17
votes
How do you keep up with new music?
I no longer listen to the radio, nor do I discuss music much with friends. My favorite hometown station even switched to Christian rock. So now I'm no longer discovering any new music, and I have no idea what's good. What do you do to keep up with what's good these days?
I use spotify's "new releases" playlist. There's also the release radar foe artists i listen to or similar, and the discovery bit is awesome. Also, tailor made playlists like the daily tracks thing are amazing.
Spotify also has Discover Weekly, which is pretty dope in finding tracks that match the music you have saved. I believe Google Play Music also has something similar, but I forget what it's called.
Jonestly, google play music could be the better option, considering you also get youtube red. I just love the spotify algorithms for music too much.
Dont get me started on apple music
Spotify also sends me notifications when artists I listen to release new albums, which is pretty great.
For me, since I prefer Live music to Albums, it's mostly through YouTube these days.
NPR Music / Tiny Desk Concerts (Bob Boilen really has his finger on the pulse of the music scene).
Jam in the Van
OurVinyl Sessions
Live on KEXP
Indie88 Toronto Studio Sessions (my favorite local Radio Station)
WXPN Concerts
The A.V. Club Undercover and Live Session
Hot 97 #freestyle Sessions
I use a lot of the same stuff. Unfortunately, AV Undercover hid all of the old seasons, and now you can only view the newest, revamped season. I'm not a fan of it anymore.
As much as I dislike YouTube, it's a big part of how I find new music. It's just a good platform for it I suppose. Plus, even if I were to say I find music at a place like r/listentothis, it's still a link to YouTube more often than not.
I'm also using Spotify less and less. Anymore, when it comes to recommendations, it seems like it plays what it already knows I listen to and that's it.
You can still find most of the old AV Undercover stuff elsewhere (even on YouTube), but yeah, it's no longer conveniently located in one place (or legally hosted) anymore. :(
And yeah, Spotify is utter garbage for finding new music, IMO. I used to use a webradio site called Musicovery for finding new artists/music that was absolutely amazing... However their streaming service was shut down last year and now they are strictly a commercial recommendation engine/API company. :(
You're right, you can find some of it uploaded by other people, there's even a convenient playlist of all 75 re-uploads. There are at least 16 other videos missing by my count though. I take it personally I guess, because a good chunk of the one that are missing happen to be my favorites.
It's weird that AV Club won't even acknowledge that they've hidden the first 7 seasons, let alone do anything about it.
I'll check out musicovery, thanks.
Edit: Also regarding Spotify, since I saw a bunch of love for it in another thread, I still think it's trash. Discover weekly tends to have a bunch of stuff I already have in playlists, and if the songs it suggests aren't already in my playlists, the artists are. With some rare exceptions
It's making safe bets and giving me suggestions it knows good certainty I will like, but nothing really new. Daily playlists are just smaller versions of the playlists I already have. New Releases is kind of like browsing new. Yeah, there might be some gems, but you've got to wade through a bunch of stuff you're not interested in to find it. It's just not an effective means of finding new music imo. It's an effective way to find music you'll like, but not necessarily new.
Pretty much my main ways:
In general, just try to bump around and don't be afraid to try anything.
I listen to the radio a lot, I also go through Google Play's "New Releases" page quite regularly. Every so often I ask my friends what they are listening to. Music blogs very occasionally. Youtube from time to time as well.
It's absolutely all about six music.
It depends what you're into -- but these are a few sites I keep an eye on.
/r/indieheads is good, but sites like the following are good to keep in your reader:
These three have shows on satellite radio. Both the show and their blogs are great. I dig through their tracklists for new gems.
Bigger sites with more noise, but still some good stuff
Lastly, if I like a band, I check their label out. I usually find a handful of excellent artists that haven't quite 'hit it' yet, or at least popped up on my radar.
If you do a lot of driving, I'd definitely suggest getting satellite radio. Not only is it fantastic for music, but there are plenty of excellent stations like Wharton's Business Radio.
I've never thought of checking out band's label--that's an awesome idea. What's the best way you've found to do research on what bands a label has under it?
Check out the band's page on Discogs and it'll show the label. From there you can either click on that link, or find the label's site.
e.g. Damien Jurado >> Secretly Canadian
I actually take it a step further and have a spreadsheet that I pop a bunch of artists names into, then in another cell I have
=HYPERLINK("https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query="&A1&" "&B1,"LINK"), assuming you have the artist and album in A1 and B1.I usually collect about 30 or so albums that I think sound interesting, and then spend some time digging in. If you want to pull the full discogs list, just use
=IMPORTHTML("https://www.discogs.com/label/35538-Secretly-Canadian","table",2), replacing the URL with the label's URL. There are probably cleaner ways to do this.I mostly use Spotify to listen to music and they usually list the label on each album -- I'll sometimes go and check if they have a SoundCloud page or a Bandcamp or something to see what other bands they represent or which albums aren't included in the Spotify library.
For me it's a mix of occasionally tuning in to the radio, seeing what's new on YouTube, and even just looking up songs that I hear my friends play that I really like
I don't keep up with much outside of the metal world, but r/metal tends to be relatively consistent with posting new stuff. I think these days it's best to find a curator or blog poster that you share tastes with (I like the Doom Charts guy) and follow them regularly.
I think RYM is pretty useful for finding the current artists "blowing up"- they might not find the smaller releases, but I've found that there's a pretty good community for most genres, so if something is picking up some traction in a genre, you'll be able to see it as it's happening.
YouTube usually does a pretty good job of suggesting stuff to me. I listen to a lot of tiny desk concerts or stuff on kexp. They're pretty good about having newer artists playing sets. And they are really good about having artist who haven't released anything in awhile play when they are releasing something for the first time in a while.
One thing I wish existed is a simple weekly "New Releases" newsletter. There's a lot of artists I like that have new music coming out that I wasn't aware of. I'm actually surprised this isn't a thing.
I discover new music a few different ways. Music service radio/discover (Spotify, Pandora, etc.), genre specific subreddits, Youtube, and Googling a list of artists in a particular genre. Youtube has been surprisingly helpful, not just their suggestions, but also in the comments section. Many people will recommend or mention similar music to the video.
I use Google Play Music for my streaming music service needs and it has a very useful feature for discovering new music: the radio function. You pick up a song, or an album, or an artist, and start a radio from that. And it automatically populares a list with songs that are similar (to an extent) of your choice. I mixes songs from your library (that you already listened) with for example, songs from artists that you never listened before but are in the same genre, or songs you never listen from a disk in your library, etc.
But this new songs are in the middle of a list of stuff that I'm already used to and like, so it has a positive impact to just listen one thing new from time to time between a lot of stuff that I like. I doesn't saturate you and you are more prone to be receptive. I even rediscover things that I tough didn't like the first time, but in this new "good mood" context I gave them a second chance and it worked very good.
It's a good experience.
I listen to a couple of "radio" shows on Mixcloud that regularly feature new music. Also in Mixcloud, as well as Soundcloud, when my playlist or whatever else I chose to listen to ends, they keep playing music. Not sure about their algorithms but sometimes I get something good. Or weird.
Also bands I follow on Facebook often post tracks of different artists that they like.
And of course live shows and music festivals. One band on the playbill? Show up for all bands and see if I like them or not.