Bamdcamp daily, people i follow on bandcamp, warez websites and features and collaborations

I do it by playing the long game.

Back in 2007 I embarked on a three year radio production degree, and the costs associated with that, all so I could start my own radio show 18 years later where I get people to suggest songs and I play them. And many of them I’ve never heard of.

I can recomend moderated Internet-/DAB-Radio like “egoFM”, “ParadiseRadio”, or “byteFM”.
https://feddit.org/post/16991458

Or Bands of Newcomerfestivals like “Ab geht die Lutzi”, “Tollwood”, or whatever is near to you.

Instead of YT you can use NewPipe, or freeTube, or a good add-blocker.

I go through my kids’ playlists.

I ask friends and family to make me mix CDs instead of giving gifts.

I listen to local independent radio (Chirp in my case).

I carpool with coworkers sometimes and have them run the aux.

I ask people to tell me what their favorite song is.

I go to concerts early enough to see the opening acts, even if I’ve never heard of them.

And I participate in threads like this.

From shows I watch and games I play. I don’t really go out of my way to search for music. If I find something interesting, it’s usually on YouTube.

Bandcamp new and notable

Bands I like touring with other bands

Record labels I like put out new stuff

https://www.music-map.com/

You type in an artist and it gives you a visual map of related artists. The artist you searched for is in the middle and the further you go out from that, the less similar the artists are.

NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert is another one. You’re discovering artists at random but I’ve found some bangers that way.

• Blogs/sites like Pitchfork for internationally hyped releases
• Smaller sites for more local content
• I check local calendars for release parties or concerts
• I talk with my colleagues.
• I go directly to labels that I trust and check out all of their new releases
• I stop by my local record stores and ask the staff for a couple of album recs
• I use the search functions of Bandcamp and follow a bunch of bands there
• Ditto for Soundcloud, where the reposts of independent artists are especially useful for discovering other bands and musicians.
• Recommendations from Qobuz or Spotify
• I have a couple of radio stations that I spend a few hours with each week, like fip.fr, local student radio, local insert political leanings radio

I take the brute approach: get music packs bundling all releases for a day, load the albums into a lightweight player, filtered by genre. Anything sounding nice results in a beet import.

Two great blogs I’ve found through Mastodon:

• https://nham.co.uk/
• https://www.etherdiver.com/category/other-peoples-music/

Both blogs have an RSS feed, and they post on Mastodon when a new article is up. Those two have accounted for almost everything I’ve bought on Bandcamp recently. Mastodon in general, and the #bandcampfriday hashtag, are great sources.

I also started buying physical media lately. Lemme tell ya, the guy behind the counter at the record store knows everything. EVERYTHING. All bands. Who toured with whom. He is the human scrobbler. Get to know him.

spotify discover weekly. its been so finely tuned over the years that 90% of them are at least put in my liked playlist, and maybe 50% into my favorites playlist

i used to follow this “greatest _____ album” tournement thing on facebook, but stopped doing that because i dont use facebook anymore

you can also do the 1001albumsgenerator, which will give you a random album a day from the book “1001 albums you must hear before you die”

Music Brainz or ListenBrainz.

Occasionally I get on WhoSampled and look into the source material of some songs.

A mix of BBC radio 6 and recommendations from my cousin who works in the music industry. I can’t give you my cousin’s details, but radio 6 has a great range of music from some of the DJs.

Old (early 40s) guy here. I exclusively discovered new music through the radio. I had several favorite radio stations that would introduce me to new music, then I’d use Shazam to find out what the song and artist is, then look up their albums.

But I’m extremely anti-advertisement nowadays, so I don’t listen to the radio any more. And I hate online music sources because they’re all algorithm-based and suggest similar stuff instead of new music I’ve never experienced before. It’s easy to get stuck in your own bubble with algorithms. Plus, they’re littered with ads, even if you pay for a subscription service. Which I’m also very much against doing.

So… I mostly discover new music through my wife, who is still using the radio and online music streaming sites. All the music I own, I rip to my PC in the highest quality I can, then stream it to myself through Plex, so I have my own ad-free radio station anywhere I go.

Spotify discover weekly has introduced me to some bangers, and their app has some really great features with a pretty deep library.

I know they suck in some ways, but overall I am pretty happy with their service.