I used to discover a lot of new music on Youtube, actually.
If you watched a music video you liked, the algorithm recommended related stuff, but also threw you a curveball with <1000 views once in a while.
I stumbled upon a lot of great bands that way.
But nowadays, 3 videos in it’ll all be AI slop, so I’m open to new ideas and willing to pay for a service, too.
Decided to start paying for Qobuz amd its been a great time so far! Audio quality is top notch, and their focus on exploring individuals/bands albums are very good. Id recommend giving the service a go, they also pay artists a much better share compared to Spotify…
YouTube, I go country by country, from period to period. I even have my own favourite medieval piece of music!
- Pitchfork and AOTY websites are is usually good. I’ll look at Last FM webpage too on the music tab to see what’s new.
- I’m subscribed to Qobuz and get a daily and a weekly playlist that bring things up that I’d never heard of.
internet radio.
A mix of BBC radio 6 and recommendations from my cousin who works in the music industry. I can’t give you my cousin’s details, but radio 6 has a great range of music from some of the DJs.
New music fix on weekday evenings is perfect whilst preparing dinner.
+1 for BBC Radio 6, and honourable mention for ABC Triple J which is kind-of the Australian equivalent.
YouTube music is still pretty good for me, the canned playlists sometimes turn up good bands I’ve not heard of, and recommendations about as good as they ever were, not great but good.
But there is a community radio station here with a variety of shows, a couple are ‘alternative’ and those DJs have good taste and stay on top of new stuff.
Also opening bands at shows, and sometimes at yoga class, oddly.
Used to be from friends.
Then it was Spotify since it had a good recommendation system (it doesn’t anymore) based on what I already liked.
Now it’s mostly the “what am I listening to” app on my phone while watching meme videos and what people share on Lemmy. All the music sharing communities here have pretty good taste.
c/ObscureMusic and the music communities on BeeHaw and .world.
Bamdcamp daily, people i follow on bandcamp, warez websites and features and collaborations
https://krvm.org/ Radio station in Eugene OR (USA). Lots of new music during their daytime hours, specialty music in their evenings (recorded, available for two weeks). If you like, please support!
Radio.garden is a website that lets you move a map around and connect to online radio stations all over the planet.
Occasionally I go on there and just start scrolling around and listening to a bunch of different stuff to see what’s playing.
About two years ago, I encountered Marius Ziska’s cover of Naeveran, I know it’s like well over a decade old, but it was new to me. It was amazing. And I never would have found it had not been on radio garden.
Pretty randomly. I’m very picky about what I listen to, I’m very reluctant to listen to stuff recommended by my friends etc. I mostly stumble upon new stuff. Either I hear a cool song on a tv-show, like Golden Brown by The Stranglers in Clarksons Farm, or a collaboration with a artist that I already listen to, like happened when I found out about Têtes Raides through Yann Tiersen.
But me being weird about how and when I find music is a pretty pointless thing to talk about since I think most people don’t do things the way I do. I’d recommend making a Last.fm account. Not only does it make lists of what you listen to, it has that “similar artists” thing. I use it mostly to have a list of stuff I’ve listened to, because I like lists. My last.fm account is the oldest account I have (now that google doesn’t let me use my gmail anymore lol), I’ve had it since 2005. Its pretty fun to go check what I listened to in February 2007 or something. I can see where my teenage relationship breakups were, based on HIM being the most listened to artist of a month lol
I tend to follow bands and musicians I like and check out who else they play music with.
e.g. I go to their shows and if I like the the other bands playing I tend to check them out later and buy their music on Bandcamp. Then from there I’ll also follow the socials of all those bands so when they mention other bands, or if they’re going on tour with other bands, or playing music fests with other bands, then I check out those bands too.
I hate social media / Instagram but every once in a while the algorithm will mention something worth checking out, kind of rare but it happens.
Seems to work for me, if anything now I have too much music to check out and not enough time to listen to it all haha.
Spotify recommendations.
I can recomend moderated Internet-/DAB-Radio like “egoFM”, or “byteFM”.
Or Bands of Newcomerfestivals like “Ab geht die Lutzi”, “Bunnycow”, “Tollwood”, or whatever is near to you.
Instead of YT you can use NewPipe, or freeTube, or a good add-blocker.
