Being a broke college student, especially in New York City, isn’t nearly as bad as it once was. Twenty-five years ago, before the rise of the World Wide Web, studying at Columbia meant, well, studying at Columbia, and not much else. Maybe that’s why Obama hated it so much.
I’ve already broken down Craigslist, but it certainly does not end there—the Internet provides underfunded New York students with so many opportunities to venture off campus. The city’s music scene is particularly accessible for those of us with thinner wallets through some really useful Web sites.
To start with a bigger site, OhMyRockness is a pretty well-known indie rock concert listing site that does a better job than most at making easy work of scanning the city’s musical offerings each night.
The site supposedly filters the concerts and only lists the “best of the bunch,” but I think this may be an exaggeration. Before you get too excited about a $6 concert in Chelsea, try the band’s Myspace to see if it’s worth the $4.50 subway fare. While New York does boast the best up-and-coming bands, we also contribute significantly to the down-and-going pool.
There are also a couple of sites that aren’t really music exclusive, but list some great deals all over the city, including concerts. FreeNYC lists all sorts of fun events, and they actually filter out the weird, creepy, and questionable.
They don’t list too far in advance, so if your friends from home are coming to town, this wouldn’t be your best bet for planning out a fun weekend. But if you’re looking for something to do this week, then this site is great.
There is also Cool in Your Code, which, for whatever reason, just seems a bit sleazy to me. It might be their “Unzip your City” advertisements that make me uncomfortable, or maybe it’s just the fact that the people who run it call themselves “hosts.”
The site is an offshoot of the TV show of the same name, which is a good resource in itself. While updated less frequently than it once was, there are a couple “hosts” who are dedicated NYC music fans, and love promoting cheap or free events.
Then there are the really small blogs, which are great in that they are typically updated frequently and are interesting to read in and of themselves. The downside to using blogs like a service is that they aren’t really a service. They often lack organization and they are generally pretty hard to navigate in a way that would make them a useful concert calendar, and you are pretty much subject to one person’s opinions and biases.
That being said, one of my favorite blogs is Burn the Bowery. It is specific to the New York City music scene and provides so much more than just interesting and free concert dates. Burn the Bowery also posts a decent amount of audio clips and videos, has some great previews of new artists, and generally makes staying afoot with the music scene easy. And another huge plus, it is one of the only NYC music blogs that isn’t written by a hipster!
Obviously, the never-ending world of the Internet has a whole lot more to provide than I can fit in so few words, but honestly, the best way to find out which ones work for you are to search yourself.
A great test is if you hear about a concert or band you’re interested in but that might not be that popular. Blogsearch it and see what sites found this show interesting, as well.
Let us rejoice in the wonders of technology and traipse the city with empty pockets, not blank agendas.
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