How to discover new music?

Hey people,

I´ve been big into music in the 80ies and 90ies, listening to the ususal of my generation (i.e. then not mainstream anymore like older ZZ Top, Genesis, Kraftwerk, a bit Punk and Metal and the likes). For the last years I found youtube and other portals being good sources to discover new sounds and musical styles. Currently I listen to "The Glitch Mob" who seem to be heavily inspired by games soundtracks, and I must say I like what I hear. Electronic with a heavy bass, a few voice tracks in the mix, very subtle, a bit trance-y.

So, how do discover new music and what are you currently listening to?

Soundcloud...

I have a very eclectic taste in music...love a little bit of everything from the 50's onward even into the current pop trends. Not all of it's good but a good beat goes a long way for me.

Except for bagpipes. Don't really like those...FKA Twigs was on my radar for good fresh R&B

I usually find new music from my friends introducing it to me, that's how I found Clutch, BHIC, Walk Off the Earth, Flight of the Conchords, etc.

Watch random YouTube compilation videos. If you hear something you like, most often they will list the artist and track.

I really like the Gilles Peterson radio show for discovering new music. It's every Saturday on BBC Radio 6, but you can listen to it all week on demand. Always loads of new music I have never heard of and he has some great guests.

Pandora app

Pandora, Youtube (if you type in one song, other suggestions will pop up, which will lead to others, and down the rabbit hole), but most importantly, asking young people who strike me as having good taste. I'm a high school teacher, so I'm always hitting kids up for suggestions. I didn't even know folk-punk was a thing until a 17 year old showed me some :lol

How does one hate bagpipes?. If you hear they live with a killer drum line backing them up. It's just plain sick. Listening to them on the radio or in movie is kinda boring and painful tho.

pandora is always a good place to go. The radio station around here does a underground set every Sunday. It's mostly bands that never been on the radio, but play the small clubs. Might sound crazy but back in the day play station games had killer music. Most of the games you could pop in the CD player and play the games whole music selection. Just had to skip track 1 most times. Found a couple of great bands that way. If you can find it, the game "Loaded" is a great techno one.

I started seriously listening to music as a younger kid in the 70' where my first albums were Queen and Kiss albums. Kiss obviously had the marketing, Queen just had the amazing hits

I was a teenager throughout most of the eighties and spent most of that time listening to metal, punk, and alternative stuff as well as discovering bands I had missed out on from the 70's like Led Zeppelin, T.Rex and Sabbath etc...

Once in a while I'll hear something on radio that catches me.

Other times I'll actually wade through the iTunes or Amazon "other people also bought" lists. I've found quite a few gems in there. I discovered the Yeah Yeah Yeahs that way and they became one of my favorites.

Going to shows at the various local music venues. I've caught many bands who made it big this way before they made it big

as other have mentioned, you tube and Pandora are nice.
speaking of more electronic type music that still rocks...
I've found tv commercials sometimes offer up some hidden gems as well. I've came across Ladyhawke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1Pucpi8cvo (recently in Verizon commercials) this way, Sleigh Bells (from the apple commerical) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmFgejWZjtg and Goldfrapp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uco-2V4ytYQ (from some phone commercial ). Basically just google a few of the lyrics I found, then it usually leads to a songs lyrics site, then check out the song on you tube to make sure its the right one


as far as some of my favorite more modern albums and bands of the last decade, my favorite being...

The Flaming Lips. Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi and even At War With The Mystics was a trilogy of releases that were just sonically so far ahead of what most bands were doing. It's like you take guys who started out as basically punk rockers, grew up, introduce them to pink floyd and neil young and write some songs together.
For me it was the equivalent of the Beatles around Sgt Pepper era as far as experimenting with sounds, but still keeping an almost pop like catchy sound underneath. They did a remix of each of these albums in 5.1 surround sound that is just amazing to listen to the depth of everything going on. I'm surprised they never broke mainstream besides a minor hit or two. One of the most underrated bands ever.


Foxy Shazam - A singer who reminds me of Freddie Mercury reincarnated, and a band that grew up on 70's glam and arena rock with a good dose of the Stones who still sound modern at the same time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rz4I69mQMo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFt3OqmGSbI


Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Shiny Toy Guns

Wolfmother

I'm thankful for satellite radio - I surf a lot of the stations and find new and old stuff that I pick up from time to time.

I found He Is Legend that way... also found out Broken Bells and Dillenger Escape Plan both had a new albums out, too.

I use youtube to remember a lot of stuff I had forgotten. Then usually go to Ebay to find the 12" extended mixes on Vinyl. I seem to listen to a lot of 80-90's stuff also. Mainly industrial house and other punk/dance stuff with a lot of bass. Here is a good list of stiff I listen to regularly not in any specific order.

Nitzer Ebb
KMFDM
Depeche mode
New order
Frankie goes to Hollywood
The Cure
Nine inch Nails
Pink Floyd
The KLF
Propaganda
Malcolm McLaren and the Bootzilla Orchestra
C&C music factory
Milli Vanilli
Madonna
B52's
311
Primus
TOOL
Audioslave

Probably my most common method of finding new music is to go to the wikipedia page for a band, and check out other bands the members have been in (mostly the singer and guitarist/main songwriter, since they are usually the most defining part of the sound). I've found a lot of new bands that way, and the rock music I listen to is a very intertwined family tree!
These days I also use Spotify, and use their generated radio feature to find new stuff.

The radio. Looking up themes of music via search engines (i.e. songs about going insane).

I just subscribed to a few music producing studios on youtube

Such as RiseRecords or Victory Records

Not pleased with Vevo though, thats just ****ty music.

Record Collector has always something that leads me to spend countless hours in Youtube. :lol

Edit: Oh and lately I've been listening to Gogol Bordello, Graveyard, Carpenter Brut and of course some Nico Fidenco!

I honestly discover 90% of new music through songs used in TV/Movies/Trailers or songs people have made whilst making their own video game or anime themed music videos.
Sometimes I will hear a song and completely hate it, then someone will put it in a music video they made and I can't stop listening to it because it now holds some context.

DaddyfromNaboo said:

Hey people,

I´ve been big into music in the 80ies and 90ies, listening to the ususal of my generation (i.e. then not mainstream anymore like older ZZ Top, Genesis, Kraftwerk, a bit Punk and Metal and the likes). For the last years I found youtube and other portals being good sources to discover new sounds and musical styles. Currently I listen to "The Glitch Mob" who seem to be heavily inspired by games soundtracks, and I must say I like what I hear. Electronic with a heavy bass, a few voice tracks in the mix, very subtle, a bit trance-y.

So, how do discover new music and what are you currently listening to?

Click to expand...

I would suggest the site last.fm. Look up the bands you like, and then see the recommendations for similar sounding bands. I found great music like that. Also, the glitch mob and the music you described is something similar to what i discovered a few months back. It's called Glitch Hop and it's amazing. Some artists remix old blues and jazz samples with amazing electronic beats and i must say i've become obsessed. Some current recommendations are (though not glitch hop) are Pretty Lights, Gramatik and Griz. They all have really cool blues and jazz samples and have real instruments like the sax. Also Big Gigantic is all electronic music with sax. Try these guys out!

Same here, new song for me to come in contact with are TV/Movies/Video Games…etc. I bought the song "Harder, Deeper, Faster" from the Bashful's bandcamp site of the Film "Butter" with Olivia Wilde and Jennifer Garner. It's a great song, that was played during the striptease scene of Wilde's character Tokyo Rose with a right timing bashing on the catwalk on main lyrics "Harder…". Or the song "My Town" from Hollywood Undead used in the Street Fighter Trailer with Poison.

My recent GitS binge lead me to the song "Run Rabbit Junk".

Nth said:

I honestly discover 90% of new music through songs used in TV/Movies/Trailers or songs people have made whilst making their own video game or anime themed music videos.
Sometimes I will hear a song and completely hate it, then someone will put it in a music video they made and I can't stop listening to it because it now holds some context.

Click to expand...

I recently built a site that can be helpful in discovering new music -- it's called GoBackOne.com . Hopefully you can find some artists you like there.

I listen to iheartradio.com on my computer at work often. I find the station of an artist I like and they have similar stuff so that's a good way. But my latest addiction is NASA radio. Great stuff on there. http://thirdrockradio.rfcmedia.com/