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Comment by omega3 | Hacker News Reader

Slightly of-topic but how do you discover new music to listen to?

Slowly and gradually. The music I love, I love. I don't like playing chase.

So sometimes they played a show/concert with an artist I already like. Sometimes it just comes up in the YouTube feed. Sometimes somebody points me to something and it takes.

I've been trying an experiment lately.

I took a few local venues that I like, and put the top song from each of their headliners for the next month into a spotify playlist, then just listened on shuffle while I was doing something else. Occasionally a song jumps out, and like that! I've discovered a new artist I like, and I can go to their upcoming show to boot!

Same way I have for the past 30 years. I listen from time to time to stations that play the kind of music I like. Sometimes I check out various places that have top 100 charts. If I find something I like, I go get it and add it to my collection. Rerun the script and resync my devices.

> I listen from time to time to stations that play the kind of music I like.

You're lucky! In my area, there are no such stations. All of the stations are essentially top 40 (in each of the major genres -- top 40 country, top 40 pop, etc.), talk, and sports.

There's nothing in any of those for me.

Internet radio may be able to solve your problem. Music podcasts, and internet radio sites/apps mean geographic location is no longer the limiting factor for what you can listen to.

There are big names like iHeartRadio and SlackerRadio but lots of smaller radio stations have internet streams and/or apps. Podcasts are nice because they can focus on niche genres or provide more information about artists/releases. Mixcloud is one of my favorite sites for listening to radio shows.

> Internet radio may be able to solve your problem

It's a problem that I've solved long ago, really. Internet streaming services bring their own set of problems, so I don't use them.

I do listen to podcasts (downloaded, not streamed), but not for music.

> There's nothing in any of those for me.

I can advice you to listen to fip, it's a french radio with every genre of music.

A couple of ways I do it:

* Use the Shazam app on my phone to identify music I hear in public places

* Go on Rateyourmusic.com, look up an album I like and find what "lists" RYM users have put that album on, or what message board posts have cited that album. It's a much more "human-centric" approach compared to websites where algorithms generate the recs.

You realize that those algorithms used by Spotify and whatnot are basically doing the same thing, right? “What songs did people who like your songs also like...”

They're not doing the same thing. I have no insight into how Spotify's algo works. When I go on RYM, I am reading human-written message board posts about WHY they're recommending this album. That additional context is far more valuable to me than a generic "Users also liked..." message that Spotify shows me.

That's true.

I attended a somewhat notable music festival this year and I noticed that the bands on the line-up had all the other bands from the same festival in the "similar" section, despite not being similar at all - (I'm assuming) just because other people interested in the festival were checking them out.

I'd like to know too. I also don't consider this off-topic considering we're contrasting streaming music with CDs, and one of the "value adds" of streaming is discoverability.

I think many of us curate a physical or digital collection and also subscribe to a streaming service.

I use Google Play Music and when I find something I like, I buy the CD.

RSS feed of music review blogs. Works well enough.

Bandcamp tags and notifications as well as following people with similar taste. Some reddit subs are also quite helpful

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