A number of years ago I started a “year” playlist and anything (anything) that people recommended to me I would add to it as well as the things that I would come across myself or via Spotify’s...
A number of years ago I started a “year” playlist and anything (anything) that people recommended to me I would add to it as well as the things that I would come across myself or via Spotify’s recs. Then I listen to it like an album, more or less from the beginning and through each song. I think this touches on the “listen better” part of the article but music (and media) is so easy to get that if you don’t like the first few seconds you move on. This really forced me to hear aongs I wouldn’t normally.
Then when the list got too long, basically not able to catch new tracks or having to start midway too often, I start a new list - maybe a 2023 2.0, add my favorites from the previous and start building anew.
Now I also have playlists that are as familiar to me as a favorite album and they really dial me back to specific points in time in my life. Is been a really fun way to reconnect with music.
I have a friend who does something similar. He creates a playlist called "newfound tunes" and then labels it with the month and year. He has like 5 to 7 years worth of playlists in this format. It...
I have a friend who does something similar.
He creates a playlist called "newfound tunes" and then labels it with the month and year.
He has like 5 to 7 years worth of playlists in this format.
It seems to work well for him as the playlists aren't too long, but I tried it and fell off pretty quick.
Definitely agree that music is great for time travelling. What I like to do is a monthly playlist and that's all I listen to the entire month. It's usually 40min to 3h depending on the songs I...
Definitely agree that music is great for time travelling.
What I like to do is a monthly playlist and that's all I listen to the entire month. It's usually 40min to 3h depending on the songs I found. To keep it static, the general rule is you can only add a song to this month's playlist within the first 10 days, then it gets added on early to the next Month's. I used to make a rule of no shuffling so you can easily predict what happens after but I've gotten rid of it the past year ish. This is a monthly playlist.
Then, in December I pick 2-3 songs that best represent each month (usually it's the starting song and my favorites) and make a summary playlist in chronological order. This is a yearly playlist.
And finally after that, every 5 years I'm going to be making a summary playlist of my favorites from each yearly playlist. (coming soon in December for the first time yay! Do I call it a bidecade playlist?)
I often find new music via byte.fm, an ad-free german music radio that's created by musicians and journalists. Their program consists of a lot of shows dedicated to specific moods/genres/concepts,...
I often find new music via byte.fm, an ad-free german music radio that's created by musicians and journalists.
Their program consists of a lot of shows dedicated to specific moods/genres/concepts, and each is archived with a playlist, which makes it easy to look up individual tracks later. Pretty great!
I'm gonna have try that trick about making a new playlist to start getting new songs. Spotify has me locked down hard on what it recommends I listen to.
I'm gonna have try that trick about making a new playlist to start getting new songs. Spotify has me locked down hard on what it recommends I listen to.
A lot of the new music I listen to comes to me from reviewers like Anthony Fantano and music recommended by friends. With reviewers I usually ignore the review itself because honestly it's not...
A lot of the new music I listen to comes to me from reviewers like Anthony Fantano and music recommended by friends. With reviewers I usually ignore the review itself because honestly it's not that interesting, unless is a lengthy retrospective review, I'm only interested in what they have been listening to. The end of the year is a great time for me because people love to post they're top 10 or top 50 singles/albums and it's very nice to see what I missed.
The other way I discover new music is by doing some "research" work myself after focusing on a particular style/artist/song. They rarely exist on a vacuum, looking around I can find other artists that have been mentioned alongside them, they are part of a particular movement, have clear influences, etc.
The recommendation algorithms has always been lackluster in my opinion, I don't mind if new music is similar to stuff I've heard already, but that's hardly a priority for me. The time spent listening to "similar" music that's uninteresting is not worth it. I'd rather look at a curated list made by someone with known tastes and opinions than whatever the algorithm "curated".
Do you have any recommendations on how to find reviewers? I'd love to find someone with similar tastes to mine but so far I've been unable (Only tried one website TBH).
Do you have any recommendations on how to find reviewers? I'd love to find someone with similar tastes to mine but so far I've been unable (Only tried one website TBH).
I think I have the same problem as you and just happened to find the ones I follow by chance. Right now my main issue is that all the reviewers I can find mainly talk about music in English and...
I think I have the same problem as you and just happened to find the ones I follow by chance. Right now my main issue is that all the reviewers I can find mainly talk about music in English and I'm missing on latin american music. To not leave you without anything of help, two I like that haven't been mentioned are Bandsplaining and Mic the Snare, the first one is not really a reviewer but covers very different music styles.
This reminds me of how frustrated I am with music education in the US. I don't think that it's necessary to know how to play an instrument, but I think that we don't have enough music education...
This reminds me of how frustrated I am with music education in the US. I don't think that it's necessary to know how to play an instrument, but I think that we don't have enough music education that people can appreciate more than a small subset of the massive amounts of music being produced every day. Huge portions of the population think they are tone deaf when in reality it's an extremely rare affliction.
I started listening to music again recently after a hiatus of many years, but I've been enjoying on spotify searching a word that I think might generate a lot of results, and sampling the list of...
I started listening to music again recently after a hiatus of many years, but I've been enjoying on spotify searching a word that I think might generate a lot of results, and sampling the list of artists or songs.
I'm sure spotify persinalizes the list order, plus it's really hit or miss and usually excludes artists of other languages, but there's still an element of randomness I enjoy and Ive found some gems. If I find a song I enjoy or artist i want to explore more, I add them to my library to revisit, and if they dont stick, I remove them later.
That is an interesting way of finding new music that would not different genres that you might not listen to otherwise. It would be fun to run the word that you are using to find new music through...
but I've been enjoying on spotify searching a word that I think might generate a lot of results, and sampling the list of artists or songs.
That is an interesting way of finding new music that would not different genres that you might not listen to otherwise.
and usually excludes artists of other languages,
It would be fun to run the word that you are using to find new music through a language translator (for like Spanish, Korean, or another language of your choosing) and using the results for Spotify, by using copy and paste. That would expand your music to another level.
It's kinda weird for a thread about music discovery to not have any comment mentioning the very simple but very effective system with bandcamp: You can follow: artists labels bandcamp users For...
It's kinda weird for a thread about music discovery to not have any comment mentioning the very simple but very effective system with bandcamp:
You can follow:
artists
labels
bandcamp users
For every album/ep/single released on the artist or label page you receive an email, and for every album/ep/single bought by a bandcamp user you follow, you receive an email every 3 days I think of all of them in a single email.
This makes for a very organic way to always have something new to listen to, without doing anything.
Yes! And Bandcamp has "Daily" and other curated lists which gives me a preview of the music and a bit of blurb about the artist too, which I find helpful for me to understand if I like it or not:...
Yes!
And Bandcamp has "Daily" and other curated lists which gives me a preview of the music and a bit of blurb about the artist too, which I find helpful for me to understand if I like it or not: https://daily.bandcamp.com/
My favorite way to find new music lately is through reviewers. I rarely actually read their reviews, but Pitchfork, Anthony Fantano, and Professor Skye's Record Review often cover the type of...
My favorite way to find new music lately is through reviewers. I rarely actually read their reviews, but Pitchfork, Anthony Fantano, and Professor Skye's Record Review often cover the type of music I like, it's a nice way to find artists I never would've heard of otherwise
I'm sharing this because it mentions the Dog Faced Hermans and I love them. (eg, previous mention here: https://tildes.net/~music/12km/the_fizzbombs_surfaround_1988#comment-7gg7 ) (My brain is...
Does anyone have opinions on Pandora for music discovery? I've been using their cheap plan that lets you create stations from existing artists that you're interested in and it'll play other...
Does anyone have opinions on Pandora for music discovery? I've been using their cheap plan that lets you create stations from existing artists that you're interested in and it'll play other similar music, based on their "music genome" multi-point categorization system, from artists you may not have heard before.
I've found some new stuff I enjoy through it (which I usually go on to buy from the artist or through Bandcamp if I can find it), but don't have a lot of experience with music streaming services in general, so not sure how they stack up to the competition or if there are any downsides (like if their catalog of licensed music is below-par or something).
I haven't used Pandora in a couple years, but previously that was my main streaming service. I use Spotify now mostly, which can be okay but inconsistent with its recommendations. It builds out...
I haven't used Pandora in a couple years, but previously that was my main streaming service. I use Spotify now mostly, which can be okay but inconsistent with its recommendations. It builds out weekly radios/playlists based on your personal taste, but I can go weeks without it really giving me anything I like or haven't heard before, even if I'm consistently seeking out new stuff. They have artist radios/playlists similiar to Pandora. These can also be pretty good, but don't seem to change much, so once you've browsed an artists radio a few times, you're familiar with most of what spotify is going to recommend.
The past few years Spotify has also built out an end-of-year "tastebreaker" playlist, which has actually always been insanely good, filled with stuff I've never heard and loved, but they only do it once a year for some reason. I have a feeling they have a lot of good data on your music listening habits, but don't surface them as much as they could.
I can also say as an artist, when I've worked to distribute my music, Pandora was by far the most picky, compared to all the other major streaming services. I don't know if thats a good thing or a bad thing for listeners, but they seem to curate their music a little more strictly.
I'd say Pandora is pretty great compared to Spotify at least, I don't have much experience with Apple Music, etc. I didn't have a good reason to stop using Pandora other than I don't listen to music at work as much now that I WFH, unfortunately.
A number of years ago I started a “year” playlist and anything (anything) that people recommended to me I would add to it as well as the things that I would come across myself or via Spotify’s recs. Then I listen to it like an album, more or less from the beginning and through each song. I think this touches on the “listen better” part of the article but music (and media) is so easy to get that if you don’t like the first few seconds you move on. This really forced me to hear aongs I wouldn’t normally.
Then when the list got too long, basically not able to catch new tracks or having to start midway too often, I start a new list - maybe a 2023 2.0, add my favorites from the previous and start building anew.
Now I also have playlists that are as familiar to me as a favorite album and they really dial me back to specific points in time in my life. Is been a really fun way to reconnect with music.
this is roughly what i do with the “year” playlist but i do monthly ones. have been doing it for 4 years now i think. it’s great!
I have a friend who does something similar.
He creates a playlist called "newfound tunes" and then labels it with the month and year.
He has like 5 to 7 years worth of playlists in this format.
It seems to work well for him as the playlists aren't too long, but I tried it and fell off pretty quick.
Definitely agree that music is great for time travelling.
What I like to do is a monthly playlist and that's all I listen to the entire month. It's usually 40min to 3h depending on the songs I found. To keep it static, the general rule is you can only add a song to this month's playlist within the first 10 days, then it gets added on early to the next Month's. I used to make a rule of no shuffling so you can easily predict what happens after but I've gotten rid of it the past year ish. This is a monthly playlist.
Then, in December I pick 2-3 songs that best represent each month (usually it's the starting song and my favorites) and make a summary playlist in chronological order. This is a yearly playlist.
And finally after that, every 5 years I'm going to be making a summary playlist of my favorites from each yearly playlist. (coming soon in December for the first time yay! Do I call it a bidecade playlist?)
It would be a pentennial playlist.
I often find new music via byte.fm, an ad-free german music radio that's created by musicians and journalists.
Their program consists of a lot of shows dedicated to specific moods/genres/concepts, and each is archived with a playlist, which makes it easy to look up individual tracks later. Pretty great!
I'm gonna have try that trick about making a new playlist to start getting new songs. Spotify has me locked down hard on what it recommends I listen to.
A lot of the new music I listen to comes to me from reviewers like Anthony Fantano and music recommended by friends. With reviewers I usually ignore the review itself because honestly it's not that interesting, unless is a lengthy retrospective review, I'm only interested in what they have been listening to. The end of the year is a great time for me because people love to post they're top 10 or top 50 singles/albums and it's very nice to see what I missed.
The other way I discover new music is by doing some "research" work myself after focusing on a particular style/artist/song. They rarely exist on a vacuum, looking around I can find other artists that have been mentioned alongside them, they are part of a particular movement, have clear influences, etc.
The recommendation algorithms has always been lackluster in my opinion, I don't mind if new music is similar to stuff I've heard already, but that's hardly a priority for me. The time spent listening to "similar" music that's uninteresting is not worth it. I'd rather look at a curated list made by someone with known tastes and opinions than whatever the algorithm "curated".
Do you have any recommendations on how to find reviewers? I'd love to find someone with similar tastes to mine but so far I've been unable (Only tried one website TBH).
I think I have the same problem as you and just happened to find the ones I follow by chance. Right now my main issue is that all the reviewers I can find mainly talk about music in English and I'm missing on latin american music. To not leave you without anything of help, two I like that haven't been mentioned are Bandsplaining and Mic the Snare, the first one is not really a reviewer but covers very different music styles.
This reminds me of how frustrated I am with music education in the US. I don't think that it's necessary to know how to play an instrument, but I think that we don't have enough music education that people can appreciate more than a small subset of the massive amounts of music being produced every day. Huge portions of the population think they are tone deaf when in reality it's an extremely rare affliction.
I started listening to music again recently after a hiatus of many years, but I've been enjoying on spotify searching a word that I think might generate a lot of results, and sampling the list of artists or songs.
I'm sure spotify persinalizes the list order, plus it's really hit or miss and usually excludes artists of other languages, but there's still an element of randomness I enjoy and Ive found some gems. If I find a song I enjoy or artist i want to explore more, I add them to my library to revisit, and if they dont stick, I remove them later.
That is an interesting way of finding new music that would not different genres that you might not listen to otherwise.
It would be fun to run the word that you are using to find new music through a language translator (for like Spanish, Korean, or another language of your choosing) and using the results for Spotify, by using copy and paste. That would expand your music to another level.
It's kinda weird for a thread about music discovery to not have any comment mentioning the very simple but very effective system with bandcamp:
You can follow:
For every album/ep/single released on the artist or label page you receive an email, and for every album/ep/single bought by a bandcamp user you follow, you receive an email every 3 days I think of all of them in a single email.
This makes for a very organic way to always have something new to listen to, without doing anything.
Yes!
And Bandcamp has "Daily" and other curated lists which gives me a preview of the music and a bit of blurb about the artist too, which I find helpful for me to understand if I like it or not: https://daily.bandcamp.com/
My favorite way to find new music lately is through reviewers. I rarely actually read their reviews, but Pitchfork, Anthony Fantano, and Professor Skye's Record Review often cover the type of music I like, it's a nice way to find artists I never would've heard of otherwise
www.angrymetalguy.com
I'm sharing this because it mentions the Dog Faced Hermans and I love them. (eg, previous mention here: https://tildes.net/~music/12km/the_fizzbombs_surfaround_1988#comment-7gg7 )
(My brain is mush at the moment, so I'm lost with tagging. Sorry.)
Does anyone have opinions on Pandora for music discovery? I've been using their cheap plan that lets you create stations from existing artists that you're interested in and it'll play other similar music, based on their "music genome" multi-point categorization system, from artists you may not have heard before.
I've found some new stuff I enjoy through it (which I usually go on to buy from the artist or through Bandcamp if I can find it), but don't have a lot of experience with music streaming services in general, so not sure how they stack up to the competition or if there are any downsides (like if their catalog of licensed music is below-par or something).
I haven't used Pandora in a couple years, but previously that was my main streaming service. I use Spotify now mostly, which can be okay but inconsistent with its recommendations. It builds out weekly radios/playlists based on your personal taste, but I can go weeks without it really giving me anything I like or haven't heard before, even if I'm consistently seeking out new stuff. They have artist radios/playlists similiar to Pandora. These can also be pretty good, but don't seem to change much, so once you've browsed an artists radio a few times, you're familiar with most of what spotify is going to recommend.
The past few years Spotify has also built out an end-of-year "tastebreaker" playlist, which has actually always been insanely good, filled with stuff I've never heard and loved, but they only do it once a year for some reason. I have a feeling they have a lot of good data on your music listening habits, but don't surface them as much as they could.
I can also say as an artist, when I've worked to distribute my music, Pandora was by far the most picky, compared to all the other major streaming services. I don't know if thats a good thing or a bad thing for listeners, but they seem to curate their music a little more strictly.
I'd say Pandora is pretty great compared to Spotify at least, I don't have much experience with Apple Music, etc. I didn't have a good reason to stop using Pandora other than I don't listen to music at work as much now that I WFH, unfortunately.