Ask HN: how do you discover new music? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: how do you discover new music?

15 pointsold-gregg23 comments

Well... the title says it all. Most of what I listen to came from hanging out with friends and parties, sometimes even from a car idling next to me in traffic. I guess that's called "old school" of acquiring personal taste in music. Very slow and time consuming.

I've tried using some social music sites too. Trying one out takes a lot of time and they usually end up recommending me what I already know and listen to (or used to listen). Or maybe I didn't use them right.

So, I'm wondering if there's something I haven't tried.

View on HN

The Perceptron ( http://theperceptron.com )

Search driven music recommendations. In my opinion, very high quality results. The Perceptron strives to make music recommendations based on the actual music rather than popularity/genre/etc.

Thanks very much for the shout-out.

I think The Hype Machine (http://hypem.com) is what you're looking for. I always keep it open.

Pandora (http://www.pandora.com/)

Create a station with a seed artist and then it suggests other music you might like. Rate each song played and pandora will refine the suggestions.

I love Pandora to death, but it is terrible at getting caught in local maxima - I've ended up with 8 stations that play the same 8 songs.

Maybe I do something unusual - I pick a completely random seed artist in an genre I don't usually listen to. Then I do the Pandora rating voodoo and before very long I've got a channel I like. I've had good luck finding new classical and jazz music this way. (Pop/Rock Top N I can get anywhere, and I haven't seen many indie bands on Pandora anyway.)

I like using both Pandora and last.fm through PandoraFM: http://pandorafm.real-ity.com/

That way I get last.fm's recommendation to provide seed songs/artists for new Pandora stations.

Cherrypeel.com is decent. It's pretty much like a reddit for indie music. The music is submitted by the artists themselves, so unless you have heard a ton a of music, there will probably be something new there. I don't have an account, but I go there every now and then to hear some indie bands.

I trust David Byrne. http://www.davidbyrne.com/radio/

For some reason I stopped listening to new music around 1990. Recently I tried to find new stuff on the internet. I made my favorite discoveries on David Byrne's playlist.

He posts a new playlist only once a month, but it's not always new music. I don't know much about how music evolved after the eighties. I hope David Byrne has followed this better than me. We may be both merely listening to new oldfashioned music.

If you use iTunes, check out Genius. I only tried for the first time yesterday, but was amazed at the degree of interesting new music that matched my tastes.

I listen to online radio stations that play the genres I'm interested in- preferably ones that provide playlists or song titles.

I find the various recommendation sites require work- with streaming radio i keep Stickies open, and just listen while I work- if I hear something I like I note it in Stickies then look for it later on.

Waffles -- nothing comes close. I have two invites available right now: first two emails to me get them, unless I get requests from people that have previously asked that I was unable to fill. I ask that you only request the invite if you intend to really use it, not if you're just curious to check Waffles out.

Anyone remember Firefly from the late 90's? I got some great suggestions that I'm still listening to - B-Tribe I believe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(website)

thesixtyone.com - yc alums!

If you like classical try youtube and Nathan Milstein, not only a pleasure to listen to but also to watch.

isn't that one of the killer apps of youtube?

allmusic.com and friends

I play my tunes through Winamp and have the Last.fm plugin installed so it uploads my track data for each song I listen to to the site...then the last.fm site recommends similar music based on what other stuff other people listen to who also listen to what I listen to...

Works pretty well, but one day I would really like to do a mashup that better allows someone to start at a certain band and branch away to newer artists as they explore similar bands. Just not enough time in the day....

huzzah for last.fm's rec engine. even with a wide spread of genres, it recommends very well. the configurable level of obscurity in the engine is pretty great, too.

agreed. I think it works so well because they didn't try to beat the system with crazy advanced prediction algorithms but instead just harnessed the listening habits and preferences of people who use the service. That's why I really want to work on a mashup of Last.fm, probably Seeqpod, and a link to a place to buy tracks if someone has that desire, all wrapped in a design I've thought of that I think would be pretty cool to use

I think that mashup already exists. last.fm lets you stream and buy tracks...

how about generating mixtapes of recommended music w/ download links to itunes, emusic, etc? last.fm lets you play your recommendations, but you could use their api to get streamable tracks, mix in other music apis for recommendation QA or range, and maybe annotate entries w/ data from onellama (radio station api).

NPR Music http://www.npr.org/music/

WNYC (New York Public Radio) http://www.wnyc.org/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com