How do you find new music?

[SteveDave]

From my friend Andrew who's got a 16 year old son.

[peanutbutter]

These days it's just rateyourmusic's custom search feature tbh, that and sifting through end of year lists for things I haven't heard of that seem possibly a bit neat. Like, dozens and dozens of them, outright dismissing ones that give the top spot to something I view as a lame choice (e.g. Lemonade, even if it's alright I'm not gonna trust the list beyond that).

[chveik]

yeah pretty much this too

[NJ Uncut]

I do this all the time. especially college stations where the half-asleep amateur DJs ramble on for hours about how they're going to instagram their playlist later while they're having their corn-flakes, & where ten minutes of dead air before anyone notices is not at all unusual. KXLU (USC at loyola marymount) was the first one I looked up because I went there in 2002 with my band & was fascinated by the set up. last night I was listening to its SF equivalent at stanford. I keep LP4 minidiscs or very long 1/4" tapes handy to archive chunks of these things, & shazam things I'm curios about (though a lot of the time, the bands are unsigned, hence the archiving. the bits I want to keep, I'll copy off before re-using the disc/tape/whatever. outside of the UK, the tune-in app still lets you record though you still can't export the files easily.

but the radio-garden site I linked above.... the best use for an old ipad.

Ah I've recently got that Radio Garden app on my (Android) blower - a good shout! Boss little thing, internet radio at its finest. Interface is rollicking too, a map of the earth with radio stations marked by green blips. Hours of fun abound! Arctic Outpost AM 1270, Radio Kiribati, Heart FM...

You've gone the extra mile with archives; what a format Minidisc is by the way!.... I'm merely Soundhounding my finds for later (that step's nebulous depending on what I've found, could be finding the artist on Bandcamp or Soundcloud, could be ripping FLACs through Deezloader).

Must be fascinating to pore through your archives of unsigned bands Dunc.

[NoSleep]

These days it's just rateyourmusic's custom search feature tbh, that and sifting through end of year lists for things I haven't heard of that seem possibly a bit neat. Like, dozens and dozens of them, outright dismissing ones that give the top spot to something I view as a lame choice (e.g. Lemonade, even if it's alright I'm not gonna trust the list beyond that).

I've found one of my favourite Sun Ra albums (Live At Montreux) by looking on RYM for albums that were consistently highly rated even though by a small number (something like that).

...

Lots of the "new" music I have listened to in recent times has been from the 1920's-1950's (discovering the roots of more recent artists that I admire).

The other recent interest is in microtonal music, which isn't really a genre but gets you searching for and listening to anything from avant garde composers to classical indian music as well as some country and blues along the way.

[a duncandisorderly]

Ah I've recently got that Radio Garden app on my (Android) blower - a good shout! Boss little thing, internet radio at its finest. Interface is rollicking too, a map of the earth with radio stations marked by green blips. Hours of fun abound! Arctic Outpost AM 1270, Radio Kiribati, Heart FM...

You've gone the extra mile with archives; what a format Minidisc is by the way!.... I'm merely Soundhounding my finds for later (that step's nebulous depending on what I've found, could be finding the artist on Bandcamp or Soundcloud, could be ripping FLACs through Deezloader).

Must be fascinating to pore through your archives of unsigned bands Dunc.

daunting. I sometimes look at the 'library' at home, which runs to thousands of cassettes, CDs, CDRs, minidiscs, quarter-inch tapes (off-airs, BBC sessions & my band/other friends' own music)... & I realise that even if I stopped working now & sequestered myself with a decent stash & plenty of food & drink, I wouldn't live long enough to get through it all*.

so there's necessarily an element of random, which sometimes throws up surprises- things I haven't heard in decades- or else playing the same thing over & over for a few days. that's without even venturing into the unknown of the internet radio stuff, & tbh it's a welcome distraction when I do.

bit of a hifi nut, which is sometimes at odds with the quality of the streaming, but it means I like to use tape (cassette or reel), minidisc, vinyl... more than I like using files.

(right now there are fifteen cassette decks actually hooked up & useable in my lounge, & three quarter-inch decks... big fuckers, revoxes/studers...)

the really nice stuff is quarter-inch, either things I've recorded myself (my band's studio & live stuff) or dubs that my mate made of various BBC sessions while he worked in the library at broadcasting house. there aren't many of these- couple of dozen- but they're all of the 70s-style straight-to-stereo format that the BBC were so good at. hatfield & the north, national health, kevin ayers, gong, zep, stuff like that. henry cow, even. all dubbed at 7.5 or 15, so it's like they're in the room with you.
of course this is at the opposite extreme to a 284kBs stream coming from 9000 miles away.... but it's all music.

(* looked in itunes quickly- my own band's content, including a bit of unpublished stuff, amounts to over ten days of continuous audio)

[Sebastian Cobb]

Nicam vcr's used to be great for that as well. Especially when freeview added radio. Dead easy way to get The Breezeblock without staying up late.

I think the beeb used them as a cheap way to archive long shows.

[Captain Z]

I find it pretty terrible tbh.

[Norton Canes]

Really disappointed to find that The 405, one of my favourite sites for music reviews, has suddenly called it a day. I found loads of great stuff in its 'latest tracks' section over the last few years.

By contrast I was just looking at The Line Of Best Fit's New Music page. Every bit of text, including the band names, has to be generated by AI, surely. And not very I AI at that.

[RicoMNKN]

I tend to find albumoftheyear.org a pretty good site to find stuff.
It ultimately shows how subjective music reviewing can be, and I wish they'd flag up albums that are dividing the reviewers since that's often the sign of something more interesting.  However, it's easy to browse around and find recent well-reviewed albums in a genre you like.

[phantom_power]

I discover a lot of new music going through the end of year lists of various websites and magazines. I also find the Spotify "Discover Weekly" playlist really good for discovering bands I have never heard of but are up my street. They seem to have a pretty good algorithm for taking my listening habits and finding similar but different artists