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YouTube music is still pretty good for me, the canned playlists sometimes turn up good bands I've not heard of, and recommendations about as good as they ever were, not great but good.
But there is a community radio station here with a variety of shows, a couple are 'alternative' and those DJs have good taste and stay on top of new stuff.
Also opening bands at shows, and sometimes at yoga class, oddly.
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.
New music fix on weekday evenings is perfect whilst preparing dinner.
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.
YouTube, I go country by country, from period to period. I even have my own favourite medieval piece of music!
Bandcamp new and notable
Bands I like touring with other bands
Record labels I like put out new stuff
Decided to start paying for Qobuz amd its been a great time so far! Audio quality is top notch, and their focus on exploring individuals/bands albums are very good. Id recommend giving the service a go, they also pay artists a much better share compared to Spotify..
By purchasing new video games.
Like 90% of my tracks in Spotify are videogame soundtracks.
internet radio.
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.
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"
Bamdcamp daily, people i follow on bandcamp, warez websites and features and collaborations
Modernrock.ca
Been a supporter since he started.
Rival Suns
Spiritbox
Kanaan
Love Honey - (Rolling 7s - holy shit is this good!{if you are me, which I am})
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets
Sick Joy
Vance Joy
Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers
Tiger cub
Mammoth
Chokecherry
Ren - (Hi Ren is fucking powerful, watch the video for it and prepare for a wild ride. Earbuds/headset recommended)
Sludgemother
Slomosa
Halestorm
Avalone stone
The Warning
The Glorious sons
Velvet Two Stripe - favourite song is Catch 22
Servo
JPNZGRLS/Hotel Mira (name change)
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.
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.
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.
Two great blogs I've found through Mastodon:
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.
Typically I have bands I like, I go to their shows and I will sometimes discover other bands by means of opening acts etc. Or I will read up about a band, see what other projects members have worked on, are affiliated with, or see what bands would play as openers to those bands.
Sometimes there's a show with some band I don't really know about and someone invites me along and then I might like that band, and then I have a whole new band to learn about in regards to members, openers, other projects etc. etc.
Can also do the same thing with the label a band is signed to, check out what other stuff is signed, if I like it I can do the same song and dance exploring which other music that band is linked to.
And then of course sometimes something just falls into my lap and then I just listen to that.
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.
New Music Friday playlist was always OK by me, too. My rule was i could only skip it if I hated it, and if I liked it even a little bit, then i had to press the like button.
I also have blended playlists set up with a couple of friends who like a variety of music and have what I consider to be good taste.
Music Brainz or ListenBrainz.
Occasionally I get on WhoSampled and look into the source material of some songs.
Half of the time it's just yt recommendations since I don't get genAI slop auto thrown at me while listening to vocaloid/utau songs since they probably already categorize it as genAI despite it being in a weird gray area. It's the closest you can get to ethical genAI¹ music, especially since you still got to put in a lot of work yourself.
From there I sometimes look through the producers channel if it's their official channel and not some rando uploading a NicoNico/BiliBili/wherever exclusive song. If something really catches my eye, I have a good chance of clicking to try it.
¹ programs like Diffsinger and the latest vocaloid voicebanks use AI but not in a suno kind of way. Consenting people using their voices for these VBs, though harder to say if consentual for DF because anyone can make one. Latest vocaloid VBs went back to what was originally done in the first VBs in the mid-late 2000s: using machine learning
Edit:
I also find stuff through CDs I find at thrift stores and a nearby CD shop. Again, whatever catches my eye.
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.
Can't believe I haven't seen SoundCloud mentioned. They play ads every couple songs but I listen to 1-2 hour edm mixes so it's actually not bad. They have a couple recommended playlists based on recent songs you've liked. Not every song lands, but there are great indie songs and remixes and stuff out there you can find.
Last artist I found was because of tracks played on the Sirius Bluesville channel.
Anime! Anime is to Japanese music now (really, since Attack on Titan and Sword Art Online blew up in 2013) what MTV was to western music in the 1980s. When I hear an opening or ending I like, I Shazam it and add it to a Japanese playlist I have, and if I really like it, I’ll explore other songs by the artist or band.
I tend to follow bands and musicians I like and check out who else they play music with.
e.g. I go to their shows and if I like the the other bands playing I tend to check them out later and buy their music on Bandcamp. Then from there I'll also follow the socials of all those bands so when they mention other bands, or if they're going on tour with other bands, or playing music fests with other bands, then I check out those bands too.
I hate social media / Instagram but every once in a while the algorithm will mention something worth checking out, kind of rare but it happens.
Seems to work for me, if anything now I have too much music to check out and not enough time to listen to it all haha.
c/ObscureMusic and the music communities on BeeHaw and .world.
There's a few ways that I've been able to discover new music. Currently, it's mainly through YouTube recommendations and I sometimes use Pandora. I also used to use Tastedive but I just haven't gotten around to actually using again mainly because I have to basically redo my entire account.
On a side note, I actually tried logging into my Tastedive account and I can't for some reason. I sent them a message through their contact page but I'll have to wait for them to respond.
Mostly digging through past albums of bands I already like. My music taste has largely fossilized. And I realize that the artists I claim to enjoy, I've rarely explored their whole discography. So I try to do that. And when I feel like I've exhausted favorites, there are plenty of not-quite-favorites to give a deeper look at.
So I'm not looking for new groups too often. But when I am, these resources are useful:
As some of you already stated:
I work in a small (450 capacity) live music venue. We have a great booker who books a very broad spectrum of up and coming bands as well as older bands still touring.
If you have cool small venues in your area, most of them have a certain style, just regularly check out their program on their website, there you'll have links to videos, the bands socials and if you happen to like some of the music you already know when and where they'll play a live show :)
College radio and commercial-free independent radio. Streaming over the net of course
Pretty randomly. I'm very picky about what I listen to, I'm very reluctant to listen to stuff recommended by my friends etc. I mostly stumble upon new stuff. Either I hear a cool song on a tv-show, like Golden Brown by The Stranglers in Clarksons Farm, or a collaboration with a artist that I already listen to, like happened when I found out about Têtes Raides through Yann Tiersen.
But me being weird about how and when I find music is a pretty pointless thing to talk about since I think most people don't do things the way I do. I'd recommend making a Last.fm account. Not only does it make lists of what you listen to, it has that "similar artists" thing. I use it mostly to have a list of stuff I've listened to, because I like lists. My last.fm account is the oldest account I have (now that google doesn't let me use my gmail anymore lol), I've had it since 2005. Its pretty fun to go check what I listened to in February 2007 or something. I can see where my teenage relationship breakups were, based on HIM being the most listened to artist of a month lol
Pandora has a vastly better "radio" mode, it's pretty intelligent about related songs.
https://krvm.org/ Radio station in Eugene OR (USA). Lots of new music during their daytime hours, specialty music in their evenings (recorded, available for two weeks). If you like, please support!
Radio.garden is a website that lets you move a map around and connect to online radio stations all over the planet.
Occasionally I go on there and just start scrolling around and listening to a bunch of different stuff to see what's playing.
About two years ago, I encountered Marius Ziska's cover of Naeveran, I know it's like well over a decade old, but it was new to me. It was amazing. And I never would have found it had not been on radio garden.
Internet radio, mainly via Mixcloud.
c/ music and c/ endlessplaylist keep having bangers posted to them.
I listen to BBC Radio 6 Music and ABC Triple-J. Both are brilliant and specialise in new music. The DJs are all passionate and informed, and they're given a LOT of freedom. I've lost track of the number of amazing songs I've heard on 6 Music only for it to get ruined by appearing in a car advert or GoPro montage six months later.
Is there still a radio 1 "essential mix"? I can still hear the intro and outro from 2008-2013, some real bangers came through that program.
YouTube, Qobuz (human curated recommendations) and Lemmy/PieFed
I've picked up quote a few new (to me) artists and songs via streaming shows. One that stands out is Netflix's DARK, the montage soundtrack for which is utterly superb and almost none of which I knew before.
I tell Claude about what I like and why I like it. Then I tell it about what I don't like and why I don't like it. I ask for for recommendations based on those two and try the suggestions. I then refine with feedback and keep doing it.
I know AI is terrible and the end of the world, but I am able to continually find things I enjoy and some things that I would have never considered. There is just ao much music, I cannot ever imaging becoming bored with it.
I tend to take a playlist of songs I enjoy and enable the radio feature. It keeps a healthy mix of things I’m already comfortable with and stuff that’s in the same ballpark. I’m pretty settled into my listening taste, so I rarely go for much outside that. Other than that, it’s direct friend recommendations.
Spotify recommendations.
