I recently realized I haven't actively listened to music for almost a decade. Some life stuff combined with a job I've had for awhile that really exhausts me, and I guess I hit a dead end without realizing it.
Back in the Before Times, the local radio stations played exclusively power trio stuff, and I sort of came to the conclusion that... I didn't like music? Which is obviously dumb, I just had a limited window on things.
Then Pandora happened and life was good. You could throw thumbs up / down at stuff and it would figure out what you liked. It was around this time I figured out that I liked stuff like Thievery Corporation, but since there wasn't any way to export your history, I don't recall many names from that period.
Pandora kept getting worse until I stopped using it. No idea what email I even used at this point. For some reason, probably stubbornness, I never picked up a Spotify account. And so here we are today: I don't listen to music much, and I don't even know what I like.
So like, what do? When I hit up Youtube for some search like "focus music" for getting stuff done, or "viking music" for playing Valheim with friends, I usually enjoy it, but that's a far cry from actually having a taste in things.
https://music.ishkur.com/
This is a really thorough, snarky guide to electronic music history. It has a sorta evolutionary tree of sub-genres and plays samples of songs from each year. It's all one guys opinion, so the odd grain of salt won't hurt. Very fun to browse as you listen, as you can make associations on the fly.
The precursor to this site was a ramshackle goofy flash website that very much endeared me to dance music as a teen.
If you have an extant live music scene where you live (covid allowing), getting out to gigs can be a great way to immerse yourself. So much of the cultural and social aspect of music is in the performance and the audience. I would have far less context for punk if my friend hadn't started dragging me to shows.
That's pretty cool, though I'd probably have a lot more cross-pollination in earlier genres when the hardware was still being developed. Also weird that experimental and modern classical are so far apart but you gotta put things somewhere.
I'd also complain about the lack of Wendy Carlos's early work like Switched-On-Bach (since the first decade or so of Moog, Classical, Soundtrack, and arguably Experimental is dominated by her), but it can be hard to legally get rights for and I see she gets a track in the 80s.
Finally, I really, really like krautrock apparently.
Agreed on all points, it's hardly a flawless document.
Re: Krautrock and its derivatives: When a friend first played me Trans-Europe Express my 13 year old soul folded inside-out like a broken umbrella. Could not compute. And then to hear it interpolated in early Electro and Hiphop felt good also.