Hey guys,

So long story short, I need some new music on my playlist.

Its just a matter of a personal goal of mine. To discover as many new things as possible.

Especially music. I might not be able to watch or read new stuff in awhile. So I at least need completely fresh music.

Question is, I find myself gravitating towards the same kind of music or genre. I want something fresh.

How do you guys go about discovering new music? Outside of reccomendations from friends and the like

 

Honestly I‘ve always been a big fan of Pandora radio. I think I’ve been using it about as long as DLP.

I know Spotify has a radio algorithm as well, but in the many times I‘ve tested it, my personal experience is that it’s not nearly as good at sticking to a particular genre or style of music that I‘m looking for for a given station.

My best results for customizing stations has been to only “like“ a song if it stands out as a perfect example of what I‘m looking for, and to only dislike along the same lines.

Songs that I really enjoy but don’t match the station get a bookmark or a new station + a dislike on the origin station.

Eventually the station will start to repeat songs a little too often, at which point you can change the radio settings to ”Discover” or “New Releases”, or a few other options that lets me carefully introduce more variety.

It’s not perfect but it’s what works for me.

 

Trawling through other people's Spotify playlists and if I find something I like, I'll end up going through whatever music that artist has produced.

 

I've been using the Spotify DJ a lot recently. It's less good at introducing new genres and better at recommending songs in genres you already like. Have found a lot of cool stuff using it.

 

Ever year, NPR (the folks who bring you Tiny Desk Concerts) puts out a list of the best 50 albums and best 100 songs of the year. Every major genre is on there. The rankings matter less to me than the sheer volume of great music to peruse. You can easily find playlists of these lists on Spotify, but I prefer to browse their "best songs" list directly (they post a YouTube video above every blurb) because I like reading their takes for every single pick, even when I disagree. The middle of the list (where I'm less likely to have heard something) is often more interesting to me than the top rankers. It's a fun thing to glance at and having playing while you're doing dishes or laundry.

Lots of publications put out lists like these, and in fact there's even a website that aggregates all major ones.

 

Thanks, a lot guys, I will definitely check out the NPR list and Spotify DJ (although I am striving to discover music outside my bubble of preferences)

 

I've tended to use the continuous playing feature from Apple Music. I'm bad at trying to listen to new music, but I will put on an album and then just let apple continue to play what it considers to be similar music.

Has worked quite well, I've found a bunch of stuff like that.

 

https://www.metal-archives.com/

 

30% fantano, 30% fantano's twitter/reddit, 40% random spotify playlists
edit - also some older p4k reviews/lists