• Country
• Punk
• Metal
• Soul/R&B
• A full list of music genres is available on our Catalogue Quicksearch page.

Of course we also take care of classical music.

'Select: Sound & Vision' collection

Get the latest CDs & DVDs faster! The 'Select' collection is designed to make it easier to borrow heavily used and reserved items within our AV Collection. The items in this collection have a reduced loan period of 3 days, meaning you can access the most popular CDs and DVDs faster for the same price and find them on the shelf more often.

Sick of reserving the latest copy of Mojo, only to find a seven-page feature on Val Doonican? Tired of trudging up the stairs to get Rolling Stone, only to find that Yanni review cruelly missing once again? Avoid nasty surprises with our music magazine roundup.

Here's what's happening in:

• Acoustic Guitar website
• Bass Player fulltext
• Downbeat fulltext
• Froots website
• Guitar Player website
• Modern Drummer website
• Mojo website
• New Zealand Musician website
• NME website
• No Depression website
• Q website
• Real Groove website
• Record Collector website
• Remix website (requires Flash)
• Rip It Up website
• Rolling Stone fulltext
• Songlines website
• The Source website
• Uncut website
• Wire website

For more magazine links, visit our online music resources page.

Podcasts

Listen to the latest Music Ad Lib

Some previous interviews:

7th August: The music of Edmund McWilliams

Listen to an interview with NZ popster Ed Cake on the albums Bresser Creeting Cake, Downtown Puff and The Fearsome feeling (10 mins).

27th November: Songs of Tama Waipara

Listen to an interview with Tama Waipara. Tama talks generously about his inspirations, lyrics and songs and the interview includes 6 songs from his 3 albums so far. (35 min.)

• Aquarium Drunkard
  Another great blog, which takes its name from a line in a Wilco song, 'Aquarium Drunkard' is also a record label under the name 'Autumn Tone'. Featuring daily music, reviews, news, and podcasts, as well as a SIRUS satellite radio show - the Drunkard bridges the gap between contemporary indie with vintage garage, psych, folk, country, New Orleans funk, R&B, soul, and everything that falls in between.' Nominated in 2008 for 'Music Blog of the Year' at the Plug Awards.
• Buzzgrinder
• Cat Bird Seat
  Indie, indie & more indie... indie music, culture & commentary
• Chachacha
• Heartache with Hard Work
  Another interesting music blog... a bit of political commentary and a lot of good writing about the response to artists and songs
• Music Is Art
  One glimpse is all it takes to tell you that Music Is Art is something different. For one, Danielle, the 'designer' behind MIA, focuses not only on excellent music, but on art, photography and writing and how they all intersect and inform the music
• Noizyland
  News, videos, random stuff.
• I Am Fuel, You Are Friends
  Taking its name from a line from a Pearl Jam song, this is a great music blog out of Colorado, USA. While it started off small in 2005 with music fan Heather Browne wanting to share her relationship with music 'Fuel/Friends' has become one of the best blogs out there. With her 'Monday Music Roundup' from new albums, and eclectic posts on pretty much everything from Pete Yorn to Yael Naim, this is definitely worth checking out.
• The Perfumed Garden
  An audio tribute to the late great DJ John Peel. This site archives many of his live sessions.
• Pop Justice
  Giving pop music the disrespect it deserves.
• SoundOpinions.org
  Take two nationally respected rock critics from Chicago, the latest music news, personal commentary, and exclusive interviews and performances, add a huge pile of records old and new, and the result is Sound Opinions, the world's only rock and roll talk show. From Podcasts, to MP3 streams they talk to everyone from Peaches to Steve Earle...
• The Hype Machine
  The Hype Machine is an MP3 aggregator - essentially a music blog that trawls others music blogs and archives all the MP3 tracks collected therein. It then archives these tracks chronologically, by popularity, and by artist. If you're after that Mazzy Star B-side, that rare Ryan Adams track, or a taste of something new by your favourite band, this is the place to find it.