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How do you discover music?
What sites/(maga)zines/people do you use to find music? I'm especially curious to how you find older music? (since newer music is often covered by p4k, needledrop, subreddits, or whatever you choose, although i'm curious about that too)
Spotify helps a lot once you have your basic recommendations set up. Their “daily mix” and “discover weekly” are very good for finding new music. Other than that occasionally movies and tv series have introduced me to some good stuff too, although it’s generally that one specific song which was in the movie/series that I take a liking to and don’t like the rest of their work.
While I agree that Spotify does a good job of curating new music once you have a few "favs" under your belt. I've had a lot better luck with the "Discover Weekly" playlist than what I'm sent via the "daily mix" lists.
Daily Mix seems to be more of a hodge-podge of different songs from artists I already have in my playlist vs. Discover Weekly seems to suggest new artists.
Just my two cents.. take it for what you will.
I think that's intentional though. Daily mix is just a mix of your music with a few new things mixed in so basically a conservative option while discover weekly is to discover new but similar music. So for me basically if I want to listen to predictable and likeable stuff (generally if I'm listening while concentrating on something else) I'll use a daily mix and when I'm feeling adventurous I'll listen to discover weekly.
I actually think Spotify is bad coming from someone who listens to an excessive amount of music. Discover weekly is only 30 songs. I go through that in a day and then I have to wait a week to have any real way to find new music. The way the discover weekly works is also based on what you recently listened to. So I like a diverse style and genre mix, but if I was on an instrumental band kick, it'll be instrumental discover songs, or if I was listening to rap I'll get more rap. I dislike it.
I can definitely appreciate your point of view. I think Spotify works on the assumption that you want stuff similar to what you're looking for, and as far as assumptions go it isn't a bad one. I personally don't listen to music as much as I used to and my tastes keep getting narrower and narrower to the point where I don't like much (even things I used to like) music at all. It works fine for a casual listener like me but I can see how it might not be enough for you.
Agreed. And if you have a song or few songs you want to shove in a playlist, Spotify will give recommendations for similar music to add to the playlist as well.
I get a steady stream of free CDs from my job. We produce some music shows for radio and streaming so I get to hear a lot of new stuff at work. And there are some other old school radio stations I'll listen to from time to time: WFMU (New Jersey), WWOZ (New Orleans), and KXCI (Tucson) are my favorites.
I follow a bunch of musicians, music journalists and bloggers on Twitter. And of course some music subreddits (with /r/jazz and /r/vintageobscura being my go to's). If I see some hype building about a new band coming from those places I'll try to check it out on youtube or bandcamp or whatever. If I really like it I'll try to find a physical copy.
For older music, I hit three big record sales in the NYC area each year: WFMU (in April) and the Archive of Contemporary Music (in June and December). I usually come away with a big haul of cheap vinyl or CDs. At those prices I can afford to take a chance on anything that looks interesting. Seriously, I have a backlog of physical releases in my apartment that will take me months to get through. I also have a bunch of thrift stores near my apartment so I make sure to check those out every few weeks to see if they get anything interesting.
For the most part I don't mess with any of the streaming services. I find their catalogs to be incomplete and disorganized, and as a musician I find their business model to be ... distasteful.
/r/vintageobscura is my favorite music sub. I have every post automatically output to a spreadsheet. I've found so many gems there.
Since we're cut from the same cloth, you'll also like http://luxuriamusic.com and https://somafm.com/illstreet
NPR Tiny Desk Concerts. Lots of NPR Tiny Desks. KEXP a lot too. KEXP is incredible. Pitchfork sometimes. Cardinal sessions are good too.
I agree with you on Tiny Desk and KEXP (listened to them online since the late 90s).
You might also like Audiotree (youtube) - I don't always like the music but I appreciate being exposed to new stuff.
Youtube's suggestion algorithm used to be much better but it seems to lean towards top40/mainstream stuff in the same genre now.
Hypem.com (favorite music blog aggregator)
SiriusXM
Google play music radio channels based on a song I like.
RateYourMusic is my main way for doing that. It has a very /mu/-adjacent taste but with a bit more of a skew toward the rock canon. The main way I do things is find a sub-genre that I'm interested in and sort by that and a decade, and see what the highest rated albums on the website are fitting those criteria. That and there are a lot of user-generated lists, so you can just look at what this one person says hits the same indescribable emotion as some other album or a million other creative ways to list records.
Plus they've got an active (but tightly knit) community going back to like 2000, so it's really cool seeing how the opinions of music nerds on the internet have evolved over time. Seeing hip hop make its way up the top of all time charts is a great feeling.
I pretty much find any other method of music discovery to be fruitless by comparison. ...if anyone else uses RYM, PM me here and I'll add you <3
Hey i wanna ask, how to you find new music there. There is a alot of music but do you go to some specific area of the site or just scroll till you find something good?
The "Charts" section of the site is probably the best place to begin. If you're interested in Dark Ambient, for example, you could type that in as the genre you're searching for, and limit it to the 00s. That will give you the highest rated (on the website) things in that genre. If you don't know what genres you're interested in, you could choose a record you like and look what the genre tags are, because the site encourages having multiple for most. You might know you like Nirvana's In Utero, for example, but you could go on there and see that it also is tagged "Noise Rock," and you may not be particularly familiar with that genre. So you click that and go to the "Top releases" section, and you see the highest rated records in that genre. From there you can pick out one of the top records and keep going in a loop.
You can also look at lists to find cool things. These are user-generated and the community here LOVES to create themed lists. The majority are yearly rankings but there are some really interesting ones out there. My personal favorites are the ones that recount how a particular user got into a style of music.
I think these features come together the best once you really start to be familiar with particular users, though. If you check reviews of and lists containing things you already like, you'll bump into some cool people and I suggest you go to their profiles, see if they have other lists, and check their highest rated records. The site has features to help this, if you add ratings for some albums you'll be able to check your compatibility list, showing you the users across the whole site who are closest to you in taste. Then you can check their profiles and see what they love that you haven't heard yet.
There's also the forums where you can find topics specifically dedicated to uncovering gems and stuff, but I typically don't feel the need to go there. The rest constantly gives me more to listen to, and I typically listen to several new records a day. Eventually you get a feel for how the taste of the site in different areas matches up or doesn't match up with your own, and you can make more and more informed decisions. It's a very powerful tool.
Though like I said, it's probably best just to check the top charts for something you're interested in. If you really don't know where to start, I could help you out. Do you have an account?
Sorry for the late reply but thanks for putting all of this out here. Really appreciated. Already found some good music using this method. Again many thanks. First day using tildes and already getting quality replies, nice.
I get a lot of music recommendations/suggestions from all eras just from listening to the radio. For various reasons radio is often my best choice for having something to listen to during the day, so I'm lucky there's a good station around to listen to.
Spotify's radio functions. When I hear a new song I really like, I'll pull up the auto-generated Spotify radio playlist for the song, album, or artist.
whew and I am so glad that feature has been improved over the past few years.
A lot of the time I get lost looking around on RateYourMusic's plethora of discovery tools. Year charts for albums, EPs, mixtapes, bootlegs, etc. User-made lists with a ton of different themes that can get as simple as "the shoegaze canon" or as specific as "album covers with animals on them" or "albums that have made me cry. I see someone review one of my favorite albums in an interesting way, I add them and look at the rest of their ratings/reviews/lists and might decide to try some of them for myself. I dig through the top charts for each genre and sometimes just go a dozen pages back to pull some random album with ~300 ratings. I check the silly auto-recommendations section for myself and I find a bunch of random albums I've never heard of in languages I don't even speak and I give them a try. It just seems like there's endless potential for discovery with a database like it.
The only other thing I rarely do is post in /chart/ generals on /mu/ but a lot of /chart/ has dried up and become replaced with lazyposters who don't recommend anything and just post their charts with no attempt at interaction in the thread. Shame.
If you use RYM you can feel free to message me here and ask me for my name or send me yours and I'll go ahead and add you back and maybe we can talk about stuff!
I find a ton of stuff on youtube. I'll find someone I like and then check out some of the suggestions it gives on youtube. If not youtube then I'll listen to recommendations that come up here and on r/listentothis.
I'm probably in the minority of people who have subscriptions to music services (most people I know are on Spotify) but I have Google Music, and it's generally where I find new stuff. The home screen has a "New Releases This Week" section that recommends new stuff based on your previous likes. It's also been pretty good at serving up radio stations on songs that I have recently found and liked. My friends definitely swear by the Spotify algorithms though, and I've recently noticed that albums I used to like have been dropped off Google's catalog. I'm not concerned enough to switch to Spotify though.. yet.
I also used to frequent /r/musicforconcentration on reddit, which tends to have minimal or unobtrusive vocals but fantastic beats or orchestration for concentration. Makes for fantastic coding music. It's not a popular sub, though you can find a ton of great music by going through their top posts of all-time.
Radio mostly. BBC 6music has some excellent programmes. A couple of shows in particular have been great for hearing stuff, new and old, that I'd never heard before
Interesting Alternative Show on PhoenixFM
The Freak Zone
Culture Clash Radio
Guy Garvey's Finest Hour
All three of these are on 6music
I also find SoundCloud is good for discovering stuff. Takes a bit of time to get set though. Find someone/a label you like, follow them, then check to see who they follow, then follow a couple of the people/labels they follow and repeat the process ad infinitum.
I use Pandora occasionally to get new band and some suggestions in whatever genre I'm interested in that day. If there's something interesting then I look them up on Google Play Music and check out the rest.
I actually get a lot of value out of Amazon reviews. There are often people there who are seriously into the history of music on there who write in depth analyses of an artist and their influences in their reviews, and I can just follow up on their leads.
I used to use Spotify, but due to account shenanigans my daily mixes and discovery evaporated. I still use r/listentothis on occasion, mostly because I'm a weirdly picky person with no defined tastes so LTT works just as well if not better then Spotify for me.
I built something that helps me dig through the crates. http://play-later.com/?date=last-week
I use Google Play Music and often will just listen to their Pandora-esque "Radio" stations. I'll just have them play a radio station based on an artist I like and I'll often discover new artists that have a similar-enough sound that the algorithm puts them in the mix. As someone else mentioned, movies/TV/games and their trailers are also good places for new music. Back when I used to have cable, I'd even hear songs on commercials that I'd look up and listen to later!
This will not be particularly helpful, but I use a private tracker to find new music. I usually search by tags or go through collages, which are curated collections of albums. I ask around on the forums for recommendations on specific genres as well.
usually use /mu/ to find something i've never heard before but i usually stem out from bands/singers i normally listen to.
Spotify has a great weekly mix that is generated based on past music you've like.
I LOVE it and learn about so many artists this way!