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Ask HN: How do you discover music?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you discover music?

#121
Discogs is the ULTIMATE way to discover new gems, from old times as recent stuff. Discogs is more than a platform for buying records. It is the BIGGEST database for music. You have many search tools and you can easily find music by year, style, genre, label, artist, area, combine everything. You have the "Hot", "Most Wanted", "Recent" algorithms that allows you to adapt the kind of stuff you want in your result (If you need to check your classics, go for "Most Collected"). It's really powerfull. It's not the best for listening music on it (lot of links for youtube videos are broken), but from Discogs you can then type the artist on Youtube, Bandcamp or Soundcloud. You can make your own lists and check other peoples lists, going from one track and see familiar music by seeing numerous selections containing this song made by other users. I've been a DJ since 10 years and I tried a lot of platforms and Discogs is the one I'm using the most.

An other way to discover music is to talk with people from your surroundings that you like the music taste and propose to exchange some music. Make some selections of tracks and send them files transfers, sometimes people will be kind and send you back some music they really enjoy.

And we can just simply start discovering new stuff from the songs we already have by checking the other projects of the artists, the labels that released the songs and have hours to spend exploring music that will really fit our tastes.

Re: Ask HN: How do you discover music?

#122
Twitter accounts of musicians and music magazines, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, word of mouth, Shazam for random things I hear, serendipitous finds whem bin diving at new or used record shops, international internet radio and sometimes good old fm radio... never spotify

Re: Ask HN: How do you discover music?

#123
As answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32840864

Usually it's one of these: - Spotify's "Discover Weekly" playlist.

- Spotify's "Enhance Playlist" feature applied to my playlists (including the "Liked Songs" playlist).

- Friends (lots of them love music, some of them are musicians).

- Live DJ Sets on YT.

- Music compilation videos on YT.

- Artists I follow on Instagram. Some make music in niche genres and started their movements, which onboard new interesting artists from time to time. I found several cool emerging artists this way, to answer your question.

Re: Ask HN: How do you discover music?

#124

I've been involved in punk/hardcore community for decades now and I've got my sources : friends, blogs, forums, last fm follows... For anything else I listen to the radio, especially fip.fr who expose me to Music I wouldn't think I could love. Also, i mainly listen to albums, never playlists, automated or curated ones. I don't believe in recommendation algos and don't feel the need to get into that way of discovering…

French mainstream radio is good, and FIP is very good on that list. I like to listen to it from time to time to just realize how much eclectic genres there are (I am 'ot really into music, just listening casually).

Another gem is the music played when the national radios are on strike. This is a special curated playlist just for that occasion (or a technical disaster) and the music is really good.

I once switched on France Culture and there was sick music, thought "great they are on strike" (yes, quite an unusual reaction) and the host was back and said "to those who just joined, we are not on strike, just listening to some nice music"

Re: Ask HN: How do you discover music?

#125

I've been involved in punk/hardcore community for decades now and I've got my sources : friends, blogs, forums, last fm follows... For anything else I listen to the radio, especially fip.fr who expose me to Music I wouldn't think I could love. Also, i mainly listen to albums, never playlists, automated or curated ones. I don't believe in recommendation algos and don't feel the need to get into that way of discovering…

French mainstream radio is good, and FIP is very good on that list. I like to listen to it from time to time to just realize how much eclectic genres there are (I am 'ot really into music, just listening casually). Another gem is the music played when the national radios are on strike. This is a special curated playlist just for that occasion (or a technical disaster) and the music is really good. I once switched on…

sick → such :)

Re: Ask HN: How do you discover music?

#126
post #10

I make multiple Spotify playlists, each dedicated to a particular type of music I like (country, electronica, folk, house, etc). Spotify Discover seems to work pretty well for me. Yesterday it surfaced an outrun track featuring both guitar and sax solos, which... is pretty on-brand for ethbr0. Having diverse and varied playlists seems to help? I've had friends complain it doesn't work for them, so I must do something…

>I make multiple Spotify playlists, each dedicated to a particular type of music

This is the correct way to make use of the so-called 'algorithm'.

I say 'so-called' because I know the algorithm to be dumb/blind. Pick something obscure on a playlist, you will get tour own recommendations back. iTunes is the same. You are gaming the recommended list correctly.

Other peoples lists are even better (when they are good ie thoughtful, lists).

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