Music

Ive struggled a lot with getting into new music. Its just too easy to be in a comfortable loop of what you know and are used to, I guess.

This year I've started a personal project where i listen to at least one unique album a day, normally 2 or 3. I've discovered so much music, both old stuff thats 'new to me', and recent releases. Its got me into a few genres that i never listened too, as well.

Plus, theres so many bands that I 'liked' but had actually really only known the hits, like AC/DC for example, and its fun to actually listen through an album for once and get to know them better!

So yeah thats for sure something I'd recommend if you have the time for it

I love seeking out new music, trying new genres, ever expanding my liked-songs playlists. But yeah, inevitably I always end up putting my old favourites on repeat every now and then.

It's very hard for me to find new music these days. I can't pin it down to any one thing, lots of things have changed over the last 10 years that make it harder.

I used to be that way, but recently I've been only listening to bands I'd never heard of before. I've had Spotify for about 10 years and only recently started using the Discovery Weekly playlist. It was only ok at first, but now I heart about 50% of the songs each week.

I’d say my music listening hasn’t changed in the past ~5 years, but that’s mostly due to changes in my life. In college, I’d listen to music walking between classes and while working in the library; college friends also exposed me to new stuff (largely prog / metal). In my early twenties, I worked in a small retail store where I often chose what music played, so I’d put on a local indie radio station and learn about new music that way. Since music played all day in the store, I’d seek out new stuff to play fairly often too.

Now that I’m in an office job where I’m doing stuff that requires more focus, I basically just listen to lo-fi and soundtracks. I also only listen to music I’ve loaded to my phone, which I haven’t bothered to add new stuff to in… over a year. I think adding more diversity to my listening will improve when I get around to tackling self-hosting my whole music library, haha.

Is it just me or is the process of finding new music also succumbing to the forces of enshitification? Like for me the sources went like this:

1. Old forum-style/niche internet sources (userbase died out)
2. Internet radio (ate by Pandora)
3. Pandora (ate by other music streaming sites, enshitification of algorithm)
4. Spotify (enshitification of algorithm, bad treatment of music industry creators)
5. Google music (rip... But tbh wasn't ever really good at finding new music)
6. Music publications?? (Pitchfork is the best I guess??? Npr maaaybe? That's sad, and also all of these are prone to enshitification)
7. Local underground music scenes (lots died with covid, hope they come back, but now I live in a more rural place)

Like... How do we find new music now? If it's up to an algorithm, it's enshitified. If it's up to people's suggestions, idk where a userbase would even exist.

I literally used to run charting for a radio station and I STILL don't know where to find new tunes. I'm still a baby, too, so some of you that think it's harder just because you're older... I have bad news lol

Its a mix. Finding new music is difficult and time consuming. But sometimes I actively try to find "new" stuff. But being in my late 40s that means basically anything less then 10 years old.

Back in "the olden days" the sieve of radio made me listen to a lot of stuff and I could pick what I liked. Post listening to the radio (because these days they are all either just playing the same stuff or gone).

But with a little effort I've found stuff.

I've recently found Bury Tomorrow and I'm liking a lot of their stuff. On another genre side I've found Hugo Kant and really dig his stuff a lot as well. I also found a throw back sort of trip hop band called Mirrors for Princes that I like though they don't have many songs.

Listen to a heap of new stuff, as well as a lot of old stuff.

Picking up the guitar to learn start of last year has put me on a journey of exploration into several areas and a lot of new music

I still discover new music, there is plenty of good music nowadays, i like fontaines dc, wet leg, squid, mac Demarco, Altin gün, the chats, la femme, parquet courts, lcd soundsystem.

Which are all active today.

Where most of my friends are getting stuck listening to the same music they've been listening to when they were young I try to actively look for the new artists/styles too. Not everyday of course, but definitely at least one a month.

i listen to the same genre of music i listened to as a teenager, which is, music for teenagers (receipts in profile links)

Nah my tastes are all over the place, but finding new new bands is kinda hard, and I never make time to actually do it. My s.o. has impeccable taste luckily so she's always showing me new stuff, most of it is older, deep cuts etx, but like you said it's new to me. I'm just starting to cycle back into stuff I listened to 10 years ago though. It's nostalgic and still amazing.

I still browse Rateyourmusic for new releases that seem interesting, but less and less seems interesting to me nowadays. Maybe that's the first sign of me getting old...

I also started making an effort to discover new music to me, no necessarily new music, simply because my tastes shifted quite a bit and I realised it by noticing I almost stopped listening to music. I just started following some very nice YouTube music album channels that introduced me to some great music that I'd never learn about otherwise.

Another thing I didn't realise I was doing was that I wasn't keeping up with the artists I enjoyed, I kept listening to the old stuff, but I didn't listen to the new material to see if liked where they were going.

I'm more focused on new releases by bands I've listened to for a long time. Mostly rock, folk, and pop from the 80s/90s.

But I also got into EDM a little while ago and added a lot of new and old stuff to my frequent plays.

I don't want to be the old grumpy guy, but the current pop music is very rarely pleasant for me... Queue the struggle for control when I'm in the car with the kids: We found that Yacht Rock is safe territory for all :p

I'm always looking out for new music, but there's so much always coming out that it's hard to separate what I want to listen to from all the stuff I don't.

For me it's both, and it depends on what I'm doing. I have a lot of tolerance for returning to the bands and songs I love and relistening to the same albums over and over again. I'm the type of person that will listen to a song 10x on repeat if I love it. But in those situations, the music is the primary activity. I might be driving or something but most of my mental processes are focused on the music.

I love discovering new music, though, and I find that it's better for me to listen to new music while I'm focused on something else, the opposite of my "old" favorites.

It seems counterintuitive, but every night I play video games for a couple of hours before bed and that's when I put an album I've never listened to on. Maybe I'll hear something that will pull my attention away form the game and I will repeat that song a few times (this happened recently with 'That's all for everyone' from Tusk), or I will be humming it the next day, and that will kind of form the neural pathway in my brain to cause me to seek that album/song out for more active listening.

It's been a great way for me to discover new (to me) music.

But there is nothing like the comfort of a well-known and well-loved song at the right moment.