Ask HN: How do you discover new music?

I don't understand your question. Is it ironic? All the bands you mention are fairly old. Most stem from the late 80s to mid 90s.

You might like Pandora then. They have a famously awesome song fingerprinting tech. Sadly their tech is proprietary and they're walled off in the states.

I just discovered King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard because some soul is using Ai to turn a line of lyrics into images in a slide show for some songs. And KG&LW happened to be one they picked.

If you're really rabid for new music I'd say manually diving through soundcloud might be a good idea. Additionally various genre forums and last.fm (probably buried the lede there Last.Fm is awesome)

rateyourmusic. It has a recommendation algorithm that is definitely better than Spotify's* (it's tweakable too!), but the real ticket is reading the endless user generated reviews and lists. You can browse genres by top-rated albums, there are featured reviews from all kinds of genres on the front page, there's a featured list page or you can find lists albums were mentioned in on their album page then check out that list to see what users categorized it with. If you get bored, you can click on a user's review on an album you like and see what other albums they rated highly. Maybe you have similar interests and find your next favorite album.

*Only issue I have with the recommendation algorithm is that once you rate an album it isn't removed from the recommendation list. Makes me doubt what the algorithm is actually taking into consideration when generating a list.

I have both Apple Music and Spotify, and each have some neat music discovery features.

Spotify has an “Enhance Playlist” [0] option, which (reversibly) populates your playlists with similar songs.

Both Spotify and Apply Music have a “song radio” functionality which creates a custom dynamic playlist from a seed song.

Apple Music has live radio stations which are surprisingly good.

Both services have very great curated playlists, based on every mood / topic / genre / artist imaginable.

Outside of this, just the old-fashioned methods of (1) going to music festivals to discover new artists, and (2) sharing music with friends.

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/9/22664655/spotify-enhance-f...

I stopped using streaming services as I tend not to listen to music in the way they want. I always listen to full albums in order and tend to listen to albums on repeat. I tend to focus on my music, and want zero interruptions, so an offline, dedicated music player works best for me. I can't stand my music randomly disappearing, so I purchase it all. That means I am reliant on finding new recommendations based on something other than my listening history!

I primarily subscribe to the RSS feeds of a few smaller review sites and blogs. I listen to a specific subgenre of metal, and so angrymetalguy.com is one of my favorites.

I also heavily use bandcamp. Because I listen to a more niche subgenre, the labels tend to be small, independent labels that only focus on that genre. So I subscribe directly to the labels in bandcamp, as they advertise new artists and releases on their label.

Bandcamp only supports using their in browser feed or getting emails, which I find annoying. So I use imapfilter to automatically convert those bandcamp emails into an RSS feed.

I also follow a few subreddits that just post new music for very niche genres to help find some things I might have missed. I also pull these in via RSS.

I use YouTube for music. Sometimes I type in things like 'retro programming synth music' , 'music while cleaning', modern mixed 90s electronic minimal' etc etc. You get dozens of music and whenever I hear a good song, I checkb the comments for the tracklist. Once every month I find a new song which I add to my like list.

Tried and true: every once in a while I look at Billboard Hot 100 and other ratings. The top pop artists are not necessarily awesome but often further down the list is good stuff not in high rotation on the ‘trending’ lists.

I grab a song I like on Spotify and do the “go to song radio” and it will usually give me some alright stuff. I’ll usually keep playlist of ones I like and add good songs to it.

I pick a genre like "Russian Doomer" or "French Electronica", then listen to the many hours long compilations on YouTube and save the songs I like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_genre

Believe it or not, Wikipedia.

Lately I did a burst of discovery around Japanese electronic music of the 1970s and 1980s such as Yellow Magic Orchestra, Isao Tomita and that in turn turned me on to the composer Claude Debussy.

Dupe:

"Ask HN: How do you discover music?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32835559

8 hours ago, 112 comments

I fell into a hole where Spotify just couldn't recommend me things that I didn't know that I wanted. I ended up building a little app that selects a random album based upon genre, related artist, or something reviewed by a publication.

https://album-mode.party/

Bands like the ones listed only come once upon a time. There is no "new" Nirvana and there never will be. If you're looking for genre, there are plenty of grunge and metal bands to discover, all you have to do is Google "grunge" or "metal."

I use an app called Giraf, which I built [0]. My friends and I use it to share the music (and culture in other mediums, e.g. books and movies) that we've been into lately. When something looks interesting, I can save it and it'll be added to a playlist in my Spotify account. I've found that this async format unlocks a lot of discovery that wouldn't have happened otherwise, because the recommendations wouldn't have risen to the level of sending them directly to each other in a text message.

I've worked on this for a few years now, and haven't really shared it on HN before. Any feedback is very welcome!

[0] https://giraf.app

I'm not a huge fan of spotify or any streaming service for "music discovery" (maybe would've said different a decade ago). But I really like listening to the radio for music discovery - especially handy with the Shazam app. College and local radio stations are quite varied in the playlists so I'd recommend checking them out either on the fm dial or online - given my background I'd recommend KDVS and KALX college stations (available online too) along with "local" station KEXP (available online). KEXP also has a wide assortment of "live in studio" performances available on their website and youtube which can be good for digging more into an artist.

But some of the best songs/artists I've discovered have just been hearing the song somewhere and using Shazam - then spotify to dig more into the artist.

Good luck in your endeavor

Some methods I use:

- Spotify's "Discover Weekly" playlist - it's hit or miss and it gives me a lot of stuff I know about (and have listened to on their platform!). But, they also send me some cool stuff I haven't heard about.

- Genre specific subreddits - broad ones like /r/music aren't great, but more niche subs have a lot of good recommendations.

- Friends that also love music and know what I'm into - this one has the highest signal to noise ratio, by far.

I make sure to avoid apps, streaming, YouTube, and the rest. If I want to find new music I generally read about what musicians I like are listening to.

Payola is an even bigger problem with streaming than it is on the radio, which is, as we all know, trash.

A good way is to select any one artist you like (e.g. the Zambian Band "Amanaz") and then look the members up, the label, the wikipedia entry, the recording engineer etc. These connections are loose enough to let you find some new things, but not so tight that you find only the same things

https://www.jqbx.fm/ Is a good site to listen to and share music with others if you have Spotify. An alternative if you don’t have Spotify is https://turntable.fm/

Bars with live music, nightclubs, music festivals.

I found a lot of new music in the early 2000s with last.fm, their suggestions algorithm was incredible, and I haven't found anything like it ever since, unfortunately.

I discover my new music mostly through friends telling me about their finds.

BBC Essential Mix + Essential Mix Classic. Fortunately the BBC Sounds app is not geoblocked like iPlayer so don't even have to look for alternative methods to listen them.

This is a combo of user error and changing fashion in music. Since there is currently no big "Nirvana" type band, there aren't 100 near-copies floating around.

The suggestions below work for me: Wikipedia entries (band members, sources of cover songs the band does), AllMusic (but ignore the staff reviews), Discogs.

Once you have your "new possible favourite new band" list, Youtube Music or your other favourite streaming service for a listen.

At the left end of the dial