I follow a bunch of artists and labels there, and get notifications when new stuff get published by them. If I find a new artist, I usually look them up on Bandcamp, and follow the label too, looking through whatever other stuff they published.
If I find a really small artist on Bandcamp, I usually look through which Bandcamp users have supported the artist, and look through what else they follow/collected, been finding some gems this way too, but takes a bit more effort.
Bandcamp also has something called "Bandcamp Fridays" (https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays-update) where more of what you pay go to the artists. I usually save up what I want to buy until next Bandcamp Friday and then go on a shopping spree based on my list.
Love bandcamp! To find new stuff I use the bandcamp search tags. Filtering by city and some niche genres (electroacoustic, drone) has found me some real treasures. Pop them in the wishlist, and then purchase the ones I can't live without. Directly communicating with the artists about their work is also pretty great.
The thing missing for me from bandcamp is the "I just want some music I like" button. It is much more of a curated album listing experience. I would love to be able to make/share some long playlists on Bandcamp.
Another vote for bandcamp. Definitely higher effort, but also higher reward in my opinion. One of my favourite things to do is sit on the sofa with my headphones on and actively listen to a few new bandcamp discoveries. It's really fun finding a new musician deep down a rabbit hole and having to try to decide for myself whether this is good music that I want to listen to again. Sometimes it's not, and that makes this method more time consuming, but I've also found most of my favourite musicians using this method.
Another great source is the Bandcamp Weekly with Andrew Jervis. If you're looking for something curated that is a little less effort, this is a great option.
Another vote for bandcamp. If you are into more indie bands, try to find their label on bandcamp and subscribe to it. Many of these indie labels specialize in a very specific genre of music, and you'll often find great stuff from your favorite band's label mates.
You could say "Spotify's algorithm", but you need to help it. It is more their links between artists that I use, and the general availability of a lot of artists. (Not as many as on YouTube.)
If I have found a lot of great, new music this week, next week's "Discover Weekly" and the albums recommended in "Home" are better.
Most of the music I find is by looking at the tracks I'm already playing: Maybe I only heard one song from an artist, maybe I only ever listened to their old stuff, or maybe I only ever listened to their new stuff. Maybe it's a remix, and the featured artist is the one I like, so I listen to their top songs.
I've learned that whatever one-hit wonder people have -- the song that everyone plays 10 times more often than their second-most popular song -- is often a good choice if you're assessing a musician. But if you like them, it's also likely that your favorite song isn't everyone else's.
I mostly listen to electronic music without vocals, so I can play a lot of random music while I work, and occasionally something sticks out in a good or a bad way.
Last year I spent 65000 minutes listening to music on Spotify.
I make extensive use of the Spotify algorithm to discover the music I want to listen to based on my own idea of what it should sound like. For example if I want some music with a house beat but folky feel to it, then I'll create a playlist and 'seed' it with some house music and some folk music; about 10 tracks total. Then I'll scroll to the very bottom of the playlist and go through the Recommended Songs. Spotify is often pretty good at finding an 'average' of the different songs added to the playlist. I add the songs that fit my expectations to the playlist which further refines the recommendations. After I've added about 10 songs I'll remove the songs I used to seed the recommendations.
Sometimes this method doesn't work because maybe the 'average' you're looking for doesn't exist or Spotify hasn't connected the dots. Sometimes a track in the 'seed' can dominate the recommendations so try removing tracks that seem to skew the results or adding more from the opposite genre.
I also make use of “song radio”, i.e. auto-generate a playlist based on a single song.
I might call your method “playlist radio”, and I don’t use it as often.
However, judging by how many songs on these recommender radios that I’ve already liked, I think that recommendations are somehow always based on a vector.
I never really liked exploring music on Spotify the back catalog was non existent for DJs putting out amazing stuff in the 90s and 00s. You get like 2010 all the way to current year. Worthless.
Do you need algorithmically curated music if you're only interested in music that is decades old, especially DJ remixes? Looking through historic DJ set list or even just listening to new sets from old DJs seems like it would be much faster.
Spotify is great for recommendations of licensed content that is new. I rarely feel there is some small or big hit I'm missing in the genres I like, but it is heavily supplanted with the use of SoundCloud for sets and music that will never legally be licensed and on the platform.
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 music and leave that passion to a company. I always loved to dig into stores crates or read reviews and I fear the infinite of choice from streaming platforms or being stuck in a bubble. There's like something "unpure" and Betrayal to how I used to love music in Spotify recommandations and the way it pushes always something new. It may sounds puerile or posh but that's just how I feel, i'm very oldschool and conservative regarding this topic.
"Late Risers Club" on WMBR (MIT radio) is pretty good. They're daily 10-12 EST, but archive the shows for 2 weeks. Its less pure "punk" than it was but (Some DJs have more rock like tendencies...), but its still great.
I Second FIP, here is the official radio and secondary web radios around one theme (Groove, Jazz, Metal, World Music, New EPs that were published recently etc.) all in one page in free access https://www.radiofrance.fr/fip/titres-diffuses
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"
Recommendation algorithms are mostly garbage, I find most of it through RYM by browsing the charts / clicking on people's profiles and seeing their highly rated albums. Human curated > machine curated still.
I wholeheartedly agree with human curation especially on the long term outlook. Sure the algorithm gives you a bunch of new stuff in the first few months but after a while you’re just stuck in a minima. Also I think my taste evolves quickly enough but algorithms box you in to what your preferences were.
I may not like everything in a human curated list but I’m exposed to more things that can have sudden jumps from my current localization.
There's a website called Every Noise At Once [0] which contains a list of almost every genre of music in the world. Each genre has a linked Spotify playlist with a few hundred songs of the given genre. And once I'm in that genre, I mostly just let Spotify algorithms do their thing to get me new stuff.
>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).
I took a language class with a large number of immigrants. Over the course of the semester, I'd ask each student about their favorite music from their home country. It's been fantastic. I've learned about whole genres of music, and expanded my listening horizons considerably.
One good tool that replicates this process a bit is https://radiooooo.com where you can listen to typical playlists from countries and even from a chosen decade (more or less).
If you've got any recommendations for someone who has been listening to Rust in Peace for decades and can't find any good albums after Trendkill, I'd love a suggestion. Thanks.
Are you familiar with Metalstorm? Pretty fantastic site for all things metal music related. The 'New Releases' and 'Upcoming Releases' section under 'News and Events' at the top would provide something similar to your Wikipedia page.
Readit News
I follow a bunch of artists and labels there, and get notifications when new stuff get published by them. If I find a new artist, I usually look them up on Bandcamp, and follow the label too, looking through whatever other stuff they published.
If I find a really small artist on Bandcamp, I usually look through which Bandcamp users have supported the artist, and look through what else they follow/collected, been finding some gems this way too, but takes a bit more effort.
Bandcamp also has something called "Bandcamp Fridays" (https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays-update) where more of what you pay go to the artists. I usually save up what I want to buy until next Bandcamp Friday and then go on a shopping spree based on my list.
The thing missing for me from bandcamp is the "I just want some music I like" button. It is much more of a curated album listing experience. I would love to be able to make/share some long playlists on Bandcamp.
Another great source is the Bandcamp Weekly with Andrew Jervis. If you're looking for something curated that is a little less effort, this is a great option.
You could say "Spotify's algorithm", but you need to help it. It is more their links between artists that I use, and the general availability of a lot of artists. (Not as many as on YouTube.)
If I have found a lot of great, new music this week, next week's "Discover Weekly" and the albums recommended in "Home" are better.
Most of the music I find is by looking at the tracks I'm already playing: Maybe I only heard one song from an artist, maybe I only ever listened to their old stuff, or maybe I only ever listened to their new stuff. Maybe it's a remix, and the featured artist is the one I like, so I listen to their top songs.
I've learned that whatever one-hit wonder people have -- the song that everyone plays 10 times more often than their second-most popular song -- is often a good choice if you're assessing a musician. But if you like them, it's also likely that your favorite song isn't everyone else's.
I mostly listen to electronic music without vocals, so I can play a lot of random music while I work, and occasionally something sticks out in a good or a bad way.
Last year I spent 65000 minutes listening to music on Spotify.
Sometimes this method doesn't work because maybe the 'average' you're looking for doesn't exist or Spotify hasn't connected the dots. Sometimes a track in the 'seed' can dominate the recommendations so try removing tracks that seem to skew the results or adding more from the opposite genre.
I might call your method “playlist radio”, and I don’t use it as often.
However, judging by how many songs on these recommender radios that I’ve already liked, I think that recommendations are somehow always based on a vector.
Spotify is great for recommendations of licensed content that is new. I rarely feel there is some small or big hit I'm missing in the genres I like, but it is heavily supplanted with the use of SoundCloud for sets and music that will never legally be licensed and on the platform.
https://wmbr.org/cgi-bin/show?id=6785
they post there set lists to "Track-blaster". They have a "listen" button if its within the 2 week archive period.
here is last mondays show: https://track-blaster.com/wmbr/playlist.php?id=47208
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"
I may not like everything in a human curated list but I’m exposed to more things that can have sudden jumps from my current localization.
[0] https://everynoise.com/
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 different.
(Doom Flamingo - Domingo's Drive, if anyone's curious https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0IUJtUBek )
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).
One good tool that replicates this process a bit is https://radiooooo.com where you can listen to typical playlists from countries and even from a chosen decade (more or less).
I listen to metal, so I'm frequently visiting this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_in_heavy_metal_music
https://metalstorm.net/home/