So, what are the best music podcasts? Well, it would be heinously arrogant of us to try and claim we have the best criteria for even daring to judge who makes the best podcasts on music. But we can still have an opinion on which music commentary podcasts we love listening to. So chill yer boots and read on. Here’s a chunk of gubbins on which podcasts Beat Motel hosts Andrew Culture and Dr Sam Page like shoving up their earholes.
Andrew wrote this page, it is a work in progress.
We Dig Music
I (Andrew) found out about We Dig Music when one of the hosts rocked up at a gig my band These Are End Times was playing in Ipswich. I’m a bit hazy on how host Tracey B ended up at a These Are End Times gig, but I’m glad she did. We Dig Music has become one of my favourite music podcasts.
The concept of We Dig Music is quite simple. The three hosts, Tracey B, Colin and Ian separately compile a list of their favourite artists from an era, then berate each other for having terrible music tastes. I’m being unfair, that’s only a part why I love We Dig Music, but it is a great part!
Between them the hosts compile a list of 30 tracks. They then each score the tracks according to whatever criteria or point of argument they see fit. It’s a bit difficult to explain exactly how important the scoring system is, so I’m going to nick the words from the show notes of a recent episode:
“The playlist of 20 songs from the other two hosts was scored as usual; our favourite song got 20 points, counting down incrementally to our least favourite, which got 1 point. The scoring of our list of 10 is now slightly more complicated to give a truer level of points to our own favourites. So rather than them only being able to score as many points as our 10th favourite in the other list, the points in our own list were distributed as follows
- 1st place – 20 points
- 2nd place 1- 8 points
- 3rd place – 16 points
- 4th place – 14 points
- 5th place – 12 points
- 6th place – 9 points
- 7th place – 7 points
- 8th place – 5 points
- 9th place – 3 points
- 10th place -1 point.”
Ian’s wife Helen totters up scores and ranks the selected tracks. Each episode of We Dig Music focuses on a Top of the Pops-style rundown of the resulting chart. I say ‘focussed on’ because the chart inspires a lot of really interesting talk about the artists being discussed.
This is a very funny podcast. The humour is warmly affectionate, never cruel, and paints a beautiful picture of a group of friends who all really do dig music. I heartily recommend this podcast.
We Dig Music is published monthly, and each episode lasts two hours. Since I walk thirty minutes to work every day, this podcast gives me half a week of entertainment!
They have a policy of never actually playing any of the discussed tracks. They do play them but very quietly in the background. I totally respect their reasons for doing this (they want us to buy the music and support the artists). They provide a Spotify playlist with every episode, and if I had Spotify I’d be able to tell you how great the playlists are.
I recently discovered that We Dig Music is just one of a suite of podcasts created by this gang of alternative music fans. This brings us to my next choice for the best music podcasts.
Website | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Free With This Months Issue
I only just realised this podcast was created by Ian and Colin from We Dig Music. That alone makes me overlook the lack of an apostrophe in the podcast name. Yeah, I know that’s not their fault, but I can’t help myself.
I’ll come back and update this article when I’ve gotten to know ‘Free with this months issue’ properly. By which I mean that I’ll mean to, but totally forget to actually do so.
The concept of this podcast is bloody great – every episode runs through the bands included on the cover-mounted free CD that came with a magazine in the 1990s. Over the past few episodes the CDs have come from Kerrang, Q, and Mojo.
In some ways, this music podcast is a little bit like radio show time machine.
Website | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Only Three Lads
Only Three Lads is an American music podcast with quite a strong British sense of humour. I’ve never heard an American use the word ‘lad’ before. I don’t think it would be unfair to describe this podcast as being part music commentary, part gonzo adventure. It’s a great mix. The hosts are knowledgable, self-effacing and disamingly honest and transparent. They run a great Instagram profile too.
A lot of detail and effort go into everything touched by Only Three Lads, it’s impressive!
Website | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
The Rock Geeks
If you want to listen to a music podcast hosted by hosts who go deep with their music analysis, then The Rock Geeks is the podcast for you! I need to listen to more episodes to be able to write a better review!
