Ask Lemmy

I check the overall best Album list of Rolling Stone and some genre Lists for each year. If the stuff is on Bandcamp I usually buy it after listening and liking an Album.

120 Minutes reruns.

Spotify is still good to me with recommendations based on what I have previously liked.

But also a lot of video memes will have bangers I seek out.

Used to use Spotify pretty much exclusively, and by now their algorithm is pretty good at giving me songs I like. However, Spotify as a company sucks, and also spotify's shuffle is shit (the magic shuffle or whatever they call it is even worse IMO).

Nowadays I mostly listen to mixes on YouTube and internet radio for discovering music, but I also find the occasional song on reddit. When I like something I buy it on bandcamp to support the artists I listen to.

YT Music. For new stuff... IDK. Osmosis? I mostly listen to 80s/90s stations on the radio.

I have 125k songs in plexamp library and it's great at recommending and matching stuff I'd like. but I listen to everything.

KEXP on YouTube. Best radio

I discover music through playing video games and watching YouTube primarily, although I want to use Bandcamp more so I can pay the artists and get higher quality files instead of doing YouTube to MP3.

I listen to music in 3 ways, I'm weird:

1. Just the normal playlist that is slowly growing with time.
2. Using Music Speed Changer to change the pitch and speed of music on my playlist, giving it a new perspective.
3. Going through my playlist, but each song has a weight assigned to it. Some are quite common and others are super rare. It creates a sense of mystery.

For listening, it's either on Auxio on my phone (files on device over streaming), a few yt playlists that have some of my favorite songs (some downloaded, some not). That, or I have a few songs on NewPipe history that aren't saved anywhere else.

On my desktop, I use either Strawberry Music Player for my audio files and VLC for CDs (I have less than 10, but that's besides the point). Some of those CDs for some reason will just shut off after a few minutes into certain songs if I try to play it on the '92 Sony CDMan. I think it's just an issue with the CDs more than the CD player itself.

As for how I discover new music, it's usually from yt recommendations based on what I listen to, whatever catches my eyes. That or maybe it's music I find on OpenGameArt or maybe I'm looking up something like a certain vocaloid song on VocaDB or yt or on rare occasion NicoVideo and finding a cover of it or another song from the original producer.

Edit: Sony Discman, not CdMan

Listen: FLAC files on my android phone using Foobar2000. Or for serious listening, FLAC files on an Astell & Kern with nice headphones.

Discover: Friends, family, Bandcamp. Bandcamp is great because the bands have the option to recommend their own favourites, and if they don't, Bandcamp does the "other supporters of this band listen to this" thing. Bandcamp collections are public, so find out who paid money for an album you like and see what else they bought.

And now for the weird one: Goodwill. Not just browsing used CDs for treasures, but listen to their overhead music (especially around Halloween). There's a surprisingly good mix of random stuff playing. I've Shazam-ed more music there than anywhere else.

Spotify auto-generated playlists

Local community radio, streaming recommendations, opening acts at shows and festivals my kids and coworkers.

I listen mostly by streaming but radio here is still good because of the local not for profit station.

My early years crate digging, than myself diggin, than Kazaa - till eventually my library is now so vast and eclectic that the Spotify algorithm does the job for me (mostly).

Though the best trick to find new music - look for your favourite band’s favourite bands. That’s honestly the fastest way to find new and interesting things.

Minnesota public radio has some great stations. The DJs read the sponsor spots, so no traditional "commercials" with sirens and megaphones.

https://www.thecurrent.org/

Primarily listen on Spotify. I try to expand my horizons using their discovery playlists or artist/track radio for songs I already like, but they've got me heavily pigeonholed into late 90's college rock and early/mid 00's pop-punk....which is harsh but fair.

I occasionally check out place like Bandcamp or Tapefear for some rut busters. Most recently, Bandcamp turned me on to Irish hip hop artist Denise Chaila, which was a welcome surprise.

After spending a year trying to go back to curating my own local library of high quality FLAC files, I just found it easier to pay for Spotify. After signing up I found at least 3 bands, one of which has become my new favorite.

Favourites currently are:

• Internet radio. Especially radiofreefedi.net which features music from people on the fediverse. I especially like their comfy channel. #radiofreefedi #RFF

• Music podcasts. The Add To Playlist podcast from the BBC is my favourite. Each track they add is inspired by the previous one. Loads of great music, plus interesting guest musicians talking about music history, theory and vibes.

• ViMusic. This is an open source front end app for YouTube music on android. No payment, adds etc. You can get it on f-droid. Found a few cool tracks via the algo but not as many as previous options.

I have to say though that, like the boomers who went before me, I feel that music in general has become worse. I'm blaming the 'winner takes all' effect of commercial streaming platforms for the narrowing of artistic culture and the debasement of musicians.

How do you listen to music?

I use RiMusic. It's a YT Music fronted, look it up on F-Droid.

How do you discover music?

• Various films (especially James Gunn's)
• Wikipedia
• YT Music "For you" section and "Radio" feature

I'm VERY old school.

OTA radio

Youtube - search for my genre(s)

Wikipedia (starting here and winding down a wiki-hole)

HardRadio

I use Spotify while driving, and while I'm usually disappointed by Discover Weekly, it does recommend gold from time to time. I would've never discovered Destiny Potato if it didn't.

Ears bro

I may sound old, but I still use Pandora and it has been one of my best avenues for new music and artists for the last 15 years I've had my account. It knows my tastes very well at this point and the recommendations are almost always spot on.

I watch The Needle Drop on YouTube. He's a music reviewer. I don't necessarily agree with the idea of being so critical of an art form that's so subjective, but following his channel is a great way to stay up to date on noteworthy new albums coming out.

Reccomendations from friends, spotify. Whenever i doscover a new genre i tend to read the wikipedia article on it‘s history which will tell me who some of the pioneering artists of said subgenre are. What i love about spotify is i can listen to playlists for a certain genre made by other people and not the crap that spotify throws at me which are biased by my listening history.

I used to use Spotify out of laziness, after a recent price hike I switched to local mp3 playback, I'm discovering music through radio, there's always something playing at work, at home, in a car, trying to diversify stations I hear, sometimes social media pops a new song in my ear

My ways have already been discussed, except for NTS Radio, some of the best new music I've listened too were on there.

Mostly YouTube recommendations and long compilation videos people have posted to YouTube.

Listen? Stream my own collection from media server.

Discover? I asked friends and relatives to send me mix CDs instead of presents. I listen to broadcast radio when I rent a car and sometimes at home; Chirp, the Chicago Independent Radio Project is especially nice because they don't have ads and DO have personality. Every so often I punch a few songs into a new Pandora station and spin the wheel. I snoop my kid's Spotify account to make sure that what they're listening to is appropriate (has to have a little talk when I found some ICP about misogyny, for example) and to their mortification shamelessly take whatever I like.

I have a Spotify playlist consisting of songs to download and add to the media server; that represents my "new music" since I paused buying it during the pandemic belt-tightening. It's over two days long. But with Google Play Music dead, I don't even know where to buy MP3s these days.

Mostly through friends, Bandcamp, sometimes BBC Radio 6. And catching random bands at festivals and liking them.

I downloaded what I liked. Now I am stuck with them

I have a Signal group with friends, one of whom listens to all new metal releases and gives reviews of the new releases.