Ask Lemmy

Call me basic, but I have no shortage of new music from Spotify and YouTube. Spotify recommendations plus shared playlists from friends. There are a handful of YT channels that host pretty consistent quality musicians, like NPR Tiny Desk, KEXP, Colors Studios, Zildjian Live.

I use rateyourmusic.com to research a genre/artist/ album and then follow where it leads me. It's amazing how much music is outside the algorithms, and then you get to find them in a differ context too.

I stream online radio while commuting.

It's a great way of discovering what people in other countries listen to or what is happening in certain genres etc.

The small online stations are better than ordinary radio because they usually don't have commercials and no need to attract large numbers of listeners so they don't always play the most popular garbage over and over.

It's as if removing all the commercial aspects of radio makes better radio.

I downloaded what I liked. Now I am stuck with them

Spotify auto-generated playlists

I am still riding the MP3 train. Music from indies and smaller bands I buy on Bandcamp or directly from the artist. Bigger bands from larger labels and really obscure stuff I get from Soulseek.

Discovering music got more difficult after leaving Reddit, I lurked on a lot of genre subs. Now I mostly find new stuff through friends or Youtube recommendations.

metal-archives.com

Spotify (Web app with ublock and cracked APK), songs from movies/shows, and songs discovered from content creators on twitch and YouTube

Mostly YouTube recommendations and long compilation videos people have posted to YouTube.

I may sound old, but I still use Pandora and it has been one of my best avenues for new music and artists for the last 15 years I've had my account. It knows my tastes very well at this point and the recommendations are almost always spot on.

Pandora works pretty well for discovery, and has multiple “modes” so you can hear album tracks, not just hits. Just put in a few songs of a genre and/or artists you like to build a station of similar suggestions. Use thumbs up/down to tune it. I will warn you that after a year of doing this, it might get in a rut of playing things you’ve already thumbed up. If that happens, switch modes or create a new station.

YouTube suggestions also has a pretty decent suggestion algorithm if you start thumbing up music you like. It’s also a good place to look at a particular label’s catalog.

Both are free with ads.

Also, if there’s an artist you like, be sure to look up who produced your favorite tracks. Chances are they’ve done similar music with other artists.

Favourites currently are:

• Internet radio. Especially radiofreefedi.net which features music from people on the fediverse. I especially like their comfy channel. #radiofreefedi #RFF

• Music podcasts. The Add To Playlist podcast from the BBC is my favourite. Each track they add is inspired by the previous one. Loads of great music, plus interesting guest musicians talking about music history, theory and vibes.

• ViMusic. This is an open source front end app for YouTube music on android. No payment, adds etc. You can get it on f-droid. Found a few cool tracks via the algo but not as many as previous options.

I have to say though that, like the boomers who went before me, I feel that music in general has become worse. I'm blaming the 'winner takes all' effect of commercial streaming platforms for the narrowing of artistic culture and the debasement of musicians.

Mostly through friends, Bandcamp, sometimes BBC Radio 6. And catching random bands at festivals and liking them.

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Spotify is still good to me with recommendations based on what I have previously liked.

But also a lot of video memes will have bangers I seek out.

Youtube.

I realised a few years back that my music tastes had stagnated, that I hadn't liked any new bands in... too many years, and that I was on the way to becoming to be a stuck-in-the-past old fart.

So I nuked my youtube data to glass and started again from scratch with The Technique.

Open all the interesting-looking music in new tabs, don't-recommend-channel annoying crap, especially reaction videos. Flick through each tab, like and add to genre playlists anything cool, and open a bunch of tabs from the recommendations on that page. If I get three solid bangers from an artist, subscribe. Go with original artists rather than reposts where possible.

Rinse and repeat.

If the algorithm starts getting stale, browse and listen through playlists I want to hear more of (often using a third-party shuffle site), to dredge up the silt.

I don't generally listen to much of a song while browsing - you can tell from a handful of samples if it's for you or not, and moving on quickly stops it from getting tedious.

I have found and enjoyed vastly more new music in the last few years than I did in the two decades before that. It's awesome.

KEXP on YouTube. Best radio

A mix of Spotify (I have a premium account there), and my own collection of CDs which I have ripped and can access via Jellyfin for higher audio quality.

I have a Signal group with friends, one of whom listens to all new metal releases and gives reviews of the new releases.

Listen? Stream my own collection from media server.

Discover? I asked friends and relatives to send me mix CDs instead of presents. I listen to broadcast radio when I rent a car and sometimes at home; Chirp, the Chicago Independent Radio Project is especially nice because they don't have ads and DO have personality. Every so often I punch a few songs into a new Pandora station and spin the wheel. I snoop my kid's Spotify account to make sure that what they're listening to is appropriate (has to have a little talk when I found some ICP about misogyny, for example) and to their mortification shamelessly take whatever I like.

I have a Spotify playlist consisting of songs to download and add to the media server; that represents my "new music" since I paused buying it during the pandemic belt-tightening. It's over two days long. But with Google Play Music dead, I don't even know where to buy MP3s these days.

Minnesota public radio has some great stations. The DJs read the sponsor spots, so no traditional "commercials" with sirens and megaphones.

https://www.thecurrent.org/

I use Spotify while driving, and while I'm usually disappointed by Discover Weekly, it does recommend gold from time to time. I would've never discovered Destiny Potato if it didn't.

After spending a year trying to go back to curating my own local library of high quality FLAC files, I just found it easier to pay for Spotify. After signing up I found at least 3 bands, one of which has become my new favorite.

YT Music. For new stuff... IDK. Osmosis? I mostly listen to 80s/90s stations on the radio.

I check the overall best Album list of Rolling Stone and some genre Lists for each year. If the stuff is on Bandcamp I usually buy it after listening and liking an Album.

yt music does all good and also friends

I feel like I'm out of the norm for listening to music these days, especially with the influence of tiktok on music, as I almost never listen to individual songs or playlists. I only ever listen to entire albums, one at a time. I have a massive amount of music that I'm interested in, and each day I just pick an album that I feel like listening to. For discovering music, I have three main sources; two friends who share similar music interests; youtube recommendations, and songs I just hear and then think about some time later.

My early years crate digging, than myself diggin, than Kazaa - till eventually my library is now so vast and eclectic that the Spotify algorithm does the job for me (mostly).

Though the best trick to find new music - look for your favourite band’s favourite bands. That’s honestly the fastest way to find new and interesting things.

my local non-comercial station just fucking kills it with new music

How do you listen to music?

I use RiMusic. It's a YT Music fronted, look it up on F-Droid.

How do you discover music?

• Various films (especially James Gunn's)
• Wikipedia
• YT Music "For you" section and "Radio" feature

Personal recommendations. Sometimes I take a chance on random artists that I see on Bandcamp. Music/artists from TV shows and movies. Music I hear when out and about, Shazam is a wonderful app for identifying tracks.

I rarely discover anything new, but I'm currently in the process of getting my entire CD and vinyl collection onto Plex - so in a way I'm rediscovering music that I liked years ago but haven't heard in ages, especially stuff that wasn't available on any streaming platforms.

It's a slow process though, especially the vinyl - I've just about finished the As, but that's one of the smallest sections! Fun though :-)

1-3 hour long mixed on SoundCloud. Mostly Jungle/D&B, with some house and techno for balance. Also, I've been really enjoying listening more about vocals and metal on The Charismatic Voice. (Rammstein link)

virtually crate digging lists in rateyourmusic, SoundCloud playlist, hours long mix videos on YouTube. if I feel in the mood for a certain genre I just do search for the aforementioned, download the whole albums if I like one song, and let it shuffle on musicbee.

I watch The Needle Drop on YouTube. He's a music reviewer. I don't necessarily agree with the idea of being so critical of an art form that's so subjective, but following his channel is a great way to stay up to date on noteworthy new albums coming out.

Listen: FLAC files on my android phone using Foobar2000. Or for serious listening, FLAC files on an Astell & Kern with nice headphones.

Discover: Friends, family, Bandcamp. Bandcamp is great because the bands have the option to recommend their own favourites, and if they don't, Bandcamp does the "other supporters of this band listen to this" thing. Bandcamp collections are public, so find out who paid money for an album you like and see what else they bought.

And now for the weird one: Goodwill. Not just browsing used CDs for treasures, but listen to their overhead music (especially around Halloween). There's a surprisingly good mix of random stuff playing. I've Shazam-ed more music there than anywhere else.