I’ve been looking for a way to discover new music. Spotify used to be quite good, but now I feel like 10% of the stuff it recommends me is AI slop.
How do you navigate the music-scape?
Listen to the billions of songs made before 2016 lol. You got a lot of catching up to do.
New does not equal good.
Beyond that, follow trustworthy artists. The only way to fight the slop is with community and trust.
Curious how you are using Spotify.
I learn about new music by playing Spotify song radio based on a song I like, and then adding the good songs I discover to a playlist.
Any standouts I listen to the whole album and research the artist.
Its not as good as when I was in high school and cross pollinating with the other music nerds bit it is ok.
At first (+10 years ago), I would just play albums friends recommended or of artists I knew I liked; Then I transitioned to playlists I found, then I let spotify mix in songs and slowly let spotify’s algorithm take up more and more of my suggestions.
After a while I noticed it getting more and more stale, recycling music I already liked and looping it.
More recently, it’s just completely off 1/2 the time, and suggesting very boring music that I suspect they commissioned and own the rights for. The playlists are all “made by Spotify” and are similar to the auto suggestions.
So I stopped using Spotify suggestions, then, as the UI got more and more bloated with stuff I don’t care for (merch, podcasts, audiobooks), I straight up switched to Qobuz for its clean UI.
But now my recommendations come from Youtube or friends.
Which is why I made this post :) (which has turned out to be a gold mine!)
- Bandcamp
- see who tours together. If you like A and they open for B, you might like B
- indie record labels
- see who’s playing at local venues.
I know quite a few people who use bandcamp, I’ll have to give it a shot
Every so often (maybe once a year) I look through my music collection and then go “Oh, I forgot about this band that I used to love” and then look them up and see if anything new from them is out. If the band has broken up I also look up the band members to see what bands they are now in or people they have worked with etc. The Six degrees of separation thing works quite well.
I don’t usually listen to anything newer than around 2010 anyway. 🤣
i recently discovered Tom Lehrer through some shit post. But I guess it depends on what you define as new
“New to you” music!
My main genre is hiphop I simply discover artists via recursive checking of features
I mainly listen to electronic music for the past decade or so and have several artists I’ve listened to consistently, they’ll collab with some new artist or do a mix and include their music so I check them out and it grows from there.
I only discover music through human curators I trust.
Currently it’s via the YouTube channel “worldhaspostrock”, though the word “new” might not be appropriate because as of late they’ve just been posting decade-old albums.
Go to the small concert venues and see them play.
I’ve used https://www.music-map.com/ a few times but not lately, so I don’t know how exclusive it is in regards to AI music.
I guess im lucky in that my taste is with older music. I had a friend whos main hobby was going to bars with bands playing and that is how bands got their start in the past. If you don’t live near a large metro you can check who is playing at various big city venues and then look around at what their music is like.
outside
I always go off features of artists I already like, has never failed me, every genre, same label also works
It’s much easier to find organic art in a community, outside the art industries.
Sure, unless you set up a lot of subscriptions it won’t just come on a consumption conveyor belt, and some people might want or expect that, but it’s much better to be in a place where you’re actually interacting with artists.
