This post was originally going to be titled “How does music discovery on Apple Music compare to Spotify these days?” but I want to make it more broad.
All advice and ideas appreciated!
Thank you! I discovered some new music via these suggestions!
These are so damn cool! Thanks so much for sharing these links! You’ve got me all excited! :)
The hivemind hard at work. I am keeper of tidibits, curator of useless facts.
thanks for sharing gnoosic, it’s already given me some unknown stuff that is right up my alley :)
You’re welcome and happy hunting.
I think they are powered by the same AI, but music map shows you how closely they are related
They are currently my local NPR station and have great music programs and DJs that align with my tastes. I will miss them dearly when I move next month but their music streams are available for free on other platforms too.
High five! I find a lot of new music through my local NPR/college radio station too: https://kglt.net/
Few places:
- Sputnikmusic
- Youtuber recommendations (people into the same kind of music I am into)
- Youtube Music suggestions
- Instagram pages dedicated to specific niche genres I am into
I tend to use a combination of youtube/bandcamp and music blogs to source new music.
Have also set up !discovermusic@sopuli.xyz as a community to record any recommended links. It’s looking a bit sparse at the moment.
Read reviews and such. I have RSS feeds from many different sources (Bandcamp, music magazines, AOTY) and every now and then I zip through them and listen to extracts of songs. If it hits the right note, I buy the album.
NPR Tiny Desk and KEXP’s live performances (both on YouTube) have both helped me discover amazing musicians.
YouTube recommendations are often 30-60% decent and you can always fall back to that. Anything that has tags and similar artist functionality: Last.fm (still technically exists), everynoise.com, more specialized sites like Encyclopedia Metallum. I like to get some recommendations out of band even if I use streaming, otherwise it’s too easy to phase out and make your memory dependent on their algo.
Some (even) more niche and involved methods:
- I am experimenting with using search.marginalia.nu for searching for opinions on forums and personal websites, starting with my “initial” artist, genre or the vibe I’m looking for.
- if you look for an album on ebay or wherever and find a have a small seller with their personal collection, I like to take a listen to some other items from the same person that look promising.
- at least for jazz and probably mainstream pop/rock (? however to call it) there are physical books dedicated to briefly reviewing a ton of albums. I prefer this to typical written reviews because all I need is an album name and some gist of what to expect. If the writer has a long analysis etc. I tend not to agree after listening, I may like some things that they hate and the words have nothing to do with music. Probably the “1000 albums you have to listen to” lists on the internet can serve similar purpose.
A thing I like to do if I’m in a cafe or place with good music playing, I’ll just straight up ask the staff – if theyre not busy – what they’re playing. Sometimes gets a nice little conversation. Then I’ll add it to a playlist and go from there. Of course I can shazam it or whatever but it’s not as fun
Honestly, I like Apple Music well enough, and have been subbed for as long as it’s existed, but the discovery is atrocious.
Mostly I find new music through listening to the radio (very old skool of me…), and following the #NowPlaying tag over on Mastodon. And on here as well, actually.
Honestly? TikTok.
I have found more good music and culture on TikTok than anywhere else on any other platform. Remixes, up and coming artists, classical, jazz, hippie, pop, subculture. You name it.
I think this has to do with how TikTok’s algorithm nails you down to similar interests and stuff, but also not so much like YouTube where it’s literally ONLY more of the exact same.
Spotify sometimes hits a good station, but you largely have to find your own vibe-of-the-moment.
TikTok now, though, for years, has been turning up some of the most interesting and good to listen music. I get northerner civil war anthem remixes, super genuine pop piano music that I’m blown away by, culture videogame anthems, and more.
The one drawback is that it’s not fast. If you search through music on a service, top lists and “audiophile” lists, you’re bound to find tons of cool new things that you probably never would have found. TikTok cannot compare with doing your own actual mass searching. But, as a platform of just using it, it’s been otherwise by far the best.
My girlfriend has found a lot of great music there as well over the past couple years. She doesn’t even search it out, really. She doom scrolls like normal but the culture of tik tik has a bent towards soundtracks and people seem to like to show off their cool music that way. Good call
Honestly, YouTube for exploration and Bandcamp for purchases and additional suggestions.
Depending on what I am looking for:
- BBC Radio 6: mainly new stuff, although I have been surprised with very good oldies.
- The newsletter To the teeth for all things metal https://totheteeth.substack.com/ The playlist in spotify is really good too.
- Last.fm, even if it’s not as used anymore, I still find very good recommendations there.
- Spotify Discovery playlist has surprised me a lot in the past, but not that much lately. It suggests me what I was in the mood to listen to last week, maybe not that much today. The daily mixes are fine, but it’s pushing the same songs too much.
- The website https://1001albumsgenerator.com even if I am not a fan of some genres, it’s good to learn about some records.
From this same thread I am sure I will use https://www.gnoosic.com in the future.
i like traditional musics from around the world so when i fancy something new i start with wikipedia articles on instruments i like and rabbit hole through links to get terms and countries and things to put into search strings on youtube. One day i started with tar (precursor for both sitar and guitar) and ended up grooving to Philippine boat lutes, which are brilliant. https://piped.simpleprivacy.fr/watch?v=K7hYfnG7mJM
Trad musicians tend to play in several groups so that’s another source of rabbit holes to explore. And just keeping an eye out for interesting things other people post. Mostly individual clips but sometimes happen into treasure troves like at the start of the first lockdown when someone I followed on Twitter posted about Met Opera in NYC streaming a different opera each day for free. It was a great opportunity to learn about a new-to-me type of music so I grabbed it, thinking it would be a couple of weeks at most. A year and a half later they finally stopped and I was an addict :)
Also libraries. Libraries can be fantastic for exploring new musicians and types of music.
Even when algorithms are good, there’s still a lot more out there waiting for listeners ❤️
Sometimes YouTube or NPR but my favorite visual way to do it is with Music Map. You type in the artist and it brings up a map of similar ones. The closer an artist is to the one you searched for, the more similar they are.
A variety of ways, but probably most commonly by browsing Discogs and rateyourmusic.com. Discogs is great for looking through labels that release the music you already like, finding side projects of your favorite artists, or just diving into random genres.
Rateyourmusic, is an interesting one. The website as a whole certainly has a certain preferences, but its genre charts are great for getting started with new genres of music and getting a foundation in genres you aren’t familiar with.
Last.fm is also a great tool as others have mentioned.
