I especially hate how the curating institutions are so dominated by English and Amerikan artists.
Some music communities are better for this than others. Metal has a million resources and people from all over the world. You can get like blogs, podcasts, archives of bands, relationship charts, theory books. People (outside of Reddit) will give you a bunch of generally good recommendations.
Meanwhile classical is basically locked behind randomly cruising YouTube, looking for old LP records at higher-end music shops, and music education.
Any sort of folk music has basically nothing unless you specifically live in the place that folk music is from.
I like '80s/'90s synthy new age music and that’s got basically nothing outside RYM and whatever Vaporwave artists are sampling, or if it’s a side project of someone who became a movie or game music composer.
it’s 2024, no one is forcing you to listen to the mainstrem. there are so many choices out there, youtube and soundcloud still has great new stuff and non-anglo too. the streaming services however are the worst. with translation apps and stuff the world is your oyster. don’t forget soulseek too. check out the album ‘dunya’ by Mustafa for something a little different, still English though.
I actually recently got into the habit to listening to old NPR tiny desk concerts episodes on YouTube during Work or shorter drives. Discovered quite a few artists I normally would never have listened to. But sadly it is limited to a bunch of genres, so no stuff like metall, etc
For a little while algorithms actually made it easier to find cool new music but now they’ve all gone back to profit profit profit.
Music needs a tiktok algorithm.
It wasn’t the algorithms, it was the external resources that people were using that led people to find albums that boosted them in algorithms. You’re not gunna’ algorithm you’re way out of mass-conformity and blandness.
I don’t see why a tiktok algo couldn’t effectively find what you like and what you don’t like just as well as it does for video content based on how much of the video you watch, what you skip, whether you “like”, etc.
Yes it’ll steer people that like mass-conformity and blandness towards mass-conformity and blandness. It will steer people that don’t like those things towards other stuff though.
You need a more holistic, complex view of why people listen to music other than viewing some people as categorically different and ignoring the relationship between them and the art they’re shown and more specifically the contexts of it. Borderline techbro understanding of art and humanity.
Rude
View people as something more than dopamine sponges connected to a hive computer.
Says the person doing the most uncharitable interpretation possible without engaging in any conversation about it in order to be an absolute dick? Fuck off? Look in the fucking mirror.
The best music curation algorithm was on Google Play Music back before they canned it, and, hot insider information here: they didn’t actually make a music algorithm, their team was full of music nerds who kept making playlists, and they just made a bunch of folders of their nonsense.
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I actually have a routine where I require myself to listen to at least one album I’ve never heard before every single day. It took a while for it to become a habit, but doing so has helped me discover a lot of music I like. When listening, I often write down tracks that I’d like to revisit in particular. I either listen to 1 LP (full studio albums) or 2 EPs (extended plays) to meet the daily “requirement.” The problem then becomes knowing which of these albums you want to listen to, but for me, it’s easy to narrow it down by genre. I like a lot of progressive metal/djent projects for instance, so I can go diving for those, a lot of which are instrumental, and I fuck with that too.
You should post what you listen to so I can listen along
I might start doing that!
That’s incredible. I was writing out a lot about how it’s one of those things where if you’re not great at it, you can just glom on to somebody who is, but was having some difficulty with the wording and scrolled down. So are you feeding @Gorillatactics album recommendations now and if so, can the rest of us get in on that?
I could…
I got hit hard by the “locked into music you listened to in your early-mid 20s” thing. I blame what.cd collapsing and being too busy to keep up with new music/go to shows.
Honestly my music taste was heavily influenced by video game soundtracks from games I played as a kid and teenager. Rise Against, TV On The Radio, Queens Of The Stone Age, etc, I heard them all first on video game soundtracks for the Need For Speed and Burnout games. So I guess that’s how I discovered music in the past? I definitely didn’t get it from my parents or classmates.
Listening to the same songs on repeat for 8 years gang.
You’re not wrong. I always hated the cultural imperialism that kept me from enjoying music from the world over.
That said, if you follow a college radio station or find a niche subculture, stuff opens up pretty fast from there. While Bandcamp isn’t the best in terms of quality, upon discovering a new genre just search there based on tag. For example, the anarcho-punk genre tag has a lot of Slavic stuff.
Check out KEXP.org they have tons of shows that feature artists from all over the world. Great way to constantly discover new music.
DI.fm has a lot of new / not mainstream artists. I’ve found a few artists on indie mixes of “inspired by” movie / game. On that note Overclocked.net is another way. Game music seems to have a few good ones. So indie game studios would have a lot of relatively unknown artists that don’t get a lot of attention. Soundtracks are usually up on YT.
There’s a radio station in the area that also has a strong indie upcomer musicians, but itxs really hit or miss because it’s a grab bag of stuff which may or may not click and 80% of the time they play “traditional” stuff.
Find a station near some college town too. That’s usually where a lot of artists get their start and college DJs are promoting indie stuff all the time. Websites and broadcasts.
Lot of the stuff is just out of the main stream way and you have to seek. But there’s a rule of the universe that if you seek, what you seek will seek you back. So I hope whatever itch you need scratching finds you.
Cost/benefit. Seems to me like investing a lot of time, and (somehow) being vulnerable (or on-edge?), just to find nothing… most of the time.
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