Comment by ddellacosta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ddellacosta | Hacker News Reader

> Now, it’s completely different. The moment some obscure demo drops, it’s everywhere, Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram, whatever. Everyone knows about it instantly. That sense of discovery, of finding a truly underground gem, just isn’t the same anymore. It’s too easy now.

I don't agree. I want to be clear that I think youtube is terrible in many, many ways, but one thing I _do_ love about youtube is music discovery. Finding label channels and tracing through their artists, seeing what else pops up in my feed as a result and following those threads...finding random weird stuff with four listens posted two days ago, which then leads you to more weirdness...etc. is all very fun to me and I've discovered a ton of great music that way. There's also tons of random channels that have DJs or mixes they put out that is also a great and relatively organic way to discover new stuff (I'm always thrilled when a new Kieran Hebden set drops on The Lot Radio for one).

Maybe spotify is different, I've actually never used it, but I don't think the "Thrill of the Hunt" is dead in a general sense. And I'm kinda old, I was a music major in the 90s and at that time I was all about finding weird bootlegs and going to shows with <10 people showing up, subscribed to The Wire for a long time, and etc. There is still a ton of great new music out there and fun avenues for discovery! If anything there is more than I ever could have imagined when I was younger. People keep making great stuff.

100% agree. Youtube has been a steady source for my music discovery. Example: I came across a Vietnamese artist with a nice videoclip and not so much views. I really liked the music, so I dropped a comment. I've done this with multiple of these videos from all over the world. Most of the time I get an appreciating comment back and I notice it does something positive to the artist.

Another 'crazy' one was where I stumbled upon some good music. Clicked a little around and it happened the artist was also a show wrestler and had some videos about that. I left a comment about the absurdity of the internet and we had a small conversation in the comment section.

I never installed spotify and it's annoying if people share music from there. Have to make an account, blah blah. Maybe it's the same for Youtube, but I don't notice that because I'm already logged in.

Right. The fact that some good stuff is everywhere because of social media campaigns, doesn’t mean all the good stuff is everywhere.

But, for many the base level of content recommended is good enough and so they are not forced to hunt. So the marginal win from hunting is less.

I do feel there is one way in which the claim is true - effectively unlimited bandwidth means that social networks like Soulseek just don’t hit the way they used to. One could download 100 flac albums speculatively from a seeder that has a good collection these days, instead of having to wait around (and have a reason to chat) to download the best one you can find.

It's also just not true.

At least in techno and rap, there are multitudes of good music, from both very popular and underground artists, which are missing from Spotify and can only be found sometimes on YouTube, or on Spotify under hidden names (uploaded by non copyright holders), or via underground sharing networks. And I'm not only talking about leaks.

Listening to Youtube DJ sets is far better music discovery for me than any of the streaming services "recommendation engines".

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