How To Find New Music

January 28, 2019

How To Find New Music

Anyone who is just started to get into music seriously would ask themselves this at one point: "How in the world I'm gonna find new music?" If you're one of those people fam, then this post is for you.

Thanks to the internet, music is much easier to find and listen to. This also means that there are a lot of stuff that you gonna go through before you can find that one album or artist that you'll like, but hey that's fun part. The worst part is though you can get bored and tired easily if you're forcing yourself listening to the same type of music 24/7, especially if the stuff can get stale very quickly.

So my first advice before embarking with these resources I'm going to show you is this: go through them in small doses. Most of my listens lately comprises of hardcore punk (this includes trad-hardcore, crust, post-hardcore, yada yada yada), though I tend change it up by listening to hip-hop, dream pop, and some electronic here and there, before diving into death metal or some grind before getting back into hardcore. If I get bored, I'll just put on some stuff that I haven't spun before. This reduces the chance of me burning out listening to music. And trust me, that shit is bad.

The Basics and Essential Stuff

Rate Your Music

Rate Your Music is without a doubt one of the best music databases out there. They have a lot of entries in its database, and what makes them a killer website is it pretty much includes any forms of music that you could -- and couldn't -- think of. This is part of the reason why I prefer RYM over the Metal Archives. (The latter is a cool database on their own right, but there were a lot of questionable decisions made by its moderators and admins.)

One of its main features is the chart system, where you can create your own music chart based on the date, genre, where it was made and many more. (You can create combinations of any of these functions too, if you want.) Apart from that you can browse a lot of cool lists made by its users where you can easily find good -- and yes, including obscure -- music. They got the obvious metal genres like death metal, black metal, sludge and whatnot, though of course you can find many lists that touch the subject of hip-hop, electronic, classical, pop, folk music and the like. Some of them are straight up full of knowledge, while others can be ranged from alright to just trash. You just have to have a good eye and some luck when going through these.

Another good feature about RYM is that users have the ability to vote and downvote genre tags on albums. For the most part the genre tags are accurate, but obviously this isn't always the case and this is where stuff can get confusing to a lot of people. In my experience genres like hardcore punk, post-hardcore, powerviolence, beatdown hardcore and crust punk tend to get the most beatings -- though who knows some other genre probably got it worse -- so tread carefully whenever you decide to go through a different style of music that you're not familiar with while using the chart feature that I've mentioned earlier.

Assuming you have an account (and you should) you can pretty much do anything that you would expect from a music database. Rate stuff, make new lists, add some friends etc. You can also browse forums too, where you can find users sharing some dope and overlooked music, and discuss them.

See also: Rate Your Music vs The Metal Archives

Last.fm

Last.fm on the other hand is useful for tracking music that you listen to. It gives you the statistics of your most listened artists, albums, and genres. They also have this feature where it can recommend new stuff based on your listens. Once you have an account set up you have to download a "scrobbler" on your phone or computer and link them to your account. You can browse genres too, but I wouldn't take them seriously that much considering the lack of moderation on that site.

That being said, Last.fm is used to track music that you listen to digitally, though there are tools on the internet that allows you to manually add songs to your profile whenever you listen to physical media. This will make your profile consistent and up-to-date, if you're up for that. Once you've used your account for a week at least, you can make a music collage (or simply, "squares") of your recent listens that you can show off to your fams. Here's an example of a collage that I made on Tapmusic.net:

See also: Squares and How They're Made

The Main Actual Stuff

YouTube

Side note: This is not my channel

YouTube got a lot of stuff uploaded when it comes to music, and I don't mean the "mainstream" ones like MrSuicideSheep or Proximity really. Channels like 666MrDoom, Atmospheric Black Metal Albums, CRUST GRIND .HARDCORE PUNK, Gore Grinder, Greg Biehl, JAPANDCRUSTPUNK, Kens Death Metal Crypt, OdiumNostrum, Simon B., sweetbabyjaysus, Stoned Meadow of Doom, and whatnot uploads a crap ton of underground music ranging from black metal, death metal, doom, stoner, hardcore punk, skramz, etc. Dedicated channels for ambient, shoegaze, techno (and any forms of electronic) exist too. The world is yours fam.

I would suggest you create a new YouTube account only for music purposes if you haven't, so that you can subscribe to these channels and your feed won't be cluttered with videos that aren't related to music.

Bandcamp

Bandcamp is usually useful whenever I want to find new music, but the chance of finding that great album/EP/single whatever is quite hard considering the amount of meh stuff being released on that site is pretty high. Again, you gotta have a good eye and some luck when going through this site. You can browse releases through genre tags too, but similar to Last.fm's case its lack of moderation can ruin your experience if you aren't willing to listen to albums that got mistagged as a different genre by the independent music labels and the artists themselves.

I encountered some great releases on Bandcamp not gonna lie, and a lot of them are pretty overlooked. For the most part you can stream releases; some of them are free to download as well, though others you gotta buy them. It depends on the labels and artists, of course. One other thing about Bandcamp is that the site also have its own blog of sorts where its editors write articles about the music they provided. I don't read them that very often, though there are times where some of them caught my eye.

Spotify

Spotify is usually my go-to whenever I want to stream music. It's extensive and includes both mainstream and underground music, but anyone who actually uses the service knows that some albums aren't meant to be there forever considering Spotify has the ability to take them down, making them unavailable to listen to.

You gotta have a premium account if you want to stream albums in full as well, unfortunately. If I recall correctly it shuffles the tracklist if you're using it for free, and not to mention the ads it gives. However the Open Spotify version that you can access on your computer allows you to listen to albums in full and unshuffled, though ads can still interrupt your music listening experience -- unless you got an adblocker installed.

That being said, one of the main features of Spotify is the "related artists" section. As the name suggests it recommends artists that are similar to what you're listening to. This is my favorite feature on Spotify because it's probably the easiest way for you to discover new artists. As an example, the screen cap below is a list of similar bands to Converge:

The Lesser Known, but Still Extremely Useful Stuff

Discogs

Discogs is where I catalog the physical media that I bought (vinyl, CDs, cassettes, the usual stuff). It's quite similar to RYM as it is a music database as well. If I can't find an info on a release from some super obscure artist on RYM that I'm trying to track down I would go to Discogs, and a lot of times they have them. If you have an account you can buy albums and whatnot through that site too, and the people that sell them are usually trustworthy. (Just take a look their approval ratings really and have some common sense, it isn't that hard.)

Blogspots

Blogspots are great resources for underground music. Most of them offers links that'll lead you to download the stuff they've covered in their posts. Some of them can provide a great insight on scenes, niche styles of music, bands, and whatnot. Blogs like Sophie's Floorboard, Fucked By Noise and La Mort D'Une Moderniste tend to be my go-to. (As always, have some common sense when you're downloading something.)

I should mention that aside from Blogspots, professional editorial websites such as Heavy Blog is Heavy, Can This Even Be Called Music?, Idioteq and Resident Advisor are also cool places for you to look up some new music.

See also: 50 Blogspot Sites for DIY Punk, Hardcore, and Metal and Reviewing the Reviewers: Some Websites You Should Check Out

Soulseek

(This isn't the normal UI. I simply changed the theme to this one just to look cool because I'm a nerd.)

Soulseek is a peer-to-peer file sharing client, which is similar to Limewire and the early days of Napster. Yes, this is where most of the music nerds "share" their stuff. It's extremely useful when you're trying to find that super obscure album that you couldn't find on Spotify and YouTube or even in Bandcamp or blogspots. I've been using it for a long time now and Soulseek usually has them. Installing it is pretty easy, but if you get stuck or something or trying to change the settings (to limit the bandwidth, for example) then looking up info on the net wouldn't hurt. (It's the damn internet.) If you're up in "sharing" music, then this is a good place to start. If not, obviously just stay away from it.

See also: But If They Steal It - How Can I Make Money and Hear / Like / Buy

Final Stuff

But while all of these are cool and all, some of my peeps are equally helpful when it comes my music intake. Some of them are on RYM (where I would stalk their ratings), though some are here in Metal Amino and Discord as well. The latter has a lot of chat servers dedicated to music, so if you want to explore more you can always go through them. (I'm somewhat active over there, so if you're curious on what server I'm in hit me up on my wall.)

In other words, don't be afraid of making some friends on the internet, especially if they're knowledgeable about music. Discussing and nerding out about music together with peeps is usually fun. Asking them for recommendations is mighty fine too, considering they're the closest ones that know about your music taste aside from yourself.

Books about music are good since not every information can be found on the internet. This is useful whenever you're trying to research on some style of music or a specific artist. I have a few books -- physical or otherwise -- that are related to music (though, most of them are mainly related to punk, jazz, and electronic music). They are obviously a must have if you're really into music, I can't stress this enough. You can look up books on Goodreads.

One final thing: once you find a band that you like try to explore the record label they signed with (especially the independent ones such as Per Koro, Gravity, Dischord, Deathwish Inc., etc). Digging through independent labels are fun and usually worth the hassle, especially if they are often praised and seem to be prominent in the underground.