Hype Machine is the first thing that comes to mind, but I'd love to hear more thoughts about any HN or Friendfeed type conversations that are going on out there. Perhaps even suggestions of Twitter or Friendfeed people to follow to get a better idea of what's going on in the music world.
That was always the best way I found music, lots and lots and lots of research and discussion with like minded people, mostly at shows.
... at least until www.last.fm came about. :) This, in my opinion, is the best way to find music that's in line with what you listen to. It takes what you listen to and finds people who listen to the same thing. It then finds out what they're listening to that you're not. Yes, you have to feed it your listening record, but once you've done that, your life won't be the same. I don't know why it's so neglected.
In fact, I always thought this would be the best way to run HN. Take all the articles I've upvoted, find people who've upvoted the same articles, look at what they've upvoted that I haven't and show me THAT on the main page.
The main problem with a HN for music is that music is too subjective and immeasurable. In hacking, you can argue stats, performance, visitors, etc. Music is different. More people listen to Brittany Spears than North of America, she also made more money, but there's no fully logical way to argue why she sucks. It's all a matter of perception and emotions. You can't wrap a webapp around that, nor can you get a group of people to agree on what's good and what's not because tastes vary so greatly.
While I can appreciate music suggestions that are in line with my taste, that is easy enough to find on my own (through the methods you suggested). What isn't easy to find are bands that sound nothing like what I've heard, but could be just as brilliant as the bands I know and love. This is where I think the suggestions in this thread are most useful.
And I would go even further to argue that because music is subjective and immeasurable it would make an even more interesting discussion.
Thanks too for North of America - I haven't heard them but will definitely check them out.
The long story short of it is that in my experiences, a real life discussion about music among 5 knowledgeable people always turns into a festival of egos. I think if you put it on the internet, it's going to magnify that worse than what you could see in the hacker community because everybody who loves music thinks they like the music they do because their perception is unique and more insightful than yours (I'm guilty of this too). We could talk music for hours but as soon as you namedrop that band that I think is trash, I no longer believe your opinion counts.
If you can solve that problem, then by all means, I'll be a believer. I think that's why last.fm is so good. Yes, there's alot of echo, put in a band like Mono into the 'radio station' feed without logging in and you'll see there's not a whole lot of variety. However where it excels is if you listen, for example, to a lot of classical music, when you put in a post-rock band, it will find the post-rock music that appeals to you as a classical music fan and will inspire you to dig deeper into the genre.
This is what I think news sites need. The problem with them is that as more people sign up, you see the lowest common denominator trickle to the front page. What would be better is if, for example, I'm a big rails fan and I upmod an article that shouts the greatness of PHP, I'd like to then start seeing more php related articles on MY (not THE) front page. Initially they would start off being very rails influenced, but as I upmod more php articles, the system would wean me away from the ror crowd and more towards the php crowd, unless I'm the type who only upmods articles titled "php is great when it's like ruby", in which case I don't really care for other opinions anyways, so who's losing?
... in a nutshell
An analogy: when I want to meet new people I usually go to parties that my friends are having because I figure that if my friends like the guests then chances are I will too. However, every now and then I go to completely random bars and gatherings because I want to be exposed to a completely new circle of people who have no common relationships with me or my friends.
Similarly in music, there are times when I want to discover things that are similar to what I have liked in the past, but also times when I want to discover things that are completely random and unrelated to anything I have ever heard or liked.
Email me, I have some invites...
However, What and Waffles are the largest and most content-oriented.
I certainly hope you posted that from a Ruby script written in vi on Ubuntu.
It doesn't have voting, but for finding music it can be alright.
Yet there are some artists that, at specific times, try something that really feels new. In the dance music space for instance, about 2001(+- 2 years) artists discovered they could for instance loop over a segment of their song, then shorten the loop until it became a stuttered noisy instant, then continue with the rest of the song. This sounded amazing at first, then everyone copied it, now people are used to it and a song has to use it creatively to make people smile.
They also have discussion forums, which I haven't tried.
For me it is: Sirius XM U (formerly Left of Center); Hype Machine; Pitchfork; Songkick (for finding shows in my area); URB Magazine; Fader Magazine; OHHLA Top 25
Hacker News is a place for people who are passionate about a subject to talk. The equivalent would most likely be a forum discussing classical music, or a form of music that requires similar dedication.