The joys of working in college radio are numerous, but having the first exposure to this kind of music is at the top of my list. There are few things that beat the weekly music intake for physical copies that get mailed to us, and opening a package from a promo company and finding stuff that turns out to be incredible. Even while "belonging" to a station, I still listen to some of the ones you listed, such as WFMU, who is a big inspiration for me. I will say that while Pitchfork is talking about increasingly mainstream music, they still conduct some great interviews and have some really interesting music news articles. But their reviews and rankings are bland at this point. flagamuffin, Jagwar Ma is a great band, that's cool that you're giving them a listen! NPR music is much better than Pitchfork at this point if you want to discover new music. Not only that, but remember that discussion we had about top 50 lists? Well check out NPR Music's 50 Favorite Albums of 2013 if you haven't already. Not only are they not ranked numerically, but it covers a ridiculous range of music, from mainstream Indie Pop (Haim) to World music from a small country (Latvian Radio Choir).
I love physical music. It hurts me that I don't have physically the music collection I have digitally, and if I ever come into extreme riches I will immediately buy hard copies of albums until I can bathe in them. Mmmmmm I'm getting a weird feeling of tangible jealousy
I would love to buy more physical music. It's a high cost to acquire a good collection of music physically, unfortunately. It's interesting that my record collection is fairly dissimilar to my itunes library, and my somewhere growing 8-track and cassette tape collections are turning out the same way. I'm definitely going to miss the weekly intake when I'm off on co-op again in January.