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://cytu.be/r/hexbear
We play music together all the time, people submit stuff to the playlists and there's a vote to skip feature.
Seriously awesome music. Occasionally you won't like it but you can switch to Spotify (very much like Pandora but you can pick exactly what to play) until the songs you don't like go away.
Tons of variety, real bops coming out of here.
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.
seriously, i've picked up days of music from my comrades over the year
Two radio stations have opened my mind up.
WFMU has both restored my faith in music and been such a salve to my sanity in these fucked-up capitalist grinder times.
Had always been a huge music fan but had become burnt out on the same old retread stuff in my collection and on ghastly commercial radio (which I absolutely cannot stomach at all).
Check out different shows there.
Also have become very interested in jazz, after a lifetime of ignoring it. Amazing stuff, with great radical ties to Black self-preservation and revolutionary understanding. WKCR is amazing also.
Soundcloud has a good community with artists sharing demos and talking about music, and interacting with fans.
Not all artists on it, but a good amount are. Twitter is a cesspool for music, and Last.FM's user base is gone.
Nice, haven't thought about that site for a long time. Do you let Jesus / the algorithm take the wheel? Their trending playlists look like they could be very useful.
Follow artists you like on SC and then look at the people who comment on their posts. See what other artists/groups they are following/commenting on. Also, tons of curators making playlists so you don't have search high and low as well.
The SC algo needs to be fed likes or it will revert to the mean eventually. So I only trust the SC algo for recommendations when I am actively using it.
Immediately clicks on a movie's OST and zones out
Oops lol. Thanks
On top of other comments, its okay to not care for listening to music.
I have music I like, but I just very rarely put music on. Seems like a lot of people like 'focus music' for doing work, or 'background music' while cleaning or playing games, but I find it super distracting. So I get the feeling of 'not liking music', even if its more complicated than that.
Check out your local college radio station, they'll play a bunch of weird and wacky shit. WPRB out of Princeton has a webcast. Very cool way to discover new stuff.
I found a discord that for a <band name>circlejerk subreddit some years ago. I’m into the band, but being in a community about music has helped me broaden my horizons a lot. Like, I never thought I’d be listening to popular 80’s music but I am.
I like listening to what artists I like listen to and get into rabbitholes from there.
If you find someone you like, try and see what they say their influences are. When I get into a new genre it's daunting on how to even find new names in there to listen to, depending on how obscure the genre is.
If I hear a cool bass riff or guitar work or whatever instrument in a song, I look up performance/production credits on discogs; and many unnamed people on pop tracks or whatever are session musicians who do a wide variety of stuff and don't usually limit themselves to one genre. And jazz musicians seem to pop up wearing many different hats.
Smaller record labels usually work with narrower genres so that could be useful if you find a band you like and want to expand from there.
I wouldn't know. Listening to the local alternative music station used to help back when it played things like SoaD before they were cool but is now kind of trash. But Pandora et al were always trash since I'm into classical and hearing 5 consecutive recitatives from different pieces is not my thing. (Idagio is alright though for classical, has kind of a mood wheel thing that works well most of the time.)
One way is to notice when you enjoy a particular track in "Viking music" of whatever, favourite it, and then look up the band as the mood takes you. Eventually, you'll work out what genres work for you (or you'll realise you only like 17th century sea shanties).
Don't sweat it too much, you're allowed to like what you like and hate what you hate, even if they're "close" genres (I love folk and hate country, for example.)
if you have any issues with anxiety i recommend electronic music with heavy bass. helps calm me down sometimes
