I get most of my recommendations via Diaspora and Mastodon (2 social networks that are part of the fediverse). They allow you to follow hashtags, so I just follow the hashtags of the music I'm interested and see people's posts that are tagged with them
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
🏴☠️ Other communities
Torrenting:
Gaming:
💰 Please help cover server costs.
![]() |
![]() |
---|---|
Ko-fi | Liberapay |
I usually get it from the YouTube algorithm, but I'll also check up on some labels every now and then and see what they got new. I also follow some individual artists.
I use Rate Your Music but I use it in a very peculiar way. Most of my listening is from scrolling through Latest Reviews for something that stands out and listening to it.
The second most common way I use RYM is to go to the page of an album I think is really special and click on user made lists that album is a part of and scroll through for things that look interesting.
The third way is when I notice I've liked a few things from a specific scene I like to go to the page for the record label that often represents artists from that scene. Currently I'm exploring Dischord Records.
Fourth, is if a genre is obscure or specific enough I will look at the charts for that genre. This is most common with electronic music, because it's so heavily taxonomized. Take for example Purple Sound which only has a couple hundred releases associated with it.
This definitely isn't how I recommend everyone find new music. But I do recommend freeing yourself from an algorithm and forging your own path. I find that algorithms often funnel a person into some kind of local maximum where most music presented is palatable but the chance to discover something revolutionary to their tastes decreases immensely, and to me that's just a bummer.
Today, I learned about clown core.
I used to listen to the radio and record songs on my feature phone (mono 16k 4bit samples/s).
Now [email protected] and downloading using NewPipe (I don't care about quality).
I like EDM and electronic music so I just leave the radio on with Tomorrowland One World Radio while I work. I also browse sites like beatport and look at their charts and if I find something I like I check out other people are buying, sometimes I pirate, sometimes I buy if I want to support a small label or a lesser known artist.
I literally type "new music" into YouTube and see where it takes me.
I am new to the music game but I still use the "discovery weeky" on Spotify and go from there as I used to use Spotify so it knows what I like. I just listen to it once or twice a week to see if I like any of it.
I don't anymore, now that I use Spotify. But when I did, it was YouTube recommendations to find new music and then torrent the whole discography to find the ones I liked
Most music I have is from "Pay what you want" albums from Ponies@Dawn, VibePoniez, A State Of Sugar, etc.
When I come across artists I like, I tend to check out their other tracks and grab the ones I like.
Ah, someone else who went down the rabbit hole of pony music.
Koa very quickly became one of my favourite artists as soon as she came in the scene ❤️
What I find amusing is just how many people have no idea how much pony music The Living Tombstone made back in the day.
Two artists who constantly churn out bangers are 4everfree and PrinceWhateverer.
And I'm the same: find an artist, look up their other stuff. I have the full discography of most of my favourite bands/artists.
Bandcamp is phenomenal for finding the niche and unknown!
Spotify APK with no ads and premium features. I then pirate what I like
When you say premium features, which exactly? I imagine you're referring to the xManager patched Spotify, which I also use, but it's not really premium. Ads cut out and can play an album without shuffle. But can't choose audio quality, download, etc
Pretty similar to that yeah. No downloads, and I don't think it saves any changes made to audio quality in the settings.
Check out new songs from youtube, spotify, music sites and later download them and store them locally as 256 or 320 kbps mp3 files. I used to be a fan of billboard Top 100, but nowadays it's just crap. Occasionally I do purchase from the artist's site if available just to support them.
plus melon usually has pretty good political takes, so seconding https://www.youtube.com/@theneedledrop
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/@theneedledrop
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
im sad I got kicked off some private trackers for inactivity after streaming picked up 😮💨
RIP rs.4chan.org, which compiled every RapidShare and MediaFire link on any board. You could scroll through and snag anything that sounded remotely interesting.
Talking to people
Youtube
Listenbrainz (or other scrobbling service)
Subscribing to communities of the genre of music you like
Music-map.com
Following artists you like on social media
Piracy is how i discover music, to a large extent. I see something i might like? I listen.
I don't download full albums, just individual songs I like.
The sources are basically anywhere I hear music, but generally, it's by listening to radio.
As of now, this has already got me to 1,179 songs with 3 in queue to be downloaded. (If you're curious, those in queue are: Dana International - Diva; New Kids On The Block - Step By Step; Prince - Purple rain)
It is hard to call it discovery in this case, more like a reminder of the songs since I knew them already.
Other sources include, but are not limited to: Browsing YouTube playlists, searching for artists to see if they have more good songs, buying a CD compilation, searching for someone's Spotify playlist after peeking into their phone when I liked multiple songs (they didn't want to share the playlist, but left it "public"), Bus Simulator Ultimate (there I discovered 2 artists, Melihcan and Cem Kılıç), old tapes, bus driver with a Bluetooth speaker (and me with Shazam), parts of songs randomly appearing in my head from who knows where, background music in videos.
As I said, everywhere I can hear music.
You can like scrape the data from Spotify Playlists and yt music and like a regularly updated local copy of that..
youtube: charts 2023, played with --no-video.
-
Google searches for open directories. One dude found an RIAA directory full of media, but it quickly got secured.
-
YouTube
-
Ringtone sites
-
Asian (Indian) sites, with heavy use of Google translate.