You read forums, buy magazines, or, just buy an album because it has some badass cover. At least that's how I did it back in the days. ;)

I think it depends how obscure your taste is. If more open and obscure, the best way I found is to listen to streaming college radio stations and find some DJs you like on those stations.

There is an effort that it takes to get on the airwaves that is not there if just anyone can play music online. The effort acts as a quality filter on the person's taste and passion.

Beyond that, I always check out what Pitchfork thinks is good new music.

The youtube algorithm has also recommended me some of my favorite, more obscure artists but that happens like once every 2-3 years.

Sure while Spotify can be nice with that, I am an old boomer that mostly sticks to what I grew up with and I just look for new albums of known artists every now and then, but I find the real gems in things like mountainbike movies. Also gameplay movies back in the day.

But yeah that ease to find new things is one positive aspect of Spotify. Also to have it everywhere available. So maybe going both ways would be the solution. Using Spotify while buying/ripping/whatever the music that I really deeply value

I use Spotify for music discovery, but buy downloads (or rip CDs, or if the band only has streaming available I rip the stream since they don't want my money) and use stored music from local devices for my everyday use. Streaming services are nice for recommendations, but not great for actual listening.

Read MA or RYM reviews and append all the names I don't already know to a big backlog.

[redacted]'s daily and weekly top10. Last.fm, reddit, Apple Music.

last.fm

Bandcamp.com

pitchfork.com has RSS feeds of best new albums and best new songs

Sound cloud, youtube