If you’re like me, the problem is not finding money to buy great music, it’s finding great music in amongst all the chaff and crud shoved out there by the majors.

Radio? TV? With very few exceptions, forget about it — way too much noise-to-signal. Magazines? Maybe, if you can recall the name of the artist, album and track next time you’re buying music. Podcasts and blogs? Certainly, but that’s all a bit obvious, innit?

I have lots of other ways to find new music I’ll love, some of which I now realise is not commonly used by other music fans. So over the course of a few blog posts I’ll try to jot down some suggestions for great ways to find good music. Here’s a cracker: walk into a public library with your laptop and look for shared iTunes libraries:

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See, these days, public libraries are full of cool people with laptops seeking a comfy chair, free wifi, a power outlet and sometimes if you’re really lucky, great coffee. The Wellington, NZ city public library where I’m writing this is great source for all of the above.

It’s an under-utilised feature many iTunes users don’t know about, but you can choose to share your iTunes music library with other users on your LAN, and you can also browse and play the shared libraries of other iTunes users.

Coworking spaces and large companies with flexible IT policies can also be good locations.

You can’t copy or rate the songs on someone’s shared iTunes library, but really, considering the relationship the music industry has to copyright law, it’s a small miracle they allowed Apple to even let us play each other’s music.

So here I am in Wellington and somebody’s sharing a library containing a big back catalogue of Kiwi native Dave Dobbyn’s music. Since discovering him on the soundtrack to the NZ film Footrot Flats years ago I’ve been meaning to get some more of his music. It’s great diverse, interesting and thoughtful music, with some similarities to Elvis Costello and Neil Finn and you could do worse than come away from your NZ visit with a few choice tracks of his, Bro, eh?