[POLL] How do you discover new music?

Just curious about how people here discover new music. If you do, of course.

 

Random chance.

 

I get a lot from reading sleeve notes, and checking out a labels releases. So for example, I have an interest in John Cage, which led me to David Tudor. A Tudor release came out on New World Records. I checked New World Records web site and read about Paul Lansky, and so on. I'd say 95% is found this way.

Another 5% or so goes on "Suggested for You" on sites such as Amazon. I can click that for ages, cycling around various titles it suggests. It's surprisingly good at finding titles I'd of missed.

 

I follow artists and fans on Bandcamp, so I can see what's in their collections. And I register interest in certain genres. Eventually this leads to a feed overflowing daily with new recommendations.

--Geoff

 

Who doesn't want new music?

I usually just dive into a streaming service or YouTube and swim around, though word of mouth sometimes works (depends whose mouth!) and Bandcamp is great, with its previews and I'm happy to just lay money down there and then for the right artist.

I have SoundHound on my phone, so if music is played and I don't know it, I fire it up and it tells me what song it is - which has led to some amazing discoveries, be it in a bar, or in front of the TV. They're saved for my later perusal.

 

Through streaming. Nowadays this site helps a lot.

 

Sirius XMU
Amazon - other albums bought by folks who bought this
Late night TV performances
SH.tv "new music" threads
Other: serendipity/luck

 

I discover new music at the radio station I work at, KUTX in Austin. Also my weekly playlists for "Discover Weekly" and "Release Radar" on Spotify helps.

 

Music new to me. Might be decades old. YouTube, whatever Ace, Eric, Dutton Vocalion happen to be releasing.

Radio in other people's houses. I haven't got radio or TV.

 

Mostly online. For new Metal, Angry Metal Guy, Shreddit, Uber Rock and Sea of Tranquility are my regular haunts. Amazon reviews help too.

 

One great way I've found is radio station YouTube pages. These two here have live performances all the time, very often from people I've never heard of.

KEXP
The Current

So it's very easy to just check out a few of the things they have posted, and if you like it just check out some of of the artist's stuff right there on youtube.


another good place I've found is reddit. specifically this sub r/ListenToThis: The New Music Machine

 

Forums like this are very helpful.
I also follow musicians. eg if Richard Innes is playing drums on a recording then I am interested in listening to it.

 

I put "Streaming", but to me that means Shoutcast and Youtube (esp. "recommended for you" is a source of pleasant surprises), not any of the subscription based services such as Spotify or Amazon.

 

You didn't include podcasts in your poll choices.

Somebody said "Random chance", which is basically how I do it. I hear a few new tracks per week via Little Steven's Underground Garage show (I no longer have Sirius, alas). My local public radio station has a five hour block on the weekends of a two hour folk/bluegrass show, an hour-long blues program, then two hours of roots music. These shows are mostly old stuff, but often new to me

I'm trying to get back into listening to the WFMU podcasts "Teenage Wasteland" (similar to LSUG) and "Soulsville".

Then there's online mentions: just a couple of days ago I discovered the power pop classic "Lovin' You Ain't Easy" by Michel Pagliaro thanks to a mention/link here on the SH forums.

 

I actively seek new music ,because it isn't always going to come to me via radio,magazine or TV. There are only ever a tiny percentage of what's out there being flaunted to the 'public' especially where major labels are concerned.
I like to dig deep ,with the internet nowadays we're at a huge advantage.
I like to draw up a list of worldwide radio stations like Surfmusic and hop from one to another see what's out there in all corners of the world ,makes for interesting listening

 

Aside from 95% of the general population? Nobody

The vast majority of people only listen to the music of their "party years". They are not interested in what came before, or after. In fact most aren't even interested in stuff from their youth they've never heard before. They want the familiar. This phenomenon is what has given us Classic Rock Radio.

 

Pretty much a bit of each of the first 6 options..

Often I’ll look up old albums from the 70s and 80s that I never gave the time of day to back then. This is surprisingly fruitful... It’s amazing how much good stuff you miss I thought I was on the ball then too.

 

That phenomenon has been given to us by marketeing.

 

Ditto.

 

Since I got into listening to recorded music in my early teens, I've been an avid reader of CD booklets. And the names of the guest musicians whose playing I liked were always the ones I would look out for in my next visits to the record store or watch for to appear in mailorder catalogues and / or the music press back in the day, and later, when the internet arrived, through online searches.

Nowadays, I still do those websearch sessions but the ongoing "search engine optimisation" has made things difficult because, for example if you google "Paul McCartney" "new album", that will always lead you to the "New" album which is by now the old album. New release websites such as pauseandplay and the discography databases of allmusic and discogs have helped a lot throughout the years because they also contain a database of album credits. Artist websites can also be rather helpful but in general, they are not nearly as well-maintained as the databases.
And then, there are of course music forums like this one which help with alerting me of new releases by artists I already know of.
And there is also word of mouth, of course, which I actively contribute to by playing stuff I have found through the above mentioned processes on my 1 hour long web radio show each month.

 

Public and college radio works well for me

 

I see who inspired or is inspired by the musicians I currently listen to or bands with members are in other bands

 

Radio remains my primary source of new music discovery, both commercial and non-commercial terrestrial radio and satellite radio. Then digital word of mouth in forums like this one and online news sources and review sites and artists and label mailing lists and the like. I don't read any music print pubs anymore, but I do turn to the online presences of those as well as the online presences of broadcast news orgs for info about new music.

Although I use music streaming a lot, I pretty much never discover music that way. I go to a streaming platform with something in mind I want to hear. I never use the recommendation engines or editorial recommendations (though when I used Pandora, I found that it's unusual musical algorithm based recommendation engine surfaces music I didn't know and that I did like at a high rate; the social and even editorial ones on platforms like Spotify, or even those of e-tailers like Amazon, are completely valueless to me and tend to surface music I already know or know about and have already decided I'm not terribly interested in).

 

You also didn’t include...here!

 

Streaming services primarily.

Radio is a small percentage (some decent stations here, mainly used during my work commute), some word of mouth and this forum (Best of 2018 thread is a great read).