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.

yt music does all good and also friends

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.

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.

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.

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 watch music reaction youtubers. They showcase a large amount of new music in a short amount of time and are kind of like DJs where they preselect good stuff already.

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.

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)

Personal recommendations. Sometimes take a chance on something 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 :-)

c/metal

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.

Spotify’s Discover Weekly mostly. YouTube music for things like trance remixes or cover songs.

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

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.

Rollins nights on NPR

I make my own playlists based on checking out similar artists using Google searches of “artists like x” format and listen pretty much exclusively through those playlist as a quick collection of songs that I like, the playlists range from 2-50 hours and are either based on mood, genre or personal life events, they are ordered to preserve both the order in which I discovered the music but also so that they flow well from one song to another.

I only ever really listen on single song repeat mode, when I’m bored of the song I pick out another one, but I’ll listen to the playlist as a whole to make sure it flows right.

I have a large offline collection but I’ve been mostly using Spotify Premium these past 6 years, the recommendations it gives at the bottom of playlists are sometimes also utilized.

I mostly listen to music at my desk on my desktop through my Beyer DT1990 with an EQ for flat frequency response or my nice wired T2 IEMs through my phone.

Sometimes I’ll check out something on SoundCloud or Spotify suggestions when I post my own music to both to see what’s considered related out of curiousity but it’s mostly garbage, my own music included, though sometimes I stumble on something interesting from an artist who’s main similarity is <10 monthly listeners.

I feel like apart from my S.O. in some aspects, I’ve never met anyone who interacts with music in this way, people maybe make a workout playlist at most or listen to other people’s or listen only to albums haha 😂

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

Metal archives

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.

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

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

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

My ways have already been discussed, except for NTS Radio, some of the best new music I’ve listened too were on there.

I used to use Spotify out of laziness, after a recent price hike I switched to local mp3 playback, I’m discovering music through radio, there’s always something playing at work, at home, in a car, trying to diversify stations I hear, sometimes social media pops a new song in my ear

Reccomendations from friends, spotify. Whenever i doscover a new genre i tend to read the wikipedia article on it‘s history which will tell me who some of the pioneering artists of said subgenre are. What i love about spotify is i can listen to playlists for a certain genre made by other people and not the crap that spotify throws at me which are biased by my listening history.

My podcast app has a section for subscribing to radio stations. I like having a curated list from a knowledgeable DJ.

Currently using Podcast Addict

A few I am currently subscribed to: WXRV, Double J Sydney, WFUV, WKQX, KZCR

I also use Spotify from my web browser so my ad blocker cuts out most of the ads.

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.

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.

Ears bro

Spotify (desktop/mobile app both cracked). I have a huge music library on my local server that I’ve acquired over the years through ytdl and soulseek, as well.

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 without it.

I'm VERY old school.

OTA radio

Youtube - search for my genre(s)

Wikipedia (starting here and winding down a wiki-hole)

HardRadio

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

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.

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.

Primarily listen on Spotify. I try to expand my horizons using their discovery playlists or artist/track radio for songs I already like, but they’ve got me heavily pigeonholed into late 90’s college rock and early/mid 00’s pop-punk…which is harsh but fair.

I occasionally check out place like Bandcamp or Tapefear for some rut busters. Most recently, Bandcamp turned me on to Irish hip hop artist Denise Chaila, which was a welcome surprise.

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

www.thecurrent.org