[HN Gopher] How to Find New Music
___________________________________________________________________
How to Find New Music
Author : garretthenry
Score : 84 points
Date : 2020-01-30 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.solfej.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.solfej.io)
| dTal wrote:
| BBC 6 Music. Man, does that station ever have its finger on the
| pulse. You have to be kind of ready for anything, and it's not
| always easy listening, but you often get pure gold. Not
| uncommonly, it'll be music that isn't even released yet, or maybe
| only exists on the artist's Soundcloud page. As a bonus, quite a
| few of its DJs are famous people who you didn't know are _really
| into_ some musical niche.
|
| On the other hand, my friend-who-consistently-finds-cool-music
| pretty much only listens to Soundcloud, and whatever it
| recommends. It seems to be the most popular platform these days
| for a certain type of eclectic artist.
| usuallymatt wrote:
| Came here to say 6Music too. It's an absolute goldmine and I've
| discovered some great stuff on there (Nils Frahm, Hannah Peel,
| Anna Meridith, Erland Cooper, Big Thief). I'm more into
| contemporary instrumental stuff these days but enjoy other
| genres, too.
|
| I usually listen to Mary-Anne Hobbs, Tom Ravenscroft, Guy
| Garvey, Cillian Murphy whenever he's on. Which DJs do you
| recommend on there?
| jlarcombe wrote:
| Stewart Maconie's Freakzone for incredible stuff you won't
| have heard before!
| am_lu wrote:
| soulseek is still around. I use a linux program called nicotine,
| got my collection shared for people to see and download,
| sometimes have a look who was downloading my stuff and have a
| look at their files.
| lb1lf wrote:
| I am in the very fortunate position that despite living way out
| in the boonies, I have a proper, brick-and-mortar record store of
| the High Fidelity kind within an hour's travel from home. Both
| the guys running it have an encyclopedic knowledge of a number of
| genres, and there's always a few customers browsing the shelves
| which will merrily question you about your preferences, before
| veering off on a tangent, getting into a heated argument with the
| other patrons and the owner as to what record will be the right
| one for me, we'll put the winning selection on, eager,
| anticipating eyes on me as the first chords fill the store,
| awaiting my reaction...
|
| I love that place.
|
| Point is - while Spotify's algorithms are brilliant at
| determining what music I might like based on similar music I've
| listened to in the past, I find there's no substitute for
| enthusiastic, knowledgeable fans.
| garretthenry wrote:
| 100% agree. Algorithms have their place, but human curation
| will always have its place as well.
| sdoering wrote:
| I remember in my early twenties there was a drug store with a
| music part in the town I lived in. The guy running that
| division was a DJ for different genres. And an wide ranging
| knowledge and thirst for new stuff. The more he got to know me
| the better his recommendations got. They were all on the edge
| and sometimes slightly over the edge.
|
| lots of the stuff I got to know back then I still like to
| listen to.
|
| I didn't have that much money to spare. Non the less he brought
| CD after CD to listen to on the players there. sometimes I
| stayed for 3 to 4 hours just enjoying the music. whenever I had
| some money to spare I took home a knew jewel of music.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Spotify has this really great alternative app called Stations:
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spotify-stations/id1453043471
|
| You just type in artists/genres you like and it'll play music
| that matches your tastes. It's like a better Pandora, with the
| things that makes Spotify great, like Spotify Connect.
|
| It's only in the US App Store for dumb reasons, but it works fine
| elsewhere once you get it downloaded with a US account.
| siquick wrote:
| Thanks - also works in Australia
| erikbye wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/user/cryochamberlabel
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/NewRetroWave
| jacobobryant wrote:
| gnoosic.com is pretty good also.
|
| I worked full-time on algorithmic music recommendation for about
| 5 months last year[1] (started working on it as a side project in
| 2016). I've always thought that, ultimately, an algorithm should
| be the best--after all, you can have it use human-curated data as
| an input. While my algorithm isn't amazing, it works far better
| for me than Spotify or Pandora ever did, so I've been using it
| myself regularly. I pivoted to a general-purpose recommender
| system idea[2] last november, but I'd love to go back and work
| more on music later on.
|
| (Music was just too hard to get started in--I spent far more time
| trying to find a way to integrate my algorithm into playback
| sources than actually working on the algorithm)
|
| [1] https://lagukan.com
|
| [2] https://findka.com
| semitext wrote:
| Having conversations about music with people is half the fun in
| my mind. It's a creative medium so talking to people that have
| unexpected associations leads to lots of wonderful surprises in
| discovering new music. Also having context is also a huge part of
| deriving pleasure from a piece.
|
| Algorithms that feed you stuff that all sounds similar is great
| if you need background music while you do chores or studying,
| etc. but for when you are listening to stuff more actively
| conversations with people is essential in my mind.
| dorian-graph wrote:
| I would add:
|
| - Radio stations, especially triple j [1] and SomaFM [2]
|
| - Hype Machine [3] with Plug (macOS) [4]
|
| - Similar artists (e.g. on Last.fm [5])
|
| - Other artists on the same label (e.g. Ghostly [6])
|
| - Wander through a record store
|
| - Search for one of your favourite songs and see what other
| user's playlists it's on
|
| - YouTube chanels (e.g. David Dean Burkhart [7])
|
| - Bandcamp--just wander around, and also check out their blog
| posts [8]
|
| - Side-projects of members of bands that you like
|
| [1] https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/
|
| [2] https://somafm.com
|
| [3] https://hypem.com
|
| [4] https://www.plugformac.com/
|
| [5] https://www.last.fm/
|
| [6] https://ghostly.com/
|
| [7] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNYJOAz1J80HEJy2HSM772Q
|
| [8] https://bandcamp.com/
| kfarr wrote:
| +1 for Hype Machine!!!
| 0xdeadb00f wrote:
| As a listener of Triple J's actual radio content; I think it's
| become stale and more "mainstream" in recent years however
| their online stuff: Unearthed, and Double J are great.
| bwanab wrote:
| For my taste, it's been Radio Paradise for a long time.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I used to listen to Radio Paradise some years ago, had
| forgotten about it. They are really good. This is kind of
| interesting:
|
| "Radio Paradise got its start in Paradise, California (hence
| the name...). Paradise is a peaceful little town in the
| foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, far from the big city
| stress & turmoil. Our goal is to bring a little Paradise into
| your life, wherever you're located."
|
| I first heard of Paradise from this station, and considered
| moving there a few years ago to be closer to my daughter in
| nearby Chico. A bit over a year ago Paradise was tragically hit
| by a huge wildfire nearly wiped the town off the map and
| reduced the population by 90%. It sounds like Radio Paradise
| moved away before the fire, since they still imply that
| Paradise is stress free, etc. ... I don't see a single mention
| of the fire on the site. That seems really odd to me.
| tra3 wrote:
| what a great interface. Thanks for sharing this.
| urda wrote:
| For me local radio, like KEXP in Seattle, is how I find new and
| exciting music I might not have listened to otherwise. It has
| become my go-to channel for when I want something on.
| slashblake wrote:
| I built https://www.nextweeksplaylist.com to help me more easily
| listen to bands coming in town, I know a few people here on HN
| enjoy using it too.
| garretthenry wrote:
| This looks amazing, I'm definitely going to use it to discover.
| If I would've known before writing the blog post, I would've
| added it :)
| l3db3tt3r wrote:
| On the word of mouth front: I started music group on various
| platforms; Play 3 Playlist Fridays
|
| Basic premise is that on Fridays people share their own 3 song
| playlist of whatever genre, theme, etc that they care to. I'd say
| it has been moderately successful. 3 songs once a week is a low
| enough bar for contribution, but still high enough that people
| tend to put some actual thought into it.
| sgw928 wrote:
| NPR's All Songs Considered
| (https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/) has New Music Friday
| every week, available through podcasts.
| chasing wrote:
| If you care about music, find human creators and curators (record
| labels, well-run stores, reviewers, DJs, etc) you like and pay
| attention to what they're doing. Talk to them, even. There are
| likely some of these people within a degree or two of you
| socially.
|
| Use algorithms only if you're at a complete loss and need a bit
| of help serendipitously stumbling onto any of the above, but
| don't rely on them.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I'm surprised this article doesn't mention youtube, which is a
| major way of finding new music for me.
|
| Not only can I find new music through videos that youtube selects
| as related to ones I like, but listening to playlists that
| contain music that I like is another great way to find new music,
| and so is listening through the other music posted by people who
| post music that I like. And then, of course, one always has the
| option to search for favorite genres and artists, which should
| turn up a bunch of new music.
|
| Listening through Soundcloud's playlists is another possibility,
| though Soundcloud's discoverability has really suffered since
| they got rid of groups.
|
| Then there are genre-specific subreddits, like r/psybient, r/EBM,
| r/industrialmusic, etc.
|
| Connecting with people with similar tastes is probably the best
| way, though.
| lostgame wrote:
| But YouTube's quality is such hot garbage, and the ads, oh,
| God, the ads.
|
| Nothing ruins the experience of a perfectly good album like
| Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue' more than a jump from cool jazz to
| an ad for Grammarly that's a full 5-10db louder than what I was
| listening to.
|
| If YouTube's audio quality was worth listening to, YouTube
| Premium might be a thing, but Spotify and Apple Music have it
| down to a science, and, similarly, have fantastic
| recommendation engines.
|
| Next to radio, YouTube is certainly the poorest quality
| experience for listening to music in the current era of
| options.
|
| I keep a family plan for both Apple Music and Spotify to
| literally just share with my best friends so they won't default
| to listening to music on YouTube while we're hanging out.
|
| I've collected CD's and vinyl for 15 years, and spent very
| little time listening to radio - the jarring advertising,
| especially between tracks on an album, drives me mad as a
| musician, listener, and producer.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I just use youtube-dl[1] and never see a single ad.
|
| Also, downloading videos with youtube-dl lets me archive them
| for myself, which is useful insurance against when (as all
| too often happens) the video gets pulled from youtube for
| some reason.
|
| As for quality, this thread is about discovery, where quality
| shouldn't really matter. But if quality matters a lot to you,
| after you discover some music that you like, you can go to
| bandcamp and buy a FLAC of the tracks you like from the
| artist. Or you can go to whatever other music service that
| you think has better quality and get them there.
|
| [1] - https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/
| ColanR wrote:
| Just finished doing this with an artist I found with music-
| map farther up the thread.
| reroute1 wrote:
| I had tons of music on google playlists and almost stopped
| due to ads. Firefox extensions and ad blockers have made it
| my go to playlist spot again.
| danShumway wrote:
| I _strongly_ encourage people to block ads. Ublock Origin is
| free and extremely simple to use, and it will get rid of all
| of the pre-roll advertising you see on Youtube.
|
| IMO the only reason at this point for anyone of any technical
| level not to be running an adblocker is if they have some
| kind of ethical objection to blocking ads in general. And
| even in that case, I encourage people to leave their
| adblocker enabled on Youtube and just pay for Youtube Premium
| on the side.
|
| One thing I try to get across to people is that pervasive
| advertising has harmful side-effects that are difficult to
| see when you're used to that state. I started universally
| blocking ads on the web, in media, in apps; I got really
| aggressive about blocking unwanted content. And I very
| quickly noticed a change in how long I could focus on
| content, how quickly I absorbed information, how much effort
| it was to consume things or interact with things.
|
| It was noticeable enough that I don't think of advertising as
| free anymore -- you're paying a real cost in mental ability,
| in your energy. Ads have an effect on your psyche, on how you
| see the world. I don't think it's healthy.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I pay $10 a month for Youtube Premium, which gives me ad free
| youtube, access to Google Play Music and the Youtube Music
| app.
| MisterPea wrote:
| I have the family plan for $15 which I think is a great
| deal considering how much my family and I use Youtube.
|
| Plus free google play music! Although its iOS app is
| absolute trash.
| jalgos_eminator wrote:
| I have also had really good luck finding music on youtube,
| especially independent house/electronic music. The youtube
| recommendation algorithm was really good for music until a few
| months ago. Not sure what they changed, but I'm seeing the same
| videos pop up over and over, and those videos are more
| "mainstream" as well.
|
| People rag on youtube, but I've found so much amazing content
| on there just by searching around and choosing the next video
| from the recommended ones so that you go deeper into the rabbit
| hole.
| krick wrote:
| > Let's start with the easy one, newly released music
|
| This kind of tedious labor isn't what comes to mind when I hear
| "easy" in HN-linked article. And really, what I am trying to
| achieve doesn't sound complicated at all: I don't even want to be
| notified in advance, just being told about new release even with
| a week delay would be fine. Yet I didn't find any efficient way
| to achieve it!
|
| There must be like 200 artists I know and like in my collection,
| probably more. Some DJs have literally tens of music projects and
| go by various handles, which I obviously cannot all remember.
| Sometimes I find out that some musician I really liked a long
| time ago before he (supposedly) retired, has started a new
| project I didn't know about for years. So manually monitoring it
| all (even assuming consequenceofsound covers everybody I listen,
| which I really, really doubt) isn't easy by any means. And unlike
| the author, I don't find it to be a fun hobby, I just want to get
| notified if my favorite band released a new album this month!
|
| What really frustrates me, is that for some comprehensive music
| DB like discogs, musicbrainz, last.fm or spotify providing a
| service like that (I'm pasting 200 artist names => you give me an
| RSS/email subscription/Telegram bot/whatever) seems like a really
| trivial thing to do, since it already knows all these
| relationships and learns about every new release in a matter of
| hours, if not before the release. Yet to the day I'm not aware
| that something like this exists, and I tried to find it for a
| while now.
| psychometry wrote:
| https://muspy.com/ is what you want
| krick wrote:
| Wow, thanks, that seems to be it!
| hotgoldminer wrote:
| Here's how you find new music: peer to peer. Soulseek is what I
| recommend. The value is unlocked when you search for something
| relatively niche. You'll find users that have what you're looking
| for and can then browse their shared directory and download other
| stuff that you haven't heard of but appears interesting. If you
| like what you find, buy it. P2P is life.
| charred_toast wrote:
| Listen to KCRW radio. Listen to DJs that play the genre of music
| you like. Radio is still the best way to disconver new music.
| Gilles Peterson on BBC Radio 6 is also another one of my go-to's.
| I appreciate an eclectic mix of recently released music (KCRW)
| and jazz, world, tasteful hip hop, etc. (Gilles).
| lostgame wrote:
| Word of mouth from friends is number one. As a DJ, I used to live
| by this. I wouldn't go hunting on BeatPort, I'd just find what
| friends were listening to and try to explore from there. 90% of
| the time it went awesome.
|
| Other than that - Spotify and Apple Music both, at this time,
| have excellent playlists and recommendations - as far as I've
| found, in my extensive use of both platforms.
|
| I prefer Apple Music, for no particular reason other than I've
| been using the iTunes/iPod ecosystem since 2004-5, and thusly my
| library contains all the music I've already ripped/downloaded.
| karlshea wrote:
| Spotify's (non-algorithmic) New Music Friday, (algorithmic)
| Release Radar and Discover Weekly playlists have all been
| amazing for finding music for me.
| rbongers wrote:
| I love to use rateyourmusic for this. It is great for finding
| related artists and for exploring new genres.
| avolcano wrote:
| My extremely modern recommendation for those feeling like they
| have no good sources: have y'all tried reading more blogs?
|
| I still read Stereogum (which recently went independent again
| after being owned by Billboard) and Pitchfork. I stay reasonably
| on top of popular music with them - Stereogum in particular
| strikes an amazing balance between having good coverage of
| straight-up pop while still giving coverage to often-ignored
| genres like hardcore and grime. Their writers certainly have
| their blindspots, and they are driven by popular label press
| releases as much honest discovery, but that's kind of why I read
| them - I want to stay on top of the zeitgeist.
|
| I think if you have specific tastes, you should find sources
| covering your niches. I also think that if you live in a major
| city, you may want to find local coverage - I read Brooklyn
| Vegan, which is (unsurprisingly given the name) also mainly
| focused on mainstream indie, also but covers a lot of smaller
| artists who are coming through NYC soon. I've managed to see a
| lot of live music I never would have heard of thanks to them.
|
| I am also interested in working on better ways to discover music.
| I've been working on a small Twitter-like social network for
| sharing new music on and off for the past few years, somewhat
| comparable to This Is My Jam. It doesn't do any fancy algorithms
| or anything, it just presents music your friends post in a form
| that's easy to listen back to (via Spotify and Apple Music SDKs -
| would love to have more sources someday, but Soundcloud and
| Bandcamp don't really have APIs for this, and obviously hosting
| content is a minefield). I'm watching the comments on this thread
| closely for inspiration on this - right now I've just been using
| it with a couple friends and thinking about how it might expand
| in the future :)
| fetus8 wrote:
| Anyone remember back on what.cd the related artists "web" system?
| That was my favorite way to find music, and since the site's
| demise, I have yet to find a comparable way of discovering
| similar artists.
|
| Luckily back then, I started following many of my favorite
| artists and labels on social media, which sort of created a new
| wave of recommendations based on what those artists are talking
| about. It works, but it's not the same as that magical "web" of
| suggestions.
| Stoids wrote:
| I miss reading the 100 page threads on What.CD about which of
| the 40 different rips of the White Album was best. Alternatives
| have popped up, but it saddens me that we lost all of that
| collective comment history.
| ValentineC wrote:
| I was part of What.CD (and its successors), but if I'm
| wondering which edition to snatch, I usually search the Steve
| Hoffman forums [1] and look up the Dynamic Range DB [2].
|
| [1] https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/forums/music-corner.2/
|
| [2] http://dr.loudness-war.info/
| no_gravity wrote:
| I run https://www.music-map.com which might be similar to what
| you describe?
|
| I have never seen (or heard about) the what.cd related artists
| web.
|
| Let me see if I can find a video or images about it...
| JensRex wrote:
| Confirming an artist not in the database leads to an infinite
| redirect for me:
|
| http://www.gnoosic.com/vote_save.php?pstVote=add&pstItem=cv+.
| ..
| garretthenry wrote:
| I use music map all the time! It's intuitive, and I've found
| it pretty accurate as well. Well done.
| jimkri wrote:
| Just used gnoosic.com for the first time and found a brand
| new artist! Great work on this, I'm going to continue using
| it and music map.
| terlisimo wrote:
| music-map is great, thank you for your service :)
| mutagen wrote:
| Every Noise At Once [1] has a nice web of genres and artists to
| check out.
|
| From their description: Every Noise at Once is an ongoing
| attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted
| scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked
| and analyzed for 3,883 genre-shaped distinctions by Spotify as
| of 2020-01-30. The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is
| more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is
| denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier.
|
| [1]http://everynoise.com/
| dorian-graph wrote:
| Damn, that is cool. I looked through some of my favourite
| genres, and the data looks good.
| CrackpotGonzo wrote:
| Yes! Completely agree that it was the best and nothing has
| filled the gap since. Such a shame.
| zahma wrote:
| Redacted has filled the gap. Orpheus too. Though maybe the
| webs aren't as fully developed as WCD's came to be, these
| sites are definitely maturing in the same way.
|
| https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html
| thatcat wrote:
| The similar artist map is still around on the successor sites
| of WCD.
| fetus8 wrote:
| Got an email address? I've got a question about the successor
| sites...
| thatcat wrote:
| win96@H+ mail.ch ; switch chem abbreviation for the
| subatomic particle it represents.
| https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle I'm wondering how they
| make their similar artist connections, tried looking
| through the code but only found code pulling from a DB
| rather than how they generate the db.
| coolswan wrote:
| I checkout playlists of artists I like and go down that rabbit
| hole. I never have gotten stuck in a genre. Quite diverse.
| Swtrz wrote:
| daily.bandcamp and their weekly radio show is pretty huge for my
| discovery along with a mishmash of npr, kexp, bleep, reddit,
| brooklyn vegan and nts radio
| soylentcola wrote:
| Other than the stuff already mentioned (subreddits, blogs,
| playlists, word of mouth) I discover a ton of music via human-
| programmed streaming "radio".
|
| I know it's not as big a thing as it was in the mid-late 2000's
| but there are still thousands of Shoutcast/Icecast/etc. stations
| and many of them are programmed by DJs, music enthusiasts, and
| fans. A good set of bookmarks is like having a radio dial filled
| with 10 or 20 college radio stations (or whatever analogue you
| would consider to be the ideal type of radio for your tastes.)
|
| I've been listening to streaming radio since the early 2000's and
| one of the main reasons I bought my first smartphone (Palm Treo!)
| was because I could install a Winamp clone and listen in the car,
| on headphones, or wherever I was. I still do this today--albeit
| on a slightly nicer phone.
| garretthenry wrote:
| That's awesome. I totally agree, nothing substitutes human
| curation
| troyvit wrote:
| Same here, in fact at least 90% of my new music comes from
| online radio. 90% of _that_ comes from dandelionradio.com. What
| other streaming radio stations would you recommend?
| ArekDymalski wrote:
| http://www.somafm.com is an utimate treasure chest for me ...
| Stephen-E wrote:
| I miss rdio so much...
|
| One of rdio's feature I miss the most is their friend view. Not
| only would you see what friends were currently listening too, but
| a full history of songs.
|
| If I was in a mood for something knew, I'd look at Joe's feed,
| because I knew he was always hunting great new indie bands. If I
| wanted obscure world music, I'd see what Sam had been listening
| to, and so on.
|
| It was so simple, but worked so well.
|
| These days Spotify just shows me what people are currently
| listening to. It requires people to make a playlist (and share
| it) if you want a similar experience.
|
| I miss rdio...
| justusthane wrote:
| Why was this comment killed? I vouched for it to revive it.
| dang wrote:
| It hit a software filter because of past activities by spammers
| or trolls. I've cleared that now so it won't happen again.
|
| Please don't post like this in the threads. If you have a
| question or see a problem, send it to us at hn@ycombinator.com,
| as the site guidelines ask
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) so we can
| answer you and fix the issue. If you post to the thread
| instead, you not only add off-topic noise, the odds are high
| that we won't see your comment and so can't do anything about
| it. I only saw this one at random.
|
| I've detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22194518.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| My admittedly old-school way of finding new music is the
| following:
|
| 1) Put a link to my last.fm profile in my forum signature.
|
| 2) Ask people to review what I listen to and make
| recommendations.
|
| This has been _infinitely_ more useful than the standard machine-
| generated recommendations, particularly when it comes to specific
| sub-genres and the like. A human who sees I have Black Sabbath,
| Sleep, and Pentagram in my rotations but _not_ Pantera, Korn, or
| Slipknot in my list is probably going to implicitly understand
| that I don 't like nu-metal, and will recommend something within
| the traditional heavy metal or doom metal genres.
|
| The machine algorithms, on the other hand, think it's all just
| "heavy metal", and will then send me bogus recommendations for
| Marilyn Manson and other crap that I'm never going to touch.
| joegahona wrote:
| OP: have you ever tried Spotify's weekly Discover playlist? I
| can't believe how good it's been for me, and I never took to
| Pandora or similar recommendation methods. Discover has opened me
| up to bands that were always on the perimeter of my tastes but
| that I never took the plunge to listen to, and I'm amazed at how
| Spotify even knows to recommend a deep cut that I'll love from an
| artist I typically hate. Spotify has 9 or 10 years of Premium
| listening data from me at this point, and for me they are using
| it well.
| uoaei wrote:
| I have had exactly the opposite experience. I have been
| pigeonholed for the past 2 years and counting. The structure of
| my playlists lately have been 25 songs that I've already heard
| a thousand times in previous Discover Weeklys or Daily Mixes,
| then 3 songs I haven't heard in a while from artists I know,
| then 2 actually interesting tracks. The heyday of Discover
| Weekly for me was 2016.
|
| I've heard that they rely much more on which artists you
| "follow" rather than your listening behavior and saved songs.
| But I have no idea if this is true. I'm having trouble
| explaining it and subsequently have lost faith in the platform.
| stanferder wrote:
| I really like Bandcamp's articles. They're hyping material on
| their own platform of course, but you can give it a quick listen
| on-the-spot, and if you like it, that's a win for you, the
| artist, and Bandcamp. If you don't like it, you can move on to
| the next article straightaway. Moreover it's often stuff that no
| algorithm would have recommended to you.
| psychometry wrote:
| https://muspy.com/ will track a list of artists you provide and
| give you a feed of new releases.
|
| last.fm can use your iTunes listening history to recommend new
| artists to you.
| kadoban wrote:
| Personally, I've found a lot of great music from
| https://www.youtube.com/user/theneedledrop
|
| Approximately 30% of his likes are IMO absolute unlistenable
| shit, 60% is just pretty good, but the last 10% is pure damn gold
| that I usually would not have heard of otherwise.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| In the 90s, friends just gave me copies of CDs.
|
| In the early 00s I figured out how to rip Library CDs. They had a
| surprising amount of NuMetal.
|
| During the mid-00s CNet had a music directory that was manually
| maintained. Looking back on it now, whoever coded the web page
| probably just put on whatever music they liked there. It was a
| great way to find new music.
|
| Next I discovered Pandora.
|
| Later I discovered dnbsets.de
|
| Then YouTube.
|
| Finally, BandCamp.
| t3rse wrote:
| Bandcamp.
|
| It has been mentioned by others but it bears repetition. From the
| curated articles to following different labels/artists, it is an
| incredible resource. I take comfort also knowing they are artist
| friendly.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| When I was growing up, MySpace was one of my favourite sources.
| Sadly, they lost their entire collection in a botched server
| migration. In April 2019, the MySpace Dragon Hoard was uploaded
| to the Internet Archive.
|
| I gathered all the metadata, added all the songs to an iTunes
| 10.6.3 library, and made smart playlists based on genre, location
| and (assumed) language.
|
| That's helping me find unknown bands from far away, who I would
| never have heard of otherwise.
|
| Personally I'm into rock (all kinds: punk, metal, Christian),
| though the Dragon Hoard also has pop, rap, dance, etc. Listening
| through everything is taking a very long time, and most of the
| music honestly sucks. But when I do find something good (e.g. The
| Dolls, Ritalinn) then it's very indie, and good for learning a
| new language!
|
| Message me if you'd like more details, and/or have a good idea
| how to share the content safely.
|
| Another project I'd love to see is to group bands based on
| friends' Likes, which I've scraped from Facebook. There must be a
| way to visualise clusters of bands who many of the same friends
| all like, though I'm not sure how best to do that.
| EvRev wrote:
| I go to SoundCloud and start following young producers who have
| the time to repost what they encounter. It is not based on an
| algorithm, but rather real people who have the time to explore
| more new music than I have to listen to.
|
| These guys do a great job manually aggregating new music and
| putting it into mixes. The jokes and fake ads are racy so listen
| with care: https://soundcloud.com/thunderstone-labs
| tra3 wrote:
| I like http://everynoise.com. Start with a genre or artist you
| know, and branch out.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| Rather than subjecting oneself to the whims of recommendation
| engines and random people, I recommend starting with the artists
| you like:
|
| -Find out who they've toured with - this is one of the strongest
| signals possible
|
| -Find out who produced their albums, and check out other albums
| produced by those folks
|
| -See if people in their band(s) have released their own work
|
| -Read interviews to find out who their influences are and who
| they like currently
|
| -If they're on a small, focused label (Amphetamine Reptile,
| Elephant 6), go listen to their labelmates
| garretthenry wrote:
| Producers are a huge piece of the puzzle to unlock. They tend
| to stick in similar areas of music, so odds are, you will like
| the other stuff they work on. Great point.
| kamilszybalski wrote:
| Can you build me an app for that?
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| That is maybe a good idea! If I were going to do it, I'd
| start by crawling AllMusic and select portions of Wikipedia.
| But it's easy enough to do it manually for the use case,
| "I've run out of stuff to listen to by X, how do I get more?"
| ronjouch wrote:
| These days I find tons of new music through
| https://daily.bandcamp.com/ . No blinders, you'll get hip-hop,
| then doom metal, then Philippines traditional music. I like this
| much more than recommendation engines that only make little
| circles around what you know.
|
| And buying music on Bandcamp, musicians get a fairer share than
| they do on big platforms.
| slouch wrote:
| It's such a shame that bandcamp is the worst music service ever
| because they have their hearts in the right place.
| slouch wrote:
| This is a terrible guide that ignores the best algorithmic
| recommendations that spotify provides, the "Related Artist"
| feature from the artist page. If you are a life long music
| explorer, why didn't you mention the last.fm Similar Artist
| feature? Concert reminder services like songkick are great for
| learning which bands are touring with your favorite artists, too,
| in addition to suggesting artists based on your current likes.
| This is low effort.
| joseph wrote:
| Spotify's algorithmic recommendations aren't very good. I use
| Spotify, but always build my playlists by hand, after finding
| music elsewhere. Typically that's Youtube, but I also follow
| the artists I like on twitter and get new songs from them.
| slouch wrote:
| What feature of Spotify was "not very good" for finding new
| artists?
|
| edit: possible answers might be "Artist Radio", "my Discover
| Weekly playlist", "Related Artists page", "my Daily Mix
| playlists"
| joseph wrote:
| I don't think Spotify has any good features for finding new
| artists. I've used all of the ones you mentioned and
| generally don't like the playlists. Usually they play songs
| I already know, and the new ones they introduce I just
| skip. I get a very small hit rate of new music to listen to
| from Spotify versus other channels.
| dorian-graph wrote:
| I agree. The post is _very_ low effort, but at least the
| discussion here has been somewhat interesting. I've picked up a
| few new sources.
| bigwheeler wrote:
| WeAreHunted was the best, until Twitter put a bullet in it's
| head. I think it was reincarnated as wonder.fm, but never really
| seemed to regain the mojo from those early days...
| briefcomment wrote:
| WeAreHunted was mind-blowingly consistent and effective. As
| long as I "liked" things I enjoyed, I almost never felt the
| need to skip whatever it presented.
|
| It worked off of music blogs, with the idea that at any given
| time, some collection of blogs/bloggers would have found the
| next big thing.
|
| The founder is an interesting guy who is currently currently
| providing VC for a bunch of ideas, one of which is using AI to
| make music. Their demos are pretty interesting.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm1SEO9TZfw
| kamilszybalski wrote:
| I don't think this is a fair assessment of Spotify. I discover
| new music all the time through Spotify, here's what I do.
|
| Choose a song, artist or playlist that you really enjoy, right
| click and select "Go to _______ radio". Spotify will instantly
| generate a whole new playlist for you based on the selected
| song/artist/playlist.
|
| I've spent hours discovering new music this way, good luck.
| terlisimo wrote:
| I found Google Play Music's "radio station" feature great for
| discovering new artists. Works even better than Pandora.
|
| Also, unlike Spotify and Pandora, it is legally available in my
| country.
| zerr wrote:
| FM Radio
| jedimastert wrote:
| Reeeeeeally depends on your area, unfortunately. For instance,
| where I grew up there were 3 christian rock stations and
| exactly zero jazz stations.
| lostgame wrote:
| Eww. Unless you can find yourself an independent station that
| actually plays something outside of the top-pops, please,
| please, count me out.
|
| In every Uber and/or cab I end up taking, I ask them to turn
| the FM radio off.
|
| The jazz and classical stations are okay, but then the
| commercials completely ruin the listening experience -
| especially for 'chill out' genres like the above.
|
| Word of mouth from friends - Spotify or Apple Music playlists,
| these are great ways to find new music. What's on popular radio
| stations generally just annoys my friends and I.
|
| Between the terrible selection of music, spotty audio quality,
| and ads, there's never been a worse time to pick radio.
| zahma wrote:
| 89.3 The Current -- based out of Minneapolis -- has a great
| selection. Totally independent. Not all the DJs play the same
| music, which is a double-edged sword, but you can count on
| healthy variety of new and old and many genres.
|
| https://www.thecurrent.org/
|
| You can also find it on I <3 Radio.
| speedgoose wrote:
| For French speakers, France Inter has a great playlist
| without ads when they are on strike. When it's not the strike
| season or if you have more precise tastes, FIP is nice too.
| emmp wrote:
| A number of low power radio stations came online after the
| 2013 application window with the FCC. These are hyper local
| and often very diverse and essentially equivalent to word of
| mouth. My city has more than one, they cover the city limits
| and some of the suburbs. One in particular is full of music
| nerds playing their own niches for an hour or two every week.
| I do a show myself :)
| rhcom2 wrote:
| *if you're near colleges
| nabn wrote:
| How to find new music:
|
| 1. Track listening on last.fm (or similar social equivalent)
|
| 2. Find people who like similar things.
|
| 3. See what they listen to
|
| 4. Profit.
| MBCook wrote:
| I really wish Apple Music just had a list (station? Whatever) I
| could listen to that showed me music I'm likely to enjoy based on
| the thousands of songs I have 'liked' in my library.
|
| I was disappointed to find that didn't exist when I signed up.
| It's what I was looming forward to the most.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| It does. Go to the "For You" tab, and pick "New Music Mix"
|
| I don't understand why this algorithmic playlist gets such a
| bad rap. On any given week, I've only heard about about 15% of
| the artists on the list at most; I usually find 2-3 new artists
| whose catalog I want to sample, one or two tracks from artists
| I already like but have new albums I didn't know about,
| everything else maybe not a keeper but definitely listenable.
|
| ... new Black Lips, Wire and Rubber Band Gun this week, cool!
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