How do you find out about new music ?

With reviewers I dont care whether they think a record's good or not - thats what I meant by consumer guide. What I'm into is how interesting or intriguing they make it sound, even if they're slagging it off.

Centro-Matic's 'All the falsest hearts can try' - track played on BBC Radio (Bob Harris - say it loud, say it proud!), followed by live show a couple of weeks later. Bought the cd there...

Gingersol's 'Nothing Stops Moving' - heard 2 45-second MP3s on a retailer's site, wanted more so bought (absolute pearl if 'roots-pop' does it for you)

Nadine's 'Downtown, Saturday Night' - listened to whole thing twice at Border's, Charing Cross Rd - thanks, Mr Border, Sir...

Because listeners cannot live on artificial date markers alone. ;-)

Probably been asked a thousand times before, but how do you make your new discoveries at the moment? Are you very active or systematic in searching out new-to-you artists or do you just let the music come to you somehow? What are your favourite places or means for finding out about new things?

ha, bit of a mangled post cos i was gonna make a new thread, but you get the gist... how do you discover new music in 2014?

discogs, soundcloud

and record shops when passing

I'm not very systematic. ILM is a major resource but when it comes to it I don't really think my favourite stuff comes directly from ILM. It's more about linking,say, an artist or genre which may or may not have initially piqued my interest through ILM or an article I happened upon and somehow following that trail through other artists and genres. I don't listen to radio or podcasts. I don't generally follow blogs unless I see them linked on social media. And really there are very few music crit sites or mags I follow regularly other than the Quietus and the Wire. I would do all these things but on the whole I find I still discover more than enough music on a daily basis than I can comfortably take in any way.

metal archives messageboard, bandcamp, juno.co.uk, RYM, ILM, looking at other projects of band members, looking at facebook invites

These are the sources at the moment, but internet age be damned, I don't think the process of hunting down music has changed much for me since I started looking.

Reviews and ILM are still my primary means of discovering new music. The only change to my music-seeking behavior is that I will no longer buy an album unless I can listen to it first. Services such as Spotify/bandcamp have saved me so much money in the past few years.

online record stores

Discogs too, yeah

Like, with discogs you can see which users gave 5 stars to your favorite records and then see what else they gave 5 stars to.

Leak blogs are more useful to me now as a means of knowing what's new and out there rather than a grab bag of new albums to steal. If I see interesting things on them, I can usually find them on Spotify or Bandcamp. I also check in at Juno once every week or two to see the new releases in a few different categories. And sometimes I just fall down a good ol' rabbit hole and come out the other side with about 20 new artists/albums to check out.

Wire reviews and bands that I hadn't previously heard of playing my town.

http://www.last.fm/group/ilXor/charts?charttype=weekly&subtype=album&range=1416139200-1416744000

THE ETERNAL QUESTION

i really don't know at this moment i'm stumped. like blind googling. i've never read official reviews, maybe that's been missing.

to the extent that i listen to current music, i mostly listen to the music my friends make.

i think it's a win-win!

I don't find music
music finds me

-bob marley

i get an email with files attached that are works i progress
or with a short personal message saying 'hey, i have a new one up on bandcamp, have a listen?'
or a text message with a picture of a flyer

this is the best way imo

ilm duh. and my metalhead nephew.

bandcamp

for new metal releases I go to Metal Storm and/or Lambgoat to keep up with what's coming out, though used to use Decibel magazine for that.

I get tons of promo emails, but aside from that:

- Every couple of days I go to the main Bandcamp page, scroll down to the bottom and click on "New Releases" and then select "Jazz" and see what pops up; I do the same for "Metal", but not as often
- I visit a couple of MP3 blogs (they still exist!) on a semi-regular basis
- I check out Stereogum and used to at least glance at Pitchfork
- I read The Wire
- I get a more or less weekly email, Night After Night, that lists tons of upcoming releases in the avant-garde/modern classical/art-music sphere(s)

bandcamp, stereogum and the wire - interesting! i see Steve Roach's name on April's the wire so that's cool. i guess kinda crazy that i've never really searched on on bandcamp before.

mainly YOU you wonderful ilx crew

Yeah, basically exclusively here. It's too easy

Here, bandcamp, a couple of specialized music blogs, and the Zoviet France and Dynamite Hemorrhage podcasts.

well bandcamp is fun. i live under a rock.

ilm obv

i find a lot of stuff browsing idiosyncratic user playlists on spotify too

ILM, distributor mail outs, following genres and other fans on Bandcamp, individual artist "radio" on Spotify, leak blogs. So many new releases. Sometimes it seems like all I do is sample new music, even within a relatively small niche. I used to think that I'd eventually tire of this pastime but I'm now pushing 60 so... probably not.

Oh, thanks to Elvis for the ZF podcast mention. News to me but damn, this is great.

I’m no longer “plugged in” to the freshest sources now that I’m older and have less free time and not much of a social circle… nowadays I basically browse new releases on discogs and check stuff out if it has good/cool cover art.

I do find stuff browsing bandcamp too… my one issue with bandcamp is that I would like to browse EVERYTHING on their site but it seems to be limited to the most popular items.. could just be user error

On ILM, I mostly find out about cool older music.

oh and NSF radio

finding new music isn't the problem, it's finding the time to listen to it in the right headspace - sometimes you hear something new and it just hits right, other times you're distracted and just go 'eh, it's alright' without really hearing it and I shudder to think how much great stuff I've punted that way. hate to be that guy but buying physical copies does change this somewhat, it kind of forces your hand into giving it a proper try

I miss the mp3 blog era a lot because you got to follow very specifically curated music even if the reviews where not always great you’d know which blogs focused on idk garage rock, psych folk, indietronica, post punk, etc… nothing ever since has been as enlightening as that era for me.

Nowadays I have found great music hovering on ilm, bandcamp, soundcloud and spotify playlists but spotify has been removing the social aspect of it and it’s harder to find users with playlists that fit what I’m looking for… at least on mobile. It keeps recommending spotify bot created playlists that are not it for me.

On the desktop app you do get user created recommended playlists which is much better to find the real gold.

xxpost can't tell ya how many times a new album dropped and I was like "well, really not in the mood for this right now, but I s'pose I have an obligation to get it as I like this band", and then played two tracks and never returned to it again. where it mighta been better for me to just pick it up when I was ready.

definitely a 'wgaf, I bought a digital copy and I'll probably return to it one day randomly' thing, which usually doesn't actually materialize.
whereas if I did have a physical copy I agree that I'd be more likely to get through the whole thing.

I manage a running google sheet of new releases throughout the year. This allows me to keep track of what I listened to and flag things I haven't had a chance to yet. The sources I use to populate it are:

- ILM
- Pitchfork
- AllmusicGuide's Editor Choice
- Word of mouth/friends
- Stereogum Album of the Week
- NYT reviews and Popcast
- "Best So Far" features that are released midyear
- A couple of blogs and genre-specific sites

Bandcamp notifications
genre specific blogs/sites
ILM
Pitchfork/Stereogum
social media recommendations

This is the section of spotify (in this case for artist "Open Space" and playlists containing said artist) that is only accesible via desktop that I'm mentioning upthread:

https://i.imgur.com/NITtj76.png

I have no idea why this section is not available on mobile because it's the best way to find the playlists I'm looking for.

metal-archives.com is also fun when I'll just plug in a band name, and then look at Similar Artists, and try and find like 2-3 in that style that are way more obscure and see if they're any good.

when it comes to pop albums, i trust youse all

obsessed with google shoot idea

sheet

I manage a running google sheet of new releases throughout the year. This allows me to keep track of what I listened to and flag things I haven't had a chance to yet.

I don't keep track of all the music in the world, but I have an Excel sheet labeled INCOMING MUSIC, which is laid out as follows:

Artist -> Title -> Release Date -> Source (the options are Promo, Purchase, or Download) -> Coverage (where I write about it for) -> Genre

-Bandcamp (esp. following artists and labels and getting the emails for their new releases)
-Following artists on instagram (used to be twitter, RIP)
-A few newsletters (Philip Sherburne, Shawn Reynaldo, Sasha Frere-Jones, Matthew Schnipper, a few others)
-ILM
-periodically just looking people up as I'm reminded of them to see the new records they put out that I had no idea about

Moka, that is some good info, I had previously been somewhat fruitless in trying to browse for cool human created playlists.

ilm, obv, plus sites like bandcamp, p4k, npr. following people on socials who i trust, and checking out their off-hand recs. direct recs from friends. very occasionally there's a spotify algo rec that hits. been following philip sherburne's newsletter for experimental/electronic things, anu/sislafami's twitter for street rap that didn't cross my radar. stereogum has a (not fully comprehensive) list of new releases each week

ilm is def my number one resource for *old* music

ILM, the Lonesome Jack podcast, the occasional Apple Music playlist. Sometimes my kids, although they mostly listen to the same stuff I do.

Oh, and a couple other podcasts, too, Vidrio Azul and a couple by people who post here.

this is a pretty good video about using discogs as a tool to find new music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNpCDbAR6ho

re: Google sheet, I toyed with the idea of offering to create an ilm/public one a while back, but I think it would become so large and unruly as to prove unhelpful. It works for me, though I tend to make Google/excel sheets for everything...

yeah i'm a diehard Google Docs guy but for some reason Sheets in particular is clicking with me in this journey

Moka, that is some good info, I had previously been somewhat fruitless in trying to browse for cool human created playlists.

― brimstead

Yeah! most of my time I’m on mobile so it sucks that it’s only on the desktop version, hope that feature doesn’t end up getting removed because it’s the best way I’ve found to discover human playlists lol.

You’ll find them at the bottom of each artist’s page. The more “unknown” an artist is the better chance you have of finding cool playlists but it works just fine with popular artists too you just have to scroll past the spotify-bot generated ones.

can't remember the last time I discovered a track or artist not via a Spotify playlist

For new music, just shazamming stuff from my car radio.

For old music (that would be 95%+) yes I do have a series of ridiculous spreadsheets. 1959 is coming soon, may share if that isn't too self-indulgent.

i say share. i'm still trolling in bandcamp world and kicking myself for waiting this long to dive in, glad i popped in this little neck of the woods.

i follow about 1500 artists, labels and fans on bandcamp and try and keep up with my feed every day, just playing through it while i work. listen to nts a fair bit and that always throws stuff up if you can find the hosts whose tastes gels with yours. i spend a fair amount of my free time rummaging around in physical records stores, charity shops and carboots and such and probably buy 10-20 records per week. also dig on discogs and if i'm buying a record off that i often find more good stuff just going through the other records that one seller is listing. spotify artist radio can be great as moka said. follow a few good accounts on youtube, get the wire every month and do look at a few music websites on a semi regular basis. this possibly all sounds a bit methodical written down, but really i'm just trying to maximise my chances of randomly bumping into that one beautiful song that i wouldn't otherwise have heard

I have a google sheet so I can add stuff if I shazam something when I'm out or I see something interesting somewhere like a record shop or someone tells me to check it out. I also have a folder of stuff I've downloaded that I thought was interesting. stuff I read about on ilx, I still check an RSS feeder for mp3 blogs (not many still active though) every couple of months, I follow some labels/distros/music writers on FB/Instagram. I also like digging around on Discogs looking up labels who put out stuff I like to find things I haven't heard before

yeah I have followed band member links on Discogs and discovered some great new stuff

same, great way to go down rabbit holes.

The kids on the Discord server I help mod post about 3,000 recommendations a day, and I try not to get overwhelmed with it all.

i say share. i'm still trolling in bandcamp world and kicking myself for waiting this long to dive in, glad i popped in this little neck of the woods.

― Swen, Friday, 8 March 2024 23:14 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Here you go then! Very happy if anyone has any suggestions to add here (1959 records only please!)

1959 Listening List

this is so cool.

see also this amazing thread
Spotify GO! 1950: The Bomb in the Heart of the Century

Pretty sure there was some good Sun Ra in 1959

ah, Jazz In Silhouette

Every friday I go to the new releases section at albumoftheyear and look at what's come out that looks interesting, and anything that does I add to one master playlist of the year, if it's on streaming, otherwise I add their bandcamp to a text file I have saved. Then over the course of the week I check them all out, removing as needed, leaving me a list of what's been good so far.

My main way of finding music is to always have a rolling Spotify playlist which I keep going and then archive every 6 months or so. Any time I hear something out and about or if someone mentions a song or artist, I save it to the playlist and just go back and listen to it on shuffle when I have time.

More recently I've got in the habit of making a public-facing playlist of just one hour of tunes I'm digging which I scrub and reload each week, working both as a personal listening diary and also for anyone else to dive into when they like https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2PoogCsS0VYTBeRTG8ce8r?si=44cbfa10b36a489f

I guess that's not "Finding music" but it's a great way to keep track of things

Thanks for the Sun Ra tip, I always miss something obvious. Someone elsewhere had pointed out that I'm missing The Louvin Brothers'"Satan Is Real" too.

xps to nickb