Like upcoming albums, new bands, music news, all that stuff. I was always really into music, but with the pandemic + getting a job where I was basically alone most of the time led to me listening to podcasts more often I spent less time listening to or reading about music. My breaking point was having a pretty embarrassing Spotify wrapped lol. I've been going back to albums I loved pre-covid and catching up on the albums from artists I enjoy that I missed these past couple years but I want more. I used to check out all of the r/genreXheads to stay current but I can't stand using reddit anymore.
So are there any good blogs/twitter accounts/websites/newsletters/whatever you use to follow music?
Edit: I'm looking for places that I can also follow music, please do not give some vague answer about the weird insular music community you belong to unless you're also inviting me to join lol
I know 4chan's /mu/ is cringe but I have found lots of great music using essentials charts and flowcharts
but if you're more interested in newer releases the Bandcamp Daily blog regularly has articles/lists doing deep dives into all sorts of music, I particularly enjoy their monthly roundup of the best releases in a particular genre
I've never used 4chan but I'm open to using it for music. and Bandcamp Daily is something I've been aware of but never followed, but I think I'll start!
haven't actually messed with it but the artist map feature on what.cd was the source of many seminal discoveries for me
Hell yeah this is kinda what I'm looking for, a way to find artists similar to the ones I already like and new artists too
I honestly don't know since my 17th century music binge continues into ever more obscure areas.
That's almost as hard a question as asking "20th century music, where do I start?", since there many sub genres and styles, some as far apart as Philip Glass and Skillrex are today.
There are two broad schools, French and Italian, with German and English composers also providing important pieces. Spanish music was also a huge thing but I'm only beginning to get into it.
Italian, the original, Where the Florentine Camerata (a group of musicians, artists, and scientists associated with the early scientific revolution) attempted (badly) to revive Greek musical and dramatic forms, accidentally creating modern Tonality and the art form of Opera. To do this they stripped out the complex polyphony of the 1500s, adopting simple, improvised harmonies below a dominant melodic line that attempted to mimic natural speech rhythms. Operatic recitative, Spoken word, and even modern rap have some of their heritage in them.
They focused mostly on secular vocal music, with a side order of lute song and dance music. Towards the middle of the century the Castrati becomes the primary heroic/romantic voice type, since Italy banned women from singing in opera (and often church)
Key composers are Monteverdi (One famous paper on music 1600-1650 is called "The development of Opera from Monteverdi to Monteverdi"), The Caccini Family (Francesco and his daughter, Francesca), and the lute song of Vincenzo Galilei (father of that Galilei). Later, Cavalli is important in transitioning opera towards the florid vocalism and melody of the early 18th century arias.
And here's an album of Francesca Caccini's songs
And here is Vincenzo Galilei's chill lute beats
And for the end of the century Corelli's variations on La Follia (Compare if you're familiar to Handel's famous Sarabande of 50 years later.)
French style came a bit later. Focuses a lot more on instrumental, dance (This is where ballet begins, and where court dance reaches its artistic peak), and church music, though French opera is also very important and develops the older method of operatic singing in a lyrical direction, lengthening the passages but never really falling into arias proper and having far more duets and ensembles. The music is generally a bit easier on the ears to modern listeners, and has a lot of spectacle and flair, suitable for the court of Louis XIV.
Two primary composers, Charpentier, and Lully.
Here is Te Deum by Charpentier which you'll likely have heard before
Here is a Pascalle (a type of early court dance) from Lully's Ballet Armide
England was in a musical decline in the first half of the century due to an excess of Protestantism, But made up for it with great popular and radical music.
In the second half we get the glory of the Restoration Semi-Opera, a play, often modified Shakespeare, with extended musical interludes. And of course, Purcell who in 35 years of life rivalled Mozart in brilliance.
When Cannons are roaring, a popular roundhead song
Unfortunately the Royalists got better composers
And some country dances based on folk tunes of the era
In Germany we mostly see great developments in Organ Music , most German composers being copiers of the Italian styles. This allowed Bach to exist though so we can't criticise too much
Finally, Spain and her colonial possessions were somewhat isolated, but influences from the Americas and remaining Islamic styles were combining to produce what we begin to think of as the distinct sound of Hispanic musical styles. Guitar music, of course, was a major subgenre. I'm currently trying to learn more.
Compare this Spanish Variation on La Follia with the Italian one I posted above to compare styles.
There's so so much more, I haven't even talked about central European, Balkan, Russian, or Mediterranian music. Let alone non-European styles and the many hybrid styles European imperialism was producing as oppressed peoples co-opted instruments and theory and applied them to their own musical traditions.
low-key I sort of thought you were joking and making fun of my request, but this is honestly wonderful. I work weekends but I'm going to dive right into all these links on Tuesday
I’m in a discord with younger people who are into similar music and that’s how I find newer stuff.
This seems like a great resource, but I'm also immediately turned off because it's full of people who seem to think they're professional music opinion havers a.k.a. the most pretentious and insufferable people on the planet.
idk, mostly here, tumblr, and the local college radio station. also i have a buddy who is constantly recommending random emo, metal, and jazz
Can you give me some of those tumblrs you follow, your college radio station frequency, or a way to contact your hella cool friend? I'm into emo and metal but also open to jazz
streaming failed due to https error - I'll see if I can workaround that
e: fixed and got it streaming outside the browser which is pretty slick
but this is some good stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUg5AwaDmPc
If you're down for rap, I recommend r/juggalo. I know it's on :reddit-logo: but I've found several artists and a few YouTube channels from there. A lot of it is updates on ICP and people on their record label, but they also spotlight a lot of small artists who are :markkks-juggalo: -related.
I like to follow record labels- find out which ones your favorite artists are on, and see who else is on the label. For instance, Colemine Records is a soul label that has some great stuff on it. Ipecac for alt-rock, etc. I usually will check out end of the year best of lists too- the usual suspects there- NPR, Pitchfork, Bandcamp. Also worth noting, check out NTS radio- you should be able to search by genre and get at least a little taste of variety. Radiooooo is another one you can kind of curate. Hope that helps!
I used to follow that and it was great but I just can't do reddit anymore
Finding new music for me means countering the algorithm, part of that is weird insular music communites like a2b2, part is taking random walks on like rateyourmusic, incognito youtube.
I mean I only use YouTube to listen to music while not fucking up my Spotify algorithm lol, but does it not use the same YouTube algorithm? because I used to be able to find cool new-to-me music on YouTube but I feel like their recommendation algorithm just kinda sucks
YouTube, Bandcamp and Reddit. For context, I'm mostly listening to relatively underground electronic music genres like Jungle, Breakbeat Hardcore, DnB, and occasionally Techno & underground House.
YouTube is good for listening to mixes, as well as following promoters & some record labels. In my case, following individual artists on YouTube isn't really an option most of the time, since most of the people I listen to don't have channels and instead mostly just rely on promoters, DJs and word of mouth to spread their music out to new people on YouTube. (I also run a YouTube channel where I upload DJ mixes for the genres I listen to, so I'm both keeping up with promoters/DJs to find new music, and serving as a promoter/DJ to others lol)
Bandcamp is good for following record labels and individual artists, and I also like using it to search for stuff by genre/subgenre. There also tends to be a lot of stuff on Bandcamp that you won't be able to find on other platforms, so you sorta wind up having to use it if you want access to shit you'll never see on Spotify.
Reddit is good for just seeing whatever other people post and checking out anything that catches my eye.
