I know the question is rather awkward at first and I am possibly overlooking something, but I would like to know something I really don't understand.
In the past I have used modified versions of Spotify and they are fine but obviously no modified version allows you to download songs because it is a premium function at server level and honestly I would like to have my songs on my device, so if I don't have internet I can still listen to them.
After those modified versions of Spotify, I have used apps like ViMusic, Spotube and SimpMusic which are basically Youtube Music apps but without ads and with more features, including downloading music, the problem is that they do that at the level of the app itself, not in a separate file. And I love these apps and I can not recommend them enough but my phone is a little old and I see 0 need to change it since I use it for basics usage and although this can sound dumb the interface of these apps are full of blur and unnecessary effects that make my device slow, including Spotify, and I don't like Spotify Lite because I feel it is a very trimmed version of Spotify.
So this is where my question comes in, for those who exclusively download music, how do you discover new songs? Spotify's recommendation system is great and Youtube's radio mode is very good but obviously I need to use Spotify or Youtube Music to use it and I prefer to use light apps for local playback because of what I already mentioned.
Edit: Thanks for all the recommendations! I never thought this post would get so many answers and there are too many comments to answer one by one, but I admit that the old-school method of reading blogs or magazines works well, and I also like the idea of sites like Last.fm or discogs.
I came here just to say this. I usually now just download shit on my ipod so its godtier to get away from the soon to be overpriced streaming services
Thank you for this. Usually I go to my universities' underground radio station but this works just as well :)
I use last.fm to track the songs i am listening to and ot gives spotify like recommendations and monthly statistics on what kind of music you listen to,top artist etc.
Aside from what others have said, I look at what other bands the bands I already listen to tour or collaborate with.
plus melon usually has pretty good political takes, so seconding https://www.youtube.com/@theneedledrop
Not scrolling through all the comments to see if someone mentioned this yet or not but every December I check what is on the best albums of the year lists.. Generally I check per-genre that I'm into. Like best black metal of 2023, best jazz of 2023, etc etc..
Other than that, bandcamp and YouTube are the biggest. I honestly buy more on bandcamp these days than I torrent though. It's such a great site.
I don't, at least I'm not making an active effort. Why would I? I already have enough music to generate playlists that could last for years. That's more than enough music.
Apart from that there's the usual cultural osmosis that can't be avoided. A song that is used in a movie, plays on a radio/car stereo or at an event somewhere and you like it. Bam, discovery!I pay a little to pirate. Basically I've figured out how to download a large percentage of lossless songs from playlists I find anywhere. I scrape playlists of radio stations i like. I import those CSVs into Soundiiz, which costs $4/mo. Youtube mixes I like, in they go the same way, imoporting tracklists. Using Soundiiz, I import those lists into qobuz and deezer, which I use to pull down lossless FLACs using deemix and qobuz-dl in linux. Qobuz and Deezer and other streaming services have curated playlists by staff and subscribers, I just download the whole lists. I replaced lists of my mp3s like youtube rips, with FLACs, the same way. Qobuz and Deezer have free trial memberships but TBH after the sheer amount I've pulled down from them, it's worth it to me. I've had to buy new hard drives because of this.
I follow a few blogs/sites that review the music genres that I like. I also read and comment in the tracker's forums, where people suggest new music or discuss about new and old music. And I found that it's much better than getting suggestions on spotify/tidal.
Great topic. A lot of my discovery was through /r/listentothis, but I'm 100% off reddit now, so these recommendations are helpful.
I was surprised to see only one other reference to Twitch. I have found Twitch to be AMAZING for new music discovery. MOST of the time when I listen to music, it is actually through Twitch. I have many good hosts saved and checking the who's on now page is the first thing I do when I want to turn on music. And when the apocalypse comes, I have a good library myself now...
There's a catch, of course. A lot of Twitch streamers are fucking irritating! It takes time to find channels that meet my needs...
- Plays my kind of music (classic rock, 80s, industrial, darkwave, synthpop, electro, gothic rock, some dance genres like filth... to name a few). If anyone wants channel recommendations I am happy to list some.
- Ideally, the video feed clearly shows the track ID (so I know what music to grab!)
- The host isn't on mic all the time. It just kills me when I find someone playing good music with track IDs and they talk too much. The more of the video frame taken up by the DJ, and the bigger the mic, the greater the chance that they won't shut up, haha.
A good host will namedrop and raid hosts with similar taste, so once you find a couple that you like, your list of follows will expand quickly.
Here are a few more tips...
- If you follow someone on Twitch, there is a separate toggle for receiving notifications when they go live. For 95% of the people I follow, notifications are OFF. A few are so good I want notifications.
- "Alternative Player for Twitch" in the Chrome extensions is a cool alternate client that MUTES ADS. There are a few such extensions, this one has been the most reliable for me. However, for some reason it does not support taking you on a raid (that is when your channel ends and sends all the viewers to someone else).
- There is a cool alternate client for Android TV called S0undTV.
- Some Twitch hosts will put their shows on Mixcloud too, so check their details
- Even if a host does not list the track IDs for what they are playing you may have success IDing music with something like Shazaam. On-screen ID is so convenient though.
- Get to know a mass tagging tool like mp3tag, and you can RAPIDLY expand the size of your music library.
- It seems impossible to tell Twitch to not suggest channels that you are not interested in. You can spend hours trying to kill off bad recommendations but it doesn't matter. For example I do not care about game streaming or people playing live music but I CANNOT get them out of my Recommended list. You just have to learn to ignore them.
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I've basically never used Twitch. Are you saying there's something akin to independent radio on there? How are these streams structured?
It's not really like radio, it's a bunch of people running their own shows at times of their choosing. But if you follow a bunch of people who are doing 2-3 shows a week, pretty soon you will find that when you look at the "Following" page to see what's happening right now, something worth listening to is probably on.
Here's what my Following page looks like at the moment: https://i.imgur.com/7OXkRbN.jpeg
Not too good, but it's early still. Only one person I follow is live and it looks like they are chatting instead of playing music, which is unusual (and I won't bother to listen).
There are some recommendations below. If I click Show More, I can see 8 other live streams. (I can see more under the Browse feature.) : https://i.imgur.com/U5Bvec5.jpeg
Some of these 8 I recognize as being not my taste, some show genres I don't care about, but there are a few that I will check out. OK... the reggae dude was playing hip-hop which isn't my bag but I might check back later because I like reggae and ragga. The funk dude was playing great music but wouldn't shut up. SlugRadio is playing some good EBM that is new to me, the DJ puts up a track ID in the chat stream, and most importantly doesn't seem to be on mic all the time. So that's a good find and if the music stays good, I'll probably Follow that channel. (this is what the stream looks like: https://i.imgur.com/cCFPpG7.jpeg)
One other thing...
Twitch lets you watch replays of shows which gives you even more ways to find something to listen to... But, they process saved videos and knock out copyrighted audio, so most recorded DJ streams are mangled. For some reason, Twitch gets away with letting people do anything they want when the show is live, while YT uses realtime detection to mute your stream and issue a copyright strike.
Spider chart at the bottom of Orpheus’ web site!
It’s not as good as WCD’s was, but it’s getting there.
Charts as well as collages on Orpheus! Basically user made Playlist but for whole albums.
Mainly local radio broadcasts, sometimes thematic webradios such as Radio Metal. Recently I've been linking my music player to LastFM so we'll see how it performs.
It requires a lot of filtering, but I find Pitchfork.com reliably has something decent in their "best new ..." pages. Just don't actually read the reviews.
