I usually get a bunch of cool stuff from the Quietus end-of-year list. It’s a lot more varied than the lists of most other publications.

Besides that, mostly Rateyourmusic for sure, especially the “Let’s all find the next gem of [current year]” forum threads. I also used to visit /mu/ for recommendations back in the day, but the culture there made me, uhh, reconsider my life choices.

Bandcamp daily Blogs Since I listen mostly to hip hop and rappers collaborate often, features is a big part of the way I discover new music

Bandcamp via the Tags system can really yield some great results. It’s got a virtual feel equivalent to browsing through a physical record store.

I basically just poke around until I find something I like then check the tags at the bottom of a release. Click the tag and then browse that for other stuff.

It’s all mostly happenstance and serendipity but I do find a lot of music by googling what I hear in the background of movies and TV. Letterkenny always has really good music and it’s always or almost always by a Canadian group that I might not otherwise encounter.

I mainly use metal-archives and bandcamp

Spotify’s Discover Weekly used to be great for me for a long time and I’d get lots of new music that I liked. it got pretty stale over the past year or so, with stuff that I don’t enjoy at all, and it often recommends me the same songs that I tell it to not recommend. it feels like I’ve reached the end of the internet and there’s no more music left to try.

Recommendations from friends/random socials/memes. Discovered Wind Rose through a Deep Rock Galactic meme. 😂

It used to be Discovery on whatever music app I’m subscribed to, but they have all turned awful for finding good music.

They always end up playing the same type of single creator synthesised music that presumably is cheaper per stream than big bands.

There are so many proper rock bands over the last 50 years, I just wish I knew how to find them.

Whenever I come across a new band I add their albums to my Plex, eventually I’ll have enough to do my own discovery.

Used to be what.cd

Now it’s just hopes and prayers

I find the Tidal algorithm to be excellent. Beyond that I think a good trick is checking out different services. Playing the same artist or song radio on Spotify will be a very different experience to Pandora or YouTube Music or again Tidal. That and a few of them actually have a ‘discovery’, or whatever they call it, setting on the radio that will specifically recommend things that are new and/or unexpected.

The YouTube algorithm is sometimes surprisingly good. Like “Listen to this band with 47 plays!” and then it’s a banger.

I am often getting interesting stuff from the personal discover playlists on Spotify. Often it is very obscure vands with like a thousand listeners on last.fm, so I feel like I am being exposed new and upcoming bands and not just established names.

Honestly I listen to the radio, but a radio station that’s alternative and aligns with my musical tastes (www.kink.nl, a Dutch station). Stuff I like I look up, and see what’s similar on Spotify or what have been influences to them.

Spotify’s discovery algorithm is great. Outside of that I routinely check Pitchfork for new albums. theneedledrop makes good recs too and Any Decent Music is a pretty decent music review aggregator similar to Metacritic but for more niche styles.

These days I listen to a lot of dance music though, so I tend to discover music via DJ mixes on Soundcloud and Bandcamp. Their Bandcamp Weekly section is pretty great and you can easily find music by browsing record labels, people’s collections or the “if you like x” recommendations listed at the bottom of individual release pages.

To add to your sites:

• Last.fm, especially the “Similar Albums” section on Album pages and the “Similar to” section on Artist pages.
• Sharethreads on 4chan’s /mu/: The download links in older threads might be dead, but it still might be useful for discovering new music.
• “Essential [insert genre] Charts”