[HN Gopher] When do we stop finding new music?
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When do we stop finding new music?
Author : commons-tragedy
Score : 368 points
Date : 2024-04-24 17:50 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.statsignificant.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.statsignificant.com)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Listening to the music of one's childhood time from other
| countries is a way to find comfort-genre but new-to-you pieces.
|
| Sometimes there are nice surprises: for instance, "My Way" (1969)
| and "Comme D'Habitude" (1967) share a tune but are very different
| songs.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FEwW0W9AvA (did Sid influence
| this interpretation?)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeTn56-lahg
| nkotov wrote:
| I loved this article. I have about 4k songs saved in my "liked"
| playlist on Spotify, majority of them were from when I was 20 to
| 24, then it tapered off a lot. I turned 30 this year and I still
| like to discover new music but not as much as I did in my early
| 20s.
| reactordev wrote:
| This is why folks in their 40s+ end up still listening to the
| same stuff. lol. The article was right about that.
|
| Acts like Greta Fleet help bridge those gaps between old school
| sounds and new music. Electronica has never been easier to get
| into as well and there's a nostalgia for those old school
| synthwave vibes.
|
| Like all things, there's an ebb and flow to music and musical
| taste over time. You'll find as you understand music more,
| you'll be listening to classical on a Thursday morning just as
| much as you'll listen to pop, rock, or jazz.
|
| By the time you reach 60, your musical tastes _should_ be broad
| enough to appreciate all music, hopefully. Obviously some will
| reach that point faster than others. Musicians tend to be the
| fastest since they are students of music.
|
| I still have a rock playlist I created in my late 20s on
| Spotify that I listen to this day. Mostly started as a digital
| version of my in-car CD collection.
| swozey wrote:
| I like to go through my Liked songs list that's probably 10+
| years old on Spotify and it's basically like a journal of my
| life.
|
| I'll see months where I clearly started dating a new person,
| incorporated their new-to-me music into my playlists, then when
| I start to see Lord Huron etc I'm probably going through
| another breakup. Then glowing up which for me is usually a
| metal/hardcore/rap 3-6 months in the gym until I meet someone
| and cycle again. lol.
|
| My Spotify Remix in 2020 was pretty much all depression music.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _it 's basically like a journal of my life._
|
| From the artist side, apparently during Fleetwood Mac's
| heyday they were getting up on stage and basically singing
| about how horrible their relationships with each other were.
| Whether that's "money for nothing" or "suffering for your
| art" I'll leave to the band members to say, but Wikipedia
| notes:
|
| > _In 1976, the band was suffering from severe stress. With
| success came the end of John and Christine McVie 's marriage,
| as well as Buckingham and Nicks's long-term romantic
| relationship. Fleetwood, meanwhile, was in the midst of
| divorce proceedings from his wife, Jenny, and had also begun
| an affair with Nicks. The pressure on Fleetwood Mac to
| release a successful follow-up album, combined with their
| new-found wealth, led to creative and personal tensions which
| were allegedly fuelled by high consumption of drugs and
| alcohol._
|
| Nothing like a musical star to provide a good corn
| king/wicker man sacrifice on behalf of society...
| swozey wrote:
| I can't imagine being a grown adult and dealing with that
| amount of drama. I don't ever date inside of my friend
| groups because it always winds up causing some rift.
| Imagine having to put out a world class album through all
| of that. Oof.
| evanletz wrote:
| Agreed. I'm 27 and still save a lot of new music. But I've
| looked back at my older playlists from college and was probably
| saving 10x more songs back then. Full-time job definitely
| affected that
| jonathankoren wrote:
| As a middle aged guy, I've used TikTok to find new music.
|
| Spotify recommendations are kind of crap after a bit. It's a
| fundamental problem with similarity based recommendations and
| people getting stagnant. I don't want to listen to the greatest
| bands of the 90s and 00s. I want to listen to new bands that were
| _influenced_ by those bands.
| andoando wrote:
| I have a similar issue with Spotify too. Everywhere on my page
| is stuff I am completely bored of listening to, but since its
| the only thing I can easily access, I end up listening to the
| same things and Spotify thinks I want more of it.
|
| Instagram has the same issue. I watch a few horse videos and
| all of a sudden my feed is horses for months.
| tombert wrote:
| I haven't read the article, but I know the answer pretty
| definitively for me: the second I stopped listening to the radio,
| which happened in 2008 (when I was 17), because my favorite radio
| station in Orlando that used to carry a lot of punk rock music
| got rebranded to music for the 50+ demographic. I'm not even
| going to pretend that I know the reasons why they did that, but
| it was the only station I was listening to regularly, and pretty
| much my only source for new music as a result.
|
| Gradually I stopped seeking out new music, instead just focusing
| on buying CDs for bands I already knew until I got Spotify in
| 2012, and that just kind of became an echo chamber.
|
| I have a SiriusXM account now, and I do try and seek out new
| music that way occasionally via their phone app, but it's been a
| bit difficult since I don't drive since I moved to NYC. My car
| was probably 80+% of my music-listening time and now I don't
| really have that anymore. I can't really listen to music with
| lyrics while working (way too distracting for me), so the only
| music I listen to during most of the day is video game music from
| the 90's: stuff that's meant to be pleasant to listen to, but
| also easy to tune out by design.
| dr-smooth wrote:
| I also have that problem with lyrics in music while I'm
| working. That pushed me toward more electronic music during the
| workday. Got into various forms of house that way.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| lyrics in a language you don't speak are much less
| distracting
|
| (every now and then I get tempted to translate whatever word
| I think I keep hearing in every song; it often turns out to
| be either "love" or "heart")
| injidup wrote:
| Finding "new" music is a concept that the music industry has
| marketed to you like being skinny or that cola is a lifestyle. In
| times past people were happy with one genre or slight variations
| of that genre for millennia. Now we are spoiled for choice but
| are yet still made to feel ashamed if we are not consuming the
| newest and discarding the oldest. As if there is sickness to be
| found in enjoying something old and well worn.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, I agree.
|
| I think it's easy to sit and judge someone as being
| "uncultured" because they listen to music that was popular when
| they were a teenager, but fundamentally it's not like they're
| hurting anyone. I listen to mostly late-90's-early-2000's punk
| rock even still, and I don't think it's a moral failing that I
| don't listen to the latest stuff all the time, just like I
| don't think it's a moral failing for my mom to mostly listen to
| The Beegees.
|
| Music is, first and foremost, a means of entertainment, and
| it's not like it really buys you anything to be up to date in
| music for most careers. If your job is, I don't know, marketing
| director of a company, then sure, maybe you should keep up to
| date with the latest trends all the time, but most of us have
| pretty utilitarian jobs where it doesn't really matter _what_
| we like.
|
| I think where it gets harmful is acting like "the stuff I
| listened to as a teenager is _objectively_ better than what the
| kids listen to now ", which I will admit is a mentality that I
| sometimes have to actively fight against. I think it can
| sometimes be a proxy for shitting on the next generation of
| humans, and I am very actively against needlessly divisive and
| reductive stuff like that.
| ElFitz wrote:
| > and I don't think it's a moral failing that I don't listen
| to the latest stuff all the time
|
| I've personally enjoyed going the other way and exploring
| earlier and earlier singers and genres.
|
| Quite fun.
|
| For those interested, there's also "Excavated Shellac"[0]. I
| can't say I've liked or even enjoyed most of it, but it's
| been an intriguing and interesting discovery nonetheless.
|
| [0]: https://excavatedshellac.com/2020/12/13/excavated-
| shellac-an...
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, I've done something like the theme of Excavated
| Shellac with old CDs a couple times. I will buy a bundle of
| 100 random CDs on eBay and go through and rip anything that
| seems remotely interesting. Occasionally I've found stuff
| from obscure artists that I end up liking, and even stuff
| that never made it to Spotify.
|
| It's time consuming and I probably won't do it again but it
| was fun to do a few times.
| floxy wrote:
| >I think it's easy to sit and judge someone as being
| "uncultured" because they listen to music that was popular
| when they were a teenager
|
| Pretty funny, especially since I just attended a sold-out
| performance of Mozart's Requiem last month. Back when I was
| younger, I think the dominant perception was that classical
| music was "cultured" and popular / current music was lacking
| in refinement
| tombert wrote:
| I think it kind of goes both ways?
|
| Maybe the word "uncultured" isn't right, but I feel like
| when I say "I don't really listen to much that was written
| in the last fifteen years", people kind of act like I'm
| some kind of luddite. I also think a lot of people feel
| like the _smartest_ people go way back and listen to the
| classical stuff. Personally, I 've never really been able
| to get into classical music outside of movie soundtracks,
| and for awhile I was kind of embarrassed by that fact, but
| I'm not really anymore. As I said, music is about
| _entertainment_ , and you like what you like.
|
| Kind of related, when I was a teenager, I liked to read a
| lot, but I didn't have any money. I discovered Project
| Gutenberg and started reading a lot of public domain stuff
| (a lot of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Dickens, etc),
| purely out of cheapness. Teachers would think I'm smarter
| than I actually was because I knew obscure literary
| references from old books in my essays and when I would
| answer questions in class, despite the fact that it doesn't
| really require a 10,000 IQ to download a PDF file from the
| internet and read it.
| ElFitz wrote:
| > I also think a lot of people feel like the smartest
| people go way back and listen to the classical stuff.
| [...] and for awhile I was kind of embarrassed by that
| fact
|
| That says a lot more about those who think that it does
| about than those who do or do not listen to "classical"
| music.
|
| > Personally, I've never really been able to get into
| classical music outside of movie soundtracks,
|
| Not implying it will or should be the same for you, or
| even that you should try it, but in my limited experience
| headphones and speakers have hardly ever done any justice
| to "classical" music.
|
| It also seems some of it needs the listeners to have
| lived a little, so it can resonate with them. As an
| example, I couldn't care less for operas as a teenager.
| Fifteen years later, two live operas are among the few
| pieces that have so far managed to make me cry.
|
| But in any case, to each their own.
| tombert wrote:
| I don't disagree with anything you said.
|
| I did however try seeing some Beethoven performance a few
| years ago and I didn't really enjoy it. I can respect and
| appreciate the talent of the musicians, and I didn't hate
| it or anything, but I still didn't really have that much
| fun.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > I think it's easy to sit and judge someone as being
| "uncultured" because they listen to music that was popular
| when they were a teenager, but fundamentally it's not like
| they're hurting anyone.
|
| I think the antagonism usually goes in the other way. Most
| people get crystallized music tastes pretty soon into their
| life and the second the new generation comes up with
| something different, it's all "music is crap these days,
| silly kids, back in my day the 90s had the best music." There
| are several examples in this thread without a hint of the
| irony of this article.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Old foreign language books had translations for phrases
| along the lines of "the lobster makes a good salad" and "my
| husband is unwell, can you call a doctor?"
|
| If I were to use YouTube for a corpus, I could probably
| write contemporary translation books for many languages, as
| long as the phrases were along the lines of "still
| listening in ${YEAR}" and "new ${GENRE} isn't this good"
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I don't even blame them, clearly the article shows
| there's a biological or cultural phenomenon to it. It's
| just unfortunate when you're the 2% outlier that thinks
| music is progressing, as you can't share with others the
| appreciation that sounds are actually getting better.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _a biological or cultural phenomenom to it_
|
| Puberty?
|
| (much folk music has ambiguous lyrics; I wonder if
| starting to blush at all the traditional village songs
| used to be a social milestone?)
| gwill wrote:
| i feel like a majority of people don't seek out "new" music, so
| i see how you apply that to the music industry as a marketing
| concept. with whatever app, if you get people listening to more
| new stuff, you can get them engaged longer etc.
|
| however, i've sought new music since i was young. its something
| i share with my father who would purposely grab new records or
| cassette based on trivial things (title, art, price..) and then
| listen to the album several times. i love exploring different
| cultures and music is a great reflection of that. at the same
| time, i often go back to the old and well worn music i grew up
| with, and even that my parents or their parents grew up with. i
| think there's a lot of beauty out there and it's a shame to
| shun something new because you feel it falls within an
| industries agenda.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > Now we are spoiled for choice but are yet still made to feel
| ashamed if we are not consuming the newest and discarding the
| oldest. As
|
| Actually I've found Gen-z's to have surprisingly wide listening
| patterns. As a few datapoints I was surprised that my friend's
| teenager could actually name several Nirvana songs, knew who
| the Smashing pumpkins were, and also the Talking Heads. (all
| rose and fell from fame before her birth)
| kyllo wrote:
| My friend (who's the same age as me) has a 14 year old son
| who's learning guitar and he asked me for a lesson. The first
| thing he wanted me to show him was some riffs from AC/DC
| songs that came out before _I_ was born.
| fancymcpoopoo wrote:
| Very difficult with streaming. Rdio used to have a slider to
| recommend more unusual music. No other service has this that I've
| found. They keep playing the same songs and artist forever.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| I still mourn the loss of Rdio. It was far and away better than
| any other option. It's such a bummer it lost out to Spotify.
| thirdsun wrote:
| So true. I remember those days very fondly. There was a real
| community of listeners back then. Within that circle you
| shared albums and playlists, commented on and discussed them.
|
| Plus, it had a persistant queue that could handle single
| songs as well as albums and playlists as individual items
| which could be moved freely. Everything I was interested in
| was added to the queue and I could be certain it'd still be
| there tomorrow. Sort of like a musical backlog.
| pavon wrote:
| Pandora has introduced different tunings that help a bit with
| this. Not a continuous slider but provides some presets to
| indicate how wide a net to cast in different dimensions.
| Normal, Crowd Favorites, Deep Cuts, Discovery, Newly Release.
| detourdog wrote:
| I never understand why streaming services that work on
| subscription push some content over others. I would think if
| they have a monthly subscriber they wouldn't care what that
| subscriber is streaming as long as they are streaming.
|
| I find this especially bad with video streaming where a service
| has a great library but only promotes about 30 titles all
| categorized under different genres.
|
| I suppose they save on bandwidth if they can get everyone to
| just stream the same titles.
| cyphereal wrote:
| YouTubeMusic actually has this. With its "You Music Tuner"
| there are a lot of configurable parameters that control artist
| variety and music discovery. It doesn't quite nail tuning by
| curation, but it's a step in the right direction.
| thefaux wrote:
| The author seems to be describing what happens when one's primary
| relationship with music is one of consumption. It is easy (for me
| at least) to find new music when you are looking for inspiration
| in your own practice of making music. Most people don't make
| music though so I'd imagine it's easy to get stuck in that rut.
| andrewmthomas87 wrote:
| I see what you're saying in terms of additional motivation to
| find new music.
|
| But, is your average person's relationship with music "one of
| consumption" in such a way that causes stagnation? This comes
| off as gatekeepy. People may not make their own music, but I
| imagine many people listen to music as a form of inspiration.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Ya, I'm positive that familiarity with creating music skews
| listening preferences towards new music. Which is funny because
| then people that shit on modern, new music are statistically
| the ones not being able to create and not as deeply familiar
| with music.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I remember reading a headline that _Despacito_ had been displaced
| from the #1 position on Billboard after a 16 week run, while I
| had never heard the song. At that point I became a bit more
| intentional about trying to find new music.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| you obviously weren't watching enough _Sesame Street_ at the
| time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS6e3ZTuxC8
|
| Lagniappe: Landlercito
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSwQ1icECNg
| StuffMaster wrote:
| I know what you mean but at that point I started blaming the
| system! I still don't know that song.
| flerchin wrote:
| You stop when you want to stop. I picked up an affinity for K-pop
| in my 30s. Currently exploring a few other genres and also
| enjoying music that my kids are finding.
| ralphc wrote:
| Me, but I found K-pop in my 50s. Add to that Doom Metal & EBM.
| I also discovered Nu Metal 20 years after the fact. You stop
| when you want to stop.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Thanks to Shazam, I find new music all the time. Often times in
| hip places like hotel lobbies and restaurants.
| artemonster wrote:
| the biggest reason I pay for Spotify is to enjoy each Monday my
| "discover weekly" playlist :)
| Flatcircle wrote:
| agree with this
| msephton wrote:
| Same, but with Apple Music which does a personalised New Music
| Mix on Fridays.
| office_drone wrote:
| > This study identifies 33 as the tipping point for sonic
| stagnation, an age where artistic taste calcifies, increasingly
| deviating from contemporary works
|
| In the time since I turned 33 I've experienced an almost-complete
| switchover in genre preference, from pop/rock/light metal to
| country. Almost all of it has been found through Spotify's Daily
| Mix N, where n >= 2.
| meowtimemania wrote:
| Are spotify daily mixes ordered in some way?
| office_drone wrote:
| As best I can figure #1 is your 'guaranteed hits' - songs
| that you have listened to the most. As you go higher it may
| be your most-loved music of a different genre or the 1st
| genre again but with more new-to-you music.
| andrewmthomas87 wrote:
| Interesting article. I expect today's streaming tech will drive
| some change in these patterns, between easy access to a massive
| library and recommendation features.
|
| Much of my music discovery is aided by Spotify - some automated
| (radio, "Made For You"), some more manual ("Fans also like"
| related artists). However, as I continue to use Spotify, some of
| these features seem less effective. It's like I'm filling in
| interconnected regions of Spotify's graph of music and there are
| less edges to unvisited nodes.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| Spotify has financial incentive to obfuscate their UI to tilt
| people toward mindlessly consuming playlists. This is because
| labels pay Spotify to put certain songs on large playlists, and
| Spotify knows playlists are a good habit to push onto their
| users.
|
| Radio was used to discover new music decades ago, but paying a
| radio station (directly) to play a song is illegal (payola), so
| DJs had to break new songs, styles, and have a wide array of
| music offered (within the theme of the station).
|
| Spotify now has the ability to engage in a legal version of
| "digital" payola, so their handcrafted group of artists by major
| labels are peppered into their hundreds of in-house playlists,
| disguising this business practice as a wide array of music
| selection.
|
| This is detrimental to music discovery, because discovering a
| song is a lot less meaningful than discovering a new album and
| consuming the project as a whole and appreciating its
| composition.
|
| So you're discovering new music, but none of it is memorable,
| because listening to music in 2024 (for a lot of people) is often
| a wall of slightly groovy background noise, with the occasional
| standout track that you probably toss into your own personal
| playlist.
|
| How I fixed this:
|
| 1. Disable the 'autoplay' feature
|
| 2. Don't use playlists and listen to albums (except for when I'm
| in a pinch or hosting a party)
|
| 3. Intentionally discover a new genre every few months and go
| down a rabbit hole. My current new genre is South African
| Amapiano. Excellent stuff.
|
| 4. Discover music across different genres and time periods using
| RateYourMusic.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > So you're discovering new music, but none of it is memorable,
| because listening to music in 2024 (for a lot of people) is
| often a wall of slightly groovy background noise, with the
| occasional standout track that you probably toss into your own
| personal playlist.
|
| Yea, I tried streaming for a while, and found exactly that.
| When I play some genre-specific stream with a goal of
| discovering new music, I find it's basically full of
| unremarkable, generic musak, punctuated by maybe 0.1%
| memorable, great tracks that I'm motivated to bookmark for
| later. Are these few needles worth slogging through hours of
| haystack? After a few years I have sadly concluded "no."
|
| Not sure why this is. Has it always been this way (0.1% great
| stuff in a sea of mediocre?) or are "content creators" of today
| just more focused on churning out quantity than artists of the
| past?
| jonathankoren wrote:
| You've discovered the Pareto Principle. It's true about
| literally everything.
| qwertox wrote:
| So now I was on the German and the English Wikipedia entry
| of the Principle and noticed a noteworthy difference:
|
| English: While it is common to refer to pareto as "80/20"
| rule, under the assumption that, in all situations, 20% of
| causes determine 80% of problems, this ratio is merely a
| convenient rule of thumb and is not, nor should it be
| considered, an immutable law of nature.
|
| German: The 80-20 distribution in the Pareto principle
| often leads to the false assumption that a sum of 100 is
| mandatory. In fact, however, any other distribution is
| possible, in which, for example, 50 % of the efforts lead
| to 90 % of the effect, and again 50 % of the efforts lead
| to the remaining 10 % of the effect. This is easy to see in
| the trivial case that 100% of the efforts are the cause of
| 100% of the success. [0]
|
| It's interesting how this explanatory information is
| lacking in the English version. Should be a cool project
| for an LLM to transfer information between the different
| language versions of a Wikipedia entry.
|
| [0] Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
| listenallyall wrote:
| It's "true", yes, for almost everything, but there is a lot
| to gain from recognizing the difference between 80/20 and
| 90/10 or even 99/1, etc. Just like 99%, 99.9% and 99.99%
| uptime are VERY different promises to meet, while looking
| virtually identical to a layman.
| mattpallissard wrote:
| I'll add one more
|
| 5. Once you find a band you like, pull their tour dates. See
| who they're opening for or who their openers are.
| horsh1 wrote:
| 6. Go to whosampled.com and figure out the originals. Whom do
| they cover, whom do they sample.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Younger artists cover older artists all the time; when
| older artists cover younger ones, that's probably a
| recommendation.
|
| Examples: Dolly Parton covering Joan Jett; Alla Pugacheva
| and Sofia Rotaru covering t.A.T.u.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| >> labels pay Spotify to put certain songs on large playlists
|
| What are you talking about. IM going to need you to back this
| one up with some proof.
|
| 1. The labels have a giant back catalog that remains popular.
| It does not need promotion. Huge long tail profits there.
|
| 2. The labels dont have a lot to sell any more. The big artists
| tend to get out of the system (and make money on tours) and
| small artists get nothing. And lots of artists have bought back
| their catalogs, again long tail.
|
| The album, as a vehicle is mostly dead. Hell songs are mostly
| dead, if you cant hook someone in the time of a ticktock video
| your going to have a lot of trouble getting them. And there you
| need to be "background music" with a groove.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I was close friends with someone who managed a
| niche (but popular) artist's social media and streaming
| service presence. We discussed this fact and this person
| mentioned it could be $10k+ to be on some playlists 1st song
| spot for just a few days. I doubt it's only Spotify official
| playlists.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Or, you know, Spotify lists suck because they dont want you
| consuming.
|
| The optimal state for Netflix, Spotify, any other bandwidth
| intensive fixed price service is for you to PAY for it and
| NOT USE IT.
|
| These services are optimized for maintaining subscription
| numbers, not your enjoyment.
| harles wrote:
| I've wondered for a while if Spotify skews playlists in favor
| of cheaper songs. I have no evidence of this, but it'd make
| business sense to use the equivalent of store brand music (even
| if that just means outsourced to a cheap agency) for generic
| study music playlists and such.
| Euphorbium wrote:
| I think they tend to play what is cached locally, to save on
| streaming costs.
| harles wrote:
| That's certainly possible, but I'd expect licensing costs
| to dwarf bandwidth costs.
| dotancohen wrote:
| You have no idea how little artists make from selling
| music on platforms. The money is in the live performances
| and merchandise.
| resource_waste wrote:
| I noticed Google Play do this with Soundcloud Rap.
|
| Their amorality has caused me to enjoy SoundCloud Rap at a
| formidable age, now I cannot shake it. My kids listen to it,
| swear amorally, and the cycle continues.
|
| All because Google Play didn't want to shell out an extra 60
| cents per year for paid Rappers.
| tripdout wrote:
| What???
| re wrote:
| > it'd make business sense to use the equivalent of store
| brand music
|
| They've been accused of almost exactly this:
| https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-is-
| creating-i...
|
| Spotify denies doing this but you can google to find a lot of
| controversy over fake artists on Spotify.
|
| A more recent variation on the theme:
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/19/swedish-
| comp...
| doublepg23 wrote:
| > so DJs had to break new songs, styles, and have a wide array
| of music offered (within the theme of the station).
|
| I'm an older Zoomer and this was never the case for radio in my
| lifetime [1]. I heard "college radio stations" being a bastion
| of this but I've never listened to one myself.
|
| One of the earliest internet services I remember loving was
| Pandora because it recommended me artists I never heard on the
| radio and was the start of my love of music.
|
| [1] I'm guessing it was related to all radio stations being
| owned by the same companies.
| dmd wrote:
| Correct - this sort of thing was basically over-and-done by
| the mid 90s.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| Late Gen-X/Early Millennial here; there was a time before the
| consolidation of radio stations and invasion of iHeartMedia
| (at the time named Clear Channel) where DJs had the final
| word in what got played and most were quite good at
| introducing new music. Here's my experience form the outside
| of the industry: once consolidation started there was a push
| to use canned (pre-recorded) intros, outros, and interstitial
| announcements to reduce costs. Stations often kept some talk
| shows, but few kept real DJs. This let stations use a small
| number of voice actors for a large number of stations.
| Combined with centrally controlled playlists they were able
| to push the costs down and increase profits to the point that
| older style stations with bespoke DJs couldn't compete
| financially and either adopted the same model or they sold
| out.
|
| EDIT: I may be misremembering, but there used to be a limit
| on how many stations a company could own in a given market.
| StuffMaster wrote:
| Yep. I recall this happening. Let's all praise DEREGULATION
| and the dollars it brought us.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| You are correct. There used to be a limit. Radio was
| deregulated in the 90s and by the early 2000s local DJ
| selected music was essentially gone.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I recently switched off Amazon Music and went back to Pandora
| (must have started using it in like 2010 and then gone on a
| 13 or so year long diversion into the on-demand streaming
| services).
|
| I guess it isn't surprising because it is their core value
| proposition, but the Pandora discovery algorithm seems _so
| much_ better than the competition, at least to my ears.
|
| I miss the ability to hyper-focus and play an album over and
| over, but on the other hand, it is probably better not to
| burn out on an album, and anyway, if I really want to, I can
| buy the album I guess.
|
| Pandora + Bandcamp reminds me of what the internet looked
| like it could be. Sad that Amazon and their ilk have to silo
| everything.
|
| Last.fm was pretty good too. I wonder how they are holding
| up...
| jrussino wrote:
| Pandora was my go-to circa 2007-2009 and I haven't thought
| about it in years. Looking back, I discovered a
| disproportionate amount of the music I like in that
| timeframe... I'm honestly kind of surprised they're still
| around (and, if I'm reading your comment correctly, haven't
| morphed into something entirely unrecognizable in the
| meantime?)
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't know much about their business model under the
| hood, but from my point of view they seem pretty similar
| to back then.
|
| It was funny to log in and see all my old stations from a
| decade plus ago, still working.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| I use Pandora and subscribe to Premium which allows me to
| listen to albums on demand. When I started out as a free
| user after I gave up on Youtube in the background apps, I
| didn't like Spotify because it kept forcing me to listen
| to awful songs that it pushes on everybody instead of
| what I actually wanted to listen to. Pandora was a much
| better experience as a free user because their "radio"
| plays music similar to what you've already told it you
| like.
| MattJ100 wrote:
| How does Spotify "force" you to listen to stuff? I have a
| very different experience. Pandora (many years ago when I
| tried it) did not let you choose what you wanted to play
| (e.g. am album) and Spotify did (and still does). I have
| hundreds of my own playlists on Spotify, and my listening
| time is split between those, Spotify's "daily mix"
| playlists (generated from your personal music tastes) and
| occasionally "discover weekly" (one way I discover new
| music). I like choosing what music I listen to.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| Dude... THANK YOU. I just logged back into Pandora and
| the recommendations are just as excellent as I remember.
| I also remember discovering some of my absolute favorite
| songs/albums via Pandora.
|
| One thing that Pandora has is GENRE based stations. I
| don't know of any other service that can do that. This
| will be a game changer for when I dive into new genres.
| Kiro wrote:
| > This is because labels pay Spotify to put certain songs on
| large playlists
|
| Source? This is what Spotify says about it themselves:
|
| "We want to make something crystal clear: no one can pay to be
| added to one of Spotify's editorial playlists."
|
| https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/How-to-get-your-music-...
|
| Sure, they could be lying but then all the labels and their
| employees would need to be in on the lie as well.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| This is the same defense used in radio. Note the wording ...
| "no one can pay". Favors and indirect payment are used
| excessively in the music industry. Note that I also said that
| payola was the act of "direct payment".
|
| An example of indirect payment in radio would be the record
| label gifting a set of expensive tickets to the station.
|
| Remember those contests in the 2000s where the radio station
| would play a collection of songs over the course of a few
| hours, and if you could call in and be caller number 15 and
| name all the songs, you could win free concert tickets?
|
| The record label didn't pay the radio station with money -
| The tickets were gifted to the station for free. But as a
| result, the radio station played [insert band name]'s songs
| for 2 hours straight (and possibly other artists on the same
| label).
|
| This is a win-win, because a ton of people talk about this
| contest with their family and friends, so the station gets
| free promo, and the artist gets exposure.
|
| I don't know how Spotify is doing this in the digital era,
| but ask anyone connected to the music industry. This 100%
| happens.
|
| For a lot of casual listeners, Spotify editorial playlists
| are the new radio station.
| Kiro wrote:
| So in other words: you're just speculating and have no
| basis for the claim.
| onion2k wrote:
| _mindlessly_
|
| Or mindfully.
|
| You have no idea why people choose what they listen to, and
| suggesting they're doing it without thinking is just your
| snobbery showing.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| Read my comment again. If you're listening to a playlist,
| you're not mindfully choosing each song. There's nothing
| wrong with playlists, but my point was to describe how
| listening to music from Spotify's playlists often isn't a
| mindful experience (excluding when your attention is grabbed
| the occasional standout track).
|
| A GOOD playlist can keep your attention, and those are often
| handcrafted by other users. Just look at some of the other
| responses in this thread. Plenty of people have the same
| experience.
|
| I also said that music from playlists is often (not always)
| groovy background noise - This isn't a mindful experience -
| And that's okay.
| domador wrote:
| I'm listening to some Amapiano now... and loving it.
|
| Care to share some of the other genres you've tried before this
| one?
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| My previous genres were dozens of Techno subgenres. Check out
| the 2023 Coachella lineup. That year had a strong focus on
| 'World Music'. I went last year and that's how I discovered
| Amapiano.
|
| If you like Amapiano, check out a song titled 'Ungowami' by
| Sha Sha
|
| Check out 'Big Flexa' by Costa Titch. Awesome music video
| too. Huge dance culture in South Africa.
|
| Also check out 'Abo Mvelo' by Daliwonga (this song gets me
| hype during workouts)
|
| And check out Uncle Waffles' Boiler Room mix. Truly awesome
| performance.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| > This is detrimental to music discovery, because discovering a
| song is a lot less meaningful than discovering a new album and
| consuming the project as a whole and appreciating its
| composition.
|
| This is a very silly statement. As someone who prefers to
| listen the full albums and does so 95% of the time and
| basically never seek to play a specific single; I'm definitely
| not going to listen to an entire albums of new artists at a
| time.
|
| I look at the discover weekly / release radar. If I like a
| song, I'll listen to the album. If it I like the album, I'll
| listen to the discography.
|
| Most music is not great, but it's easy to sample and dive
| deeper.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| >If I like a song, I'll listen to the album. If it I like the
| album, I'll listen to the discography.
|
| Not everyone wants to put forth that much effort. Design
| decisions are often, if not always, centered around the path
| of least resistance. [1]
|
| 1: https://www.usertesting.com/blog/why-users-wont-go-where-
| you...
| bheadmaster wrote:
| > Not everyone wants to put forth that much effort.
|
| How is that more effort than listening whole albums?
|
| I personally do my Spotify discovery exactly that way - I
| listen to "discover weekly", and when a song stands out, I
| just click on the artist and listen more. I can't imagine
| any way of putting _less_ effort than that into discovering
| new music.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| Albums aren't what Spotify recommends. Path of least
| resistance. See my comment above.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Albums are literally one tap away - you tap on the song
| title and the album opens.
|
| > See my comment above.
|
| Please either reply to my comment with new words, or not
| at all.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Listening to albums is a bad way of discovering albums you
| like. That's my point.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't know about the Spotify analysis here, but certainly
| cosign RateYourMusic, which I just learned about this last
| weekend and am now a little bit obsessed with. It's like IMDB
| crossed with Pinboard, and the list of new stuff I have to
| listen to now is _long_ and intricately connected to what I
| already listen to. It 's a pretty amazing resource, even if
| everyone there is wrong about Uncle Tupelo's "Anodyne".
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I pay for it because it's dirt cheap and you get track
| ratings. If I discover an artist I use RYM to get the best 3
| songs of their best 3 albums on YouTube. if I still like the
| band after that I'll buy the highest rated album.
| tptacek wrote:
| I used it for like 5 minutes before paying for it, it's
| obviously great, and the "pro" upgrade has the funniest
| best feature ever (exclude ratings by the age of the
| rater).
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Haha yep, and I also exclude an entire genre and all of
| its sub-genres.
| divbzero wrote:
| The old school way still works too:
|
| 5. Listen to the radio.
| masklinn wrote:
| Nah, most people only have consolidated radio stations, they
| play national playlists of soup.
|
| If you still have independent stations which pay actual radio
| DJs empowered to craft their sets, cherish them.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Three D Radio, local independent radio station in Adelaide,
| South Australia is the source of most of my discovery.
|
| They play a lot of styles, and there's a lot I don't like,
| but there's a very high chance you haven't heard it before
| - and that counts for something.
|
| https://www.threedradio.com
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _My current new genre is South African Amapiano._
|
| How did you discover Amapiano? I ask because Tyla has become
| massively popular in the last year and I'm wondering if the
| discovery was truly coincidental or undercover marketing?
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| Uncle Waffles @ Coachella 2023
| rsanheim wrote:
| Also - just don't use Spotify. It has a UX that is just
| consistently opposed to album-centric listening. Or any sort of
| focused listening, really.
|
| There are alternatives. Apple music is fine. Tidal + Roon is
| also pretty good.
|
| For discovering music, Roon provides a much more album-centric
| way to browse and learn about different albums and genres. I
| use that combined with subreddits for particular genres and
| good old fashioned album reviews and artist interviews.
| gaudystead wrote:
| Since I'm not seeing anybody mention it yet but it's one of my
| favorite ways to find new genres, I'd highly recommend everyone
| check out everynoise.com because they seem to have scraped
| Spotify's genres (you'll need Spotify to listen to more than 30
| second samples, but probably still useful even if you don't use
| Spotify). The number of genres they have listed in the
| THOUSANDS, and I guarantee they will have something you've
| never heard of, but it's a great rabbit hole to go down when
| looking for new music. If you like a genre, they'll already
| have multiple playlists for it, and if you like a particular
| artist, they'll have those too. I am not affiliated with the
| website, but try to turn everyone I know onto it because
| there's just so much out there to discover that I wouldn't have
| otherwise.
|
| (everynoise.com developer, if you're reading this, I love you
| <3)
| hboon wrote:
| I see this in https://everynoise.com/#updates
|
| > 2024-01-05 status update: With my layoff from Spotify on
| 2023-12-04, I lost the internal data-access required for
| ongoing updates to many parts of this site. Most of this, as a
| result, is now a static snapshot of what, for now, will be the
| final state from the site's 10-year history and evolution,
| hosted on my own server. Some pieces may get disabled and
| reenabled over time, and some that only made sense with current
| data may never return. But we'll see.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Strongly disagree with your take on albums. I'm a music lover,
| spotify wrapped always puts me in the top 5% for most artists.
| I _never_ search by album, always song, and if it 's great I'll
| click in to check to see if the album is to my taste.
|
| I have discovered so much music on spotify. I'm not going to
| listen to a whole album to see if I like a new artist, lol.
| bigirondba wrote:
| I'm not convinced that we stop finding new music, we just become
| less zealous or outward about it as we get older. When I was
| young, I was all about talking music, having the right DJ list
| for roadtrips, etc, etc and now? I just hit play and don't think
| too much about it. Probably because it's harder to attend shows,
| less relevant to my social life, etc. I've also found as I've
| gotten older that I just care less about the specifics of what
| the song or artist is. I'll anchor to a song I really like and
| then let Apple's infinite play loop take it from there.
| monksy wrote:
| The artists have made it harder. They've pushed for aggressive
| one sided fan behavior policies (phone less), they've increased
| aggressively with the prices, the quality has gone down with
| many established bands, pushed large shows without building a
| performance with the space, and they've done a ton of things
| that don't help their product.
|
| It feels more like greed in the business than an experience.
|
| That being said I'm still sitting on the idea of paying 123$
| for cage the elephant show on an album I haven't heard yet.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _They 've pushed for aggressive one sided fan behavior
| policies (phone less)_
|
| That's the best thing they could do for fans.
| kennyadam wrote:
| I am 100% onboard with the phone bans. There's nothing worse
| than hundreds of phone screens glowing in your face while
| you're trying to enjoy a live act. I can't imagine how weird
| it must feel for the performer(s) too. To go from people
| looking at you, making eye contact, engaging with the
| performance, to suddenly seeing a sea of phones pointed at
| you, with everyone watching you indirectly via their phone
| screen.
| monksy wrote:
| There are far better ways to address people holding up
| their phones to record than to outright ban them from
| everyone. There are strong reasons (Bataclan) to need and
| have those there.
|
| What's with the sympathy for the performer? It's hard for
| them to even see the audience. Most of the light is focused
| on them and the audience is in the dark.
| kennyadam wrote:
| What's the better way? I'm not saying phones need to be
| physically removed from people, just kept in
| pockets/bags/whatever.
|
| As for my comment about the performer, I'm just picturing
| it from their perspective and to me it would feel odd to
| go from looking at people to looking at phones. I'm sure
| there are lots of people who film with their phone lights
| on, so that's got to be noticeable through the stage
| lights.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, the whole "I want to watch the concert through my
| phone" thing I don't get at all. If you just want to watch
| it on your phone, why not just stay home and watch a
| professionally-produced concert video? Are they actually
| recording it for later (and are actually going to watch
| their low-quality recording later), or do they simply need
| to frame everything they experience inside a phone bezel?
| jfdbcv wrote:
| I think humans have a natural instinct to share what they
| find cool / interesting.
|
| Before this was mostly done through in person
| communicate, now this is primarily done through smart
| phones.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I'd bet that most of such recordings are not even shared
| or perhaps even looked at by the author (personally, I'm
| guilty of this). It's just some sort of compulsion to
| record it.
| Contax wrote:
| They just want to brag about it, I guess. Like with
| photos of their meals and... well, lots of things. To
| each their own, but I stopped attending most shows mainly
| because of the annoying seas of phones in front of me.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > Are they actually recording it for later (and are
| actually going to watch their low-quality recording
| later)
|
| What's wild is how much the "low-quality recording" on a
| modern smartphone looks and sounds way better than
| bootlegs I listened to (or, god forbid, watched) in the
| 90s.
|
| I don't film entire concerts but I will usually try to
| get a nice clip from one of my favorite songs. It's fun
| to revisit. I'd love it if I had short clips from shows I
| saw when I was 20, especially ones of bands who blew up
| later or fell off the face of the earth.
| monksy wrote:
| Thank you for pointing this out. Everytime I bring up the
| "phone free" thing, everyone keeps jumping on and saying
| "well i don't like people filming". The situation that
| you mentioned is exactly how I do that and what I've
| seen.
|
| The exception to this is extremely mainstream
| performances that attract people, where it may be the one
| big thing they do in the year or the next.
| conradfr wrote:
| Also, why can't phones have a "concert mode" where you can
| film with the screen off?
| kennyadam wrote:
| It's surprisingly difficult to keep something in frame
| without a viewfinder. Especially if you're standing at a
| concert and holding your phone up.
| jmkr wrote:
| No thanks, security is already ridiculous.
|
| > There's nothing worse than hundreds of phone screens
| glowing in your face while you're trying to enjoy a live
| act.
|
| Plenty of worse things. People throwing up on you.
| Harassment. Tarps. Passing out. Being sold water even
| though it's supposed to be free. Taking bottle caps away
| from you. People talking during the show. People yelling
| about politics.
|
| I don't enjoy all the phones either, but it is what it is.
| riffic wrote:
| perhaps it's ill-behaved fans enjoying the art the wrong way?
| do we suppose the audience should be talking during a set
| too?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I'm not convinced that we stop finding new music, we just
| become less zealous or outward about it as we get older. When I
| was young, I was all about talking music, having the right DJ
| list for roadtrips, etc, etc and now? I just hit play and don't
| think too much about it. Probably because it's harder to attend
| shows, less relevant to my social life, etc._
|
| Well, older people (40, 50, even 60+) more passionate about
| music, they still do all of those (going to concerts,
| discussing music, crafting the right playlist for roadtrips),
| not unlike like they did in their 20s.
|
| So, yes: most people do care less about music and stop finding
| new music.
| cchi_co wrote:
| I am an adult but still love to make right DJ list for
| roadtrips
| grujicd wrote:
| > Probably because it's harder to attend shows
|
| This is maybe true if we talk about superstar kind of show. But
| I think it's now easier than ever to find out about little
| gigs, which were hard to find before social networks.
|
| I live in medium size capital city (Belgrade), there are
| options to listen to live music every single day. Sometimes
| it's just classic music, sometimes there are cover bands, but
| quite often there's a chance to listen to original music. And
| these small gigs are quite cheap or even free. I very often
| listen a song or two (Spotify or youtube really help with
| this!), then if it looks promising I listen to some more while
| walking to the show.
|
| Sure, sometimes it's not good. But very often I like it a lot
| and you can bet I listen to it much more focused then if that
| same music came on autoplay at home.
|
| If you're in big enough city or have something bigger nearby -
| find a way to discover new gigs, follow venues, event
| organizers, local cultural institutions, festivals, etc. That's
| my main use of Facebook.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I can't buy an argument about there being too many options. If
| there were a lot of options, and you liked a lot of them, you
| could just randomly sample new albums, or listen to whatever
| Spotify told you to listen to, and there would be no problem
| finding new music. I suspect the issue is there's a lot of music
| out there and none of it sounds like what you want.
|
| Note that this isn't saying music today is bad, it's got nothing
| to do with that.
|
| At a certain point, changing trends in music cause it to drift
| too far from your internal model (developed in youth) for what a
| song should be, and it becomes hard to take, decreasing returns
| with increasing effort, and you say "fuck it, I'll just listen to
| what I already like for the rest of my life".
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I would guess there's a strong correlation with trait openness to
| someones ability to integrate new music into their collection.
| IDK if its a lot, but I listened to 90 genres in 2023. I do find
| myself frequently liking music that is about 10 years old, but I
| think that's a function of discovering it, not of a willingness
| to try new sounds on for taste.
| riffic wrote:
| I'm still finding new music (look at my account creation date if
| you want an indication what my real world age is).
|
| Go crate digging or something, I don't know what the secret
| formula is.
|
| Spotify's robot dj just plays the same stuff over and over
| without much of a discovery component to it.
| czbond wrote:
| My best Spotify discovery method is the channel for the style I
| enjoy - and it is always news songs.
|
| I only listen to hard rock. All the songs are new & recently
| added with a fairly new artist mix.
| adamgravitis wrote:
| Other than the opportunity for a misplaced pun on the term
| "spiral", why would you take an otherwise linear-in-time graph
| and make it radial? Why would age 0 to 50 be somehow cyclical?
| kristopolous wrote:
| I've got a rather wonky way of doing this.
| https://github.com/kristopolous/music-explorer
|
| I've been building systems to find new music for 18 years or so.
| This latest one I've been using since early 2020.
|
| It's really for just me so sorry if the documentation is a little
| scattered. I'm certainly doing some minor ToS violations all over
| the place with this thing so I don't want it to get _too_ popular
| but I 'll be happy to clean up the documentation if there's
| interest
| dimask wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this! Looking forward to try it, seems
| like an interesting idea. My strategy on bandcamp is
| conceptually similar, albeit manually.
| l72 wrote:
| Bandcamp is my primary place for learning about new music. I
| find following small labels that specialize in a genre to be
| ideal. Unfortunately, bandcamp doesn't do a great job in
| helping me keep track of everything, so this is what I do:
|
| 1. Bandcamp doesn't have RSS, but I take all the incoming
| emails and convert them to RSS[1]. I separate out new
| messages vs new releases. I host my own RSS with FreshRSS.
|
| 2. I wrote an app (Camp Counselor [2]) to help manage your
| Bandcamp wishlist. You can organize, rate, and comment
| (privately) on your wishlist, along with play directly in the
| app. I find that my wishlist (which has a few thousand albums
| on it) is more of a "to do" list. If I get a recommendation,
| I just add it to my wishlist and will check it out later.
| Even stuff I don't like stays in my wishlist (with a low
| rating), to help me remember. I then sort by rating or added
| at dates, and as I purchase things, they move off my wishlist
| into my purchase list.
|
| This generally works really well for me, and I continue to
| explore lots of new and great music every day!
|
| [1] https://blog.line72.net/2021/12/23/converting-bandcamp-
| email...
|
| [2] https://flathub.org/apps/net.line72.campcounselor
| jddj wrote:
| Ah this is very cool.
| inbetween wrote:
| This looks great - how do you then keep the subset that you
| want to continue listening to in the longer term? Is there an
| "extract to my music collection" feature - or is this your
| music repository?
| havblue wrote:
| It doesn't seem like the article makes much of a distinction
| between newly released music and music that you haven't listened
| to yet. Personally, as I get older I've lost the ability to
| listen to the same Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd etc albums for the
| 100th time. I cringe every time I hear the opening of Don't Stop
| Believing. So I've kept trying to get deeper into prog and other
| genres lately as I'm just burnt out on the old (good) stuff.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _Pink Floyd etc albums for the 100th time_
|
| If you can risk a 101st time, have you tried "Dark Side of the
| Moonshine" (2009) yet?
| grujicd wrote:
| I really like Roger Waters recently released Dark Side of the
| Moon Redux.
| eterm wrote:
| Dub side of the moon (2003) is an absolute masterpiece of
| alternative covers.
|
| Sometimes I forget their version of Breathe isn't the
| original.
| jddj wrote:
| I also listened to so much of this in my late teens that
| hearing the original sounds strange.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| I still like Nirvana, and think they defined a moment, but
| let's be honest here. Dave Grohl has had a longer career with
| Foo Fighters, and Cobain hasn't put out new stuff since 1994.
|
| I'm not really interested in reliving that time.
| nocman wrote:
| Just pulled up "Don't Stop Believing" as a test.
|
| Even on crappy old junk headphones, still an awesome song that
| I don't think I'll ever get tired of.
|
| Granted, I don't generally let services make a playlist for me,
| and I don't beat the old songs to death. I like more variety
| than that.
|
| I _have_ however, rolled my eyes when listening to services
| that have an "80's rock" or "top 90's songs" only to have them
| play the _exact_ same dozen-or-so songs that they did the last
| time I visited that channel. No thanks!
|
| That's also probably one of the reasons I rarely listen using a
| service-generated playlist/channel. I think they are maximized
| for the service's profit, not for the listener's enjoyment.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| To me it depends a lot on the music... if it's more complex, or
| has more emotional depth I can usually continue to enjoy it
| almost indefinitely and get something new out of it each time.
|
| I'm sad to admit Led Zeppelin has lost some of it's charm after
| many listening, which makes me sad because I enjoyed it so much
| in the past. I've found a lot of Pink Floyd stuff is complex
| enough that I'm still enjoying it and noticing new things after
| many decades of listening to it. Watching videos of Floyd
| playing live also opened up a whole new appreciation for the
| music.
|
| Lots of the music I enjoyed as a kid/teenager had themes I can
| only now understand in my late 30s, and didn't really
| appreciate or fully grasp back then.
|
| Overall, a lot of prog really seems to have enough complexity
| to remain interesting for a long time. Most of Tools albums, I
| seem to not enjoy much at first, but enjoy more, and notice
| more things each time I listen, even after hundreds of listens.
|
| The same music that is complex enough to remain interesting
| over time, usually doesn't compress well and is really damaged
| as a low bitrate MP3. I've found those same albums I listen to
| most year after year are the ones I sought out lossless
| versions of.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Prog is making a bit of a comeback. Black Midi brought it back
| to the limelight for critics I think and the london scene is
| kind of all in on the sound.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I have to wonder how much of this is societal expectations as you
| age? or "Being an adult".
|
| The idea that once you reach a certain age, you settle down, get
| into a routine, doing less new things, etc.
|
| While yeah, a music streaming service could introduce you to new
| music. Maybe you will just find yourself in less situations where
| you will experience new music?
|
| Listening to a new song on your phone is a drastically different
| experience to overhearing it while traveling, with friends,
| whatever.
|
| I know I have a number of songs that bring up an emotional
| response due to certain events tied to them. And some of them are
| genres I would not have normally found myself listening too.
| blakesterz wrote:
| There's a great episode of the Ongoing History of New Music on
| this topic
|
| What A Drag It Is Getting Old (Musically)
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/what-a-drag-it-is-gett...
| "Ah...there it was again: an example of how someone's musical
| tastes evolve with age... it's just something that happens with
| most people... most of take that as a given...not me,
| though...this is something that's always fascinated me...there
| has to be some science behind why we listen to different types
| and styles of music as we go through life... So I tracked down
| this science and I have some answers...we'll call this episode
| "what a drag it is getting old--musically"..."
| murmansk wrote:
| Never! It gets just gets harder with time to find what you like,
| as your taste ossifies, and music evolves.
| ergonaught wrote:
| Well I'm in my 50s, and I mostly stopped finding new music when
| record labels, streaming, and social media destroyed the
| prospects for people who would otherwise make that new music for
| me to find.
|
| New stuff still arrives (you're not going to predict that me-
| at-15-loving-Megadeth will much later also love Billie Eilish or
| Gin Wigmore or Mirel Wagner or ...) but most "new music" is
| garbage by the standards set by about 50 years of music (much of
| that before I was alive and thus well before my "peak
| influence").
|
| I suspect the "findings" of the article suffer from environmental
| effects that weren't considered/controlled.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'm closing in on 50s, and what I miss the most out of the
| music I grew up with are actual cohesive albums that work as a
| single artistic unit. I think the 70s were the golden age of
| albums, and then slowly we moved towards the world of albums
| being just random collections of tracks, with one or two good
| ones and the rest "filler." Now, do many modern musicians even
| bother to release albums anymore? Seems like it's just track
| after track now.
| xoac wrote:
| I mean depends on what you are listening to. PLENTY of albums
| are being made.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| You might really like the new Cindy Lee double album[1]. The
| artist decided to only release it as one long video on
| Youtube instead of separating the songs so it can be played
| by streaming companies.
|
| For people who want to purchase the album, they can purchase
| the entire album, or none of it.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LJi5na897Y
| andrewmthomas87 wrote:
| > but most "new music" is garbage by the standards set by about
| 50 years of music
|
| How so? What are these standards?
| coldtea wrote:
| Infantilized lyrics, melodies, and harmonies, for starters.
| gwill wrote:
| i think defining what "new" means would help clarity this.
| perhaps what you said is true with new mainstream music
| from large labels, but none of that applies to "new" music
| that i listen to, at least that i'm aware of.
| coldtea wrote:
| New popular music.
|
| The mainstream went from quite decent to crap within the
| last 20 years or so.
|
| One could always find stuff to listen to their personal
| echo bubble, but not as much in the wider shared pop
| culture space.
| goosejuice wrote:
| A peek at billboard 100 from 2004 might surprise you.
| Same themes, new style and production. That said the rise
| of trap, particulary the repetitve autotuned bars,
| certainly hasn't helped in the lyricism dept.
|
| You'll of course find great talent in every generation.
| While I don't like the majority of the current top
| billboard there's some talent behind those tracks.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _A peek at billboard 100 from 2004 might surprise you.
| Same themes, new style and production._
|
| That era is already after it has been going downhill.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Have you tried adapting to newer discovery methods like
| http://rateyourmusic.com/ or http://last.fm/ or subreddits like
| reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic , reddit.com/r/IndieHeads ,
| reddit.com/r/HipHopHeads ?
|
| Perhaps even "4chan /mu/ charts"?
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| There's something biological going here I would think. 30 is
| about the age where fluid intelligence peaks but crystallized
| intelligence continues to grow for a few more decades. Also, 30
| is about the age where a lot of us come into our own as the
| person we will more or less be for the rest of our lives. I know
| for myself that in my teens and twenties, music was part of the
| process of defining myself. By my early thirties, I had grown out
| of that phase and mine or someone else's taste in music was
| irrelevant to how we viewed each other. Interestingly, like many
| men, I have not touched a video game since the age of thirty even
| though I've had the time.
| monksy wrote:
| Buy a Nintendo switch, and breath of the wild
|
| Come back in 9 months after you start that.
| DEADMEAT wrote:
| I'm curious about your experience with older men not playing
| video games? I'm in my mid-thirties and I would say that the
| overwhelming majority of my male friends and co-workers play
| video games recreationally. Video games are more popular and
| accessible than ever, so I guess I'm confused about why someone
| would age-out of the hobby?
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Perhaps it's just been my personal experience or maybe a Gen
| X thing? I tried getting back into playing video games a few
| years ago. I gave up after a weekend. It was dead boring. I'd
| much rather read the paper.
| ctoth wrote:
| Related, though not so much to the question in the article which
| more applies to individuals but societally:
|
| Melancholy Elephants:
| http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
| noashavit wrote:
| I think that it really depends on your relationship with music.
| I'm no longer in my 30s and still find new music all the time.
|
| I wonder why parents consistently listening to older music than
| their childless peers
| coldtea wrote:
| New-new music, or just new acts in the same genres that you
| liked in your early 20s?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Maybe I missed this in the article but I agree this is a
| major consideration. I find a lot of people might like "new"
| music but it's very much a slight riff on stuff they liked a
| long time ago. As a 30yo, good luck introducing anyone in the
| 25+ category to new albums that actually experiment into
| novel sounds and become the music of the current 20yo
| generation.
|
| It's a little sad too because the internet unlocked so much
| "bedroom producer" potential from the entire world where
| before you had to be musically trained or get a lot more
| lucky. There's actually a talent explosion right now.
| dublinben wrote:
| >good luck introducing anyone in the 25+ category to new
| albums that actually experiment into novel sounds and
| become the music of the current 20yo generation
|
| Both here and in the article there's a conflation of "new
| music" with "contemporary mainstream popular" which seems
| invalid. Is the Billboard Hot 100 any more or less
| innovative in 2024 than it was in 2004, or 1974? I think
| that most "mainstream" music is precisely "a slight riff on
| stuff [written] a long time ago." You have to go outside of
| the mainstream to find music and artists that are
| experimenting with novel sounds, just like you did in
| decades past.
|
| As you say, there's been an explosion of independent
| creativity, thanks to the Internet. There's no reason for
| anyone who is interested in music to listen to the same old
| mainstream dreck.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Is the Billboard Hot 100 any more or less innovative
| in 2024 than it was in 2004, or 1974?_
|
| Yes, amazingly less so. Less innovative and less diverse
| music styles.
| chx wrote:
| This rapidly becomes an exercise in classifying music which I
| always felt a bit silly. Try to put God Is an Astronaut in a
| genre, I wish you good fortune in the wars to come.
| https://youtu.be/ZmWYCIZhBgk at one time Wikipedia had them
| as "Post-rock, electronica, ambient, Space rock" then just
| gave up and labelled them as post-rock.
|
| My brother and I, less than two years apart in age, when we
| were 18 years old listened to the same music, power metal,
| mostly. By now, some three decades later he have veered off
| in a direction of high BPM while I am deep in folk metal land
| sometimes leaving metal behind. Where does folk metal end and
| where does (neo)folk rock start? I do not know and I couldn't
| care less if I tried. I simply enjoy
| https://youtu.be/mQWmryiIcxY a lot without trying to label
| it.
| bojan wrote:
| From the perspective of this parent - toddlers are loud. They
| make so much noise, continuously, either by playing or talking
| or, more often, both at the same time, that when I get a moment
| of silence I don't want to ruin it by playing music. I just
| want to hear nothing for a while, or chat with my partner in
| peace.
|
| Only in the last few months, with the youngest being almost 5,
| do I feel the urge to listen to the music again - and I have a
| 10 year gap to catch up with.
| floxy wrote:
| ...And you are listening to music for them. Although "C is
| for Conifers" (by They Might Be Giants) is pretty good by
| toddler-music-genre standards.
| theodpHN wrote:
| Wonder if this has gotten worse as music listening has become
| more of a private thing (solitary ipod/iphone listening). prior
| to that, i think many parents (myself included) found
| themselves exposed to lots of new music simply because it was
| hard to avoid not hearing whatever their children/spouses were
| listening to at home or in the car.
| SamBam wrote:
| For me it's the lack of time or headspace to keep up, and the
| lack of time to go to concerts. Pre kids we did a lot more of
| that.
| noashavit wrote:
| That makes sense!
| imp0cat wrote:
| > I wonder why parents consistently listening to older music
| than their childless peers
|
| Oh that one is easy. They probably watch Bluey with their
| children. That show features stuff by Rossini, Offenbach,
| Tchaikovsky, Holst (Jupiter!), etc... which then gets played in
| the house because it's so much fun.
|
| I know my kid can't stop dancing when John Ryan's Polka (Bluey
| episode Fairies) is on! :)
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/bluey/comments/ph5sot/whats_your_fa...
|
| It's weird that a kid's show can make the entire crave Rossini,
| but so is life, just roll with it! :)
| tmountain wrote:
| Age has affected my taste in music, but I continue to discover
| new music as I reach my mid 40s. As a teenager, I wanted to
| listen to grunge, punk, and metal. In my 20s, I had a strong
| preference for indie music. In my 30s, I got into blues and
| American folk music. Now, I'm in a jazz phase and appreciating
| classic guitarists from the 1950s and 1960s. I have always loved
| classical music, and I still appreciate a lot of the music from
| my past decades of development, but I hear a lot of it filtered
| through nostalgia and historical experiences more than from an
| angle of objective enjoyment.
| cchi_co wrote:
| > Age has affected my taste in music, but I continue to
| discover new music
|
| Same here... And I became really into the ganre World Music
| tmountain wrote:
| I also like World Music a lot, and West African blues. Check
| out Bombino if you haven't already heard him.
| nbk_2000 wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation! Reminds me of Amadou &
| Mariam.
|
| I'm often saddened by how hard it is as a Westerner to
| discover modern African music.
| aimor wrote:
| I've been using http://somafm.com and it's really the only thing
| that got me back into listening to music. ( https://radio.garden
| is also interesting )
| kyllo wrote:
| When I lived in South Korea, one of the things that struck me was
| how much "flatter" the generations there were in terms of pop
| culture and music taste and awareness, compared to the US. I
| worked in an office with a bunch of suit-and-tie businessmen who
| were mostly in their 40s to 60s, and if you were to ask them
| about any current K-pop group, they all knew their hit songs.
| esafak wrote:
| That's sad. That means they had no diversity in their music.
| greyface- wrote:
| Possible confounding factor: they only studied Spotify and Deezer
| users. This is like studying Kindle users for insights on readers
| at large. I would not be surprised if there were a correlation
| between using streaming services (or not) and openness to new
| music. Study, say, Bandcamp users, and I bet you get a different
| picture.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Wasn't there already a "Tom the Dancing Bug" about the 13-14
| thing over a decade ago?
| crtasm wrote:
| I love opening the bandcamp homepage and seeing the live
| purchases scroll past, people all over the world buying music
| I've (mostly) not yet discovered!
| treflop wrote:
| my thought is that music is a hobby and people mislead themselves
| into themselves into thinking that it's their hobby or that
| everyone has music has a hobby. I think music is just a phase for
| most people, as have been most things I've personally tried but
| wasn't really into
|
| but I'm in my 30s, am still into finding my music, and I can't
| see that ever going away.
|
| and I know people love listening to music from their formative
| years and don't get me wrong, I too was obsessed into 2010's
| indie rock and pop punk too, but I think it's just people
| reliving the phase.
|
| personally I will only pretty much listen to 2020's indie rock
| and pop punk from new bands if I do. you will rarely catch me
| listening to music that I used to listen to. it was good then.
| now it's tired and boring.
| floxy wrote:
| >it was good then. now it's tired and boring.
|
| It might be worth revisiting that music in a decade or two. My
| wife recently found an old Michael Jackson CD cleaning out an
| box of something in the garage. That sparked a let-me-listen to
| some more 70's and 80's music. Lot's of great "timeless"
| Michael Jackson songs. Not so much for Madonna for some reason.
| The Carpenter's and select ABBA gets a thumb's up from me as
| well.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I love listening to pop-ier 80s acts that were sampled by
| vaporwave artists and my GenX dad (huge grunge guy) is
| puzzled why I like the dreck.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| The trend towards flatting the curve with the preferred decade of
| music for each generation is cool to see. I had assumed this was
| happening anecdotally, but it looks like a pretty large effect
| here.
| TheTon wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "But 'American Idiot' wasn't a true act of revolution. In fact,
| the album was produced and promoted by a multinational
| conglomerate with the intent of packaging seemingly transgressive
| pop-punk acts for my exact demographic."
|
| This is sort of beside the point of the article, but I was just
| reading an interview[1] with Billie Joe Armstrong about this
| album and it doesn't sound like their process was anywhere as
| cynical as this take.
|
| On another note, I find Elton John's Rocket Hour on Apple Music
| to be refreshing in terms of how earnestly he approaches new
| music and new artists. If you haven't heard it, it's nothing like
| what you might expect based on the title. It's not "Elton plays
| songs from his back catalog and talks about them," but rather
| "Elton plays new songs you haven't heard by artists you haven't
| heard of yet, and interviews them as his peers."
|
| [1] https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/green-day-billie-joe-
| ar...
| cess11 wrote:
| A video essay about the social impact of American Idiot and
| similar records from that period:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehbgAGlrVKE
|
| Been a while but I thought it was pretty interesting when I
| watched it, coming from a black metal and punk background that
| was too underground when that pop cultural thing happened to
| notice.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Green Day got a lot of air time in the 90's but the playola
| effect (the not payola wink-wink that still went on) died out
| in the early-mid 00's as rock and alt rock stations folded with
| demographic changes and mp3 trading took off. Also overplayed
| on the radio: Sublime, Rush, Van Halen, RHCP, and Metallica.
|
| As far as cultural impact over a larger timespan: Iron
| Butterfly, The Dead, Frank Zappa, Quiet Riot, Ozzy, MJ,
| Nirvana, Cake, AiC, NIN, Marilyn Manson, Soundgarden, TOOL,
| Beastie Boys, RATM, Kool Keith (and other aliases), Jay-Z (and
| Danger Mouse mixes), RZA (and family relations).
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| From what I can tell from your list, it is 100% men. Where
| are the women? Heart might fit your list.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| The Runaways? Ford and Jett both started their careers
| there, and while I don't know if Ford ever anchored herself
| in the literature, Jett covered "I Love Rock&Roll" and had
| it covered in turn by Parton, which then leads to a fair
| chunk of that century.
| kleiba wrote:
| When I was in my teens, I really had nothing to do. Not that I
| was a loner - I was in a sports club and I had a pretty active
| social life. But the thing is - compared to having a job, the
| time I spent at school each day left me with so much more spare
| time than today [1], you gotta do _something_ with that. And my
| knowledge of music was still pretty limited, so of course
| exploring new styles of music and new bands was exciting! Plus,
| everyone of my friends was doing the same, and at that age, doing
| what the peer group does was very important...
|
| [1] By which I mean, having a day job, commuting back and forth,
| oh, and having a family with little kids, which basically means
| zero spare time.
| usrusr wrote:
| Very interesting to see these things observed in numbers.
| Impressive 80ies peak among us gen X!
|
| My music taste brain was initially formatted by that 1990ies idea
| of MTV mainstream vs independent (which paradoxically, also
| defined itself through existing on MTV, just in different
| niches), and from there it had been a slippery slope towards ever
| nichyer niche. Stuff where the big hits now have accumulated
| total Spotify plays in four-digit range, if they do exist there.
| When eventually I realized that winning at niche one-upmanship is
| a lonely celebration, what followed was mostly silence.
| chaosprint wrote:
| I feel like the more I listen to it, the less new patterns I
| find. In addition to auditory sensory stimulation, spiritual
| identification is also increasingly important, and the latter is
| not easy to be constantly fond of the new and dislike the old.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| As a teenager it really bothered me that adults seemed to have
| lost the ability to appreciate good music simply because it was
| new- I vowed to make a point of regularly trying new music with
| an open mind as I grew older, and not to grow up like that. My
| own parents who loved good music when they were younger, and
| whose music tastes I could appreciate well, literally heard my
| music as basically random noise, and couldn't even process it...
| stuff that was deeply inspiring and meaningful to me. It seemed
| like such a loss and a shame that they were incapable of enjoying
| it.
|
| Overall, in my late 30s, I would say it's worked pretty well. I
| try to spend a decent amount of time sampling new music, and my
| music tastes have evolved a lot over time. In just the last two
| years I came to appreciate two entire new genre of music I had
| never really paid attention to, and listen to them a lot.
| Although, I will admit that most of my overall favorite music is
| still the same stuff I liked as a teenager.
|
| I think a lot of it is simply taking the time to sample new
| music, and to develop the mental pathways to process new music
| styles. Old people can do it just as well as young people, but
| generally, older people have less time and interest in doing so.
| Kids generally don't understand what its like to be a parent with
| a job, and how little free time adults have, and how precious it
| is to them.
|
| Also- regarding the author's comments on "American Idiot." I've
| always found it amusing how American capitalism loves to
| unironically sell people whatever they are willing to buy,
| especially including rebellious and anti-capitalist products and
| services, which are a big business overall. Reddit is currently
| worth 7 billion, and caters largely to people that like to
| complain to one another about how evil they feel capitalism is,
| and especially how evil Reddit in particular is.
| logtempo wrote:
| I think the same. And tbh, if music variations are finite, I'm
| quite sure it's big enough to fill my entire life with new
| song, sounds, arrangement, voices, lyrics...Also music is not
| only sound, but also performances.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Completely agree on performances... I've had a renewed
| appreciation for a lot of music after seeing it performed
| live (even on video), and/or hearing live album versions.
| _virtu wrote:
| On the other hand, I'm listening to a new album at least three
| times a week. Using tools like last.fm and some private trackers
| helps to keep things fresh. Never give up on finding that next
| tune!
| cchi_co wrote:
| And the feeling when you find something...
| UrineSqueegee wrote:
| most likely never is the answer.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I must be some sort of freak.
|
| I grew up in the 60's and 70's listening to classic rock, and a
| lot of it I can't even stand any more due to the incredibly small
| playlists that most classic rock stations use.
|
| In my 20's I started listening to a lot of classical and then
| jazz. In the 90's a lot of grunge which's I still love. After
| that was trance in the 2000's, then ambient, techno and IDM after
| that. I still listen to all of these genres today depending on my
| mood.
| Zancarius wrote:
| I don't think you're completely alone, but you're probably
| statistically insignificant (don't worry, I'm right there with
| you).
|
| Like you, I can't stand the music I grew up with all that much
| (maybe a few songs here and there), but I went through the
| trance/electronic fixation in the 2000s. Now it's almost
| anything that I enjoy, which probably doesn't say much, but I'm
| presently listening to some chillstep and was listening to
| metal covers of the sea shanties "Santiana" and "Roll the Old
| Chariot Along." A few weeks ago, I was listening to Norse-
| inspired works by Einar Selvik.
|
| I can't imagine we're that statistically significant or if
| streaming may have some impact on availability and interest.
| I'm unwilling to believe it's a personality trait, for
| instance. (For another data point, I was born in the early
| 80s.)
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Anecdotally for me it's that music is now more complex the
| simplicity of older music just doesn't please the senses as
| it did back then.
|
| Kind of the same feeling where you upgrade to two monitors
| and if you have to use a workstation with one just isn't the
| same.
| Zancarius wrote:
| You know... this makes a LOT of sense to me.
|
| On the other hand, I really appreciate the minimalism of
| some modern ambient scores, but I'm not sure me from 15-20
| years ago would have had any tolerance of it.
| RIMR wrote:
| I actually wonder if staying receptive to new music into or
| past middle age is enhanced by autism. I am a male on the
| spectrum, in my late 30's, and absolutely nothing about this
| article rings true to me. I generally operate on a 5 year
| cycle where I completely reinvent my musical interests, stop
| enjoying lots of tracks that I used to love (I hate just
| about eveything I loved at 14), and hang onto a handful of
| tracks that I consider timeless.
|
| I am already feeling myself reach the end of one of these
| cycles where I am digging through netlabels and indie
| internet radio stations looking for the next niche subgenre
| to become addicted to.
| willismichael wrote:
| I'm going on mid 40s and could have written a very similar
| comment, except my five year cycle is more additive than
| reinventive.
| Zancarius wrote:
| It seems plausible. I'm not on the spectrum (so far as I
| know), but my receptiveness to new music _generally_ has
| some association with previous genres I enjoyed. I
| definitely don 't experience the "reinventiveness" trait so
| much as gradual evolution. I don't like early 2000s
| electronica anymore, some trance I used to enjoy I don't,
| but now I just love some other genres that are tangentially
| related (chillstep, etc). On the other hand, I still enjoy
| some of the same metal groups that I used to (Disturbed,
| Epica, etc) even though I don't listen as often.
|
| Perhaps there is, if you pardon the expression, a spectrum
| of receptiveness.
|
| I'm thinking there's something to your speculation, though.
| com2kid wrote:
| Brains have to have repeated exposure to a stimulus before
| they find it pleasurable. This is why you may need to try a
| new food a few times before you develop a liking for it,
| and the same goes for new music genres.
|
| If you purposefully go out and listen to new music, you'll
| quickly get accustom to the sounds of new genres. On the
| other hand, people who are not in the habit of trying new
| things never train their brain to enjoy new types of music.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Im much the same, but today I'm constantly in the search for
| anything new, anything in any genre that breaks the well-worn
| formulae and surprises me, but it's honestly hard to find,
| everything is derivative.
| cchi_co wrote:
| I go through periods like that
| jdougan wrote:
| I want a station that plays everything that was ever in the
| rock top 100 from around 1950 to around 2010. There has to be
| all kinds of great stuff that never gets played on "oldies"
| stations. Probably a bunch of duds too, but if they made it
| as far as the top 100, there can't be that relatively many.
|
| You could do this with almost any genre, I suspect.
| winternett wrote:
| I listen to anything new I can get my hands on without a bunch
| of ads disrupting the vibe.. YouTube is my favorite music
| resource these days, as the videos are better in telling me
| more about whether an artist is genuine (non Ai, and non-
| industry-plant).
|
| The genre is not really defining in most cases for me, because
| so much is mislabeled, or not even labeled at all, and I've
| found in searching music by genre, that most of the
| recommendations are flooded with SEO spam, and typically never
| the best music within the genre to begin with...
|
| Ai recommendations will also primarily be based on what makes
| platforms and their partners the most money, which is often
| coincidentally the generic sounding pop drivel we're all so
| used to being played in every retail outlet around us, the best
| music I've noticed is often hidden below 10k views or less.
| bigthymer wrote:
| I think we have the same taste from the 2000s on. If you had to
| recommend one artist\track I probably haven't heard of yet,
| which would it be?
| patchorang wrote:
| I have a very similar history as well, so jumping in. You've
| probably heard of the artist, John Frusciante. But probably
| not the album, Maya.
|
| The guitarist for RHCP is making the best modern IDM.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I'm not who you're asking, but this is a relatively recent
| release that put me on my ass:
|
| The song Party Dozen by the band Party Dozen.
|
| Follow rabbit hole from there.
| alickz wrote:
| "ambient, techno and IDM" is a broad bucket but my favourite
| noname I found post 2010s is a greek sampler going by
| Moderator
|
| Closer to trip-hop maybe but has elements of ambient and some
| dance
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX1SpTUdZQM
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MjAGr09yWo
|
| https://moderator.bandcamp.com/album/sinners-syndrome-2
|
| If you're more into the techno / IDM side then maybe you'll
| like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMGkis0E2r8
|
| it's the dustiest deep house track i've found in a decade
|
| also this one makes me nostalgic for 90s rave scene:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpZ2s1BrLHI
| readingnews wrote:
| I find this very interesting, as my path is nearly identical,
| with the added note (like some other replies) that I just can
| not stand 60s-70s rock any longer... but I find my musical
| interests are much wider, and I am listening to more new music
| than ever before (trance, IDM, experimental, jazz, classical).
|
| I do know people who turn on some streaming service and
| basically listen to the same genre all day long. I am not sure
| how they do it. Maybe we are in some small demographic that
| goes nuts if we do not discover new music?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Spotify gives me half a dozen suggested playlists, and
| they're each broadly compartmentalized into different genres
| (or collections of similar genres).
| bsder wrote:
| > I can't even stand any more due to the incredibly small
| playlists that most classic rock stations use.
|
| That's _every bloody station_ nowadays. It doesn 't matter if
| its radio, SiriusXM, Spotify, or whatever they _all_ degenerate
| into a small number of repeated songs.
|
| I _loathe_ this pigeonholing. It makes finding something new
| you might like _REALLY_ hard.
|
| For example, I don't want an "80s station" with the same old
| crap. How about a station that plays all the songs released
| since 1990 by those 80s artists? Nope. Nada.
|
| Or, how about just the _other tracks_ from the same albums.
| Sure, you 've heard "Faithfully" from Journey's "Frontiers"
| album a zillion times and hate it. Have you heard "Chain
| Reaction", "Edge of the Blade" or "Frontiers" from the album?
| Bet you haven't and if you hate their sappy ballads you're
| likely to enjoy those tracks.
|
| Or, God forbid, brand new artists that sound like what you
| want. Try coughing up Blossoms from liking 80s. You might get
| there if you really work by starting from the very specific
| "jangle pop" angle.
|
| Ever heard _anything_ from "Blackstar" out in public? I know I
| sure haven't.
|
| However, I would also argue that music is simply a _LOT_ less
| important to today 's youth. It's background noise while doing
| some other activity and not an activity in and unto itself.
| 48864w6ui wrote:
| The local oldies station plays 1950-2004 (now-20) and does
| seem to delve a little past top 40 from time to time.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| > However, I would also argue that music is simply a LOT less
| important to today's youth. It's background noise while doing
| some other activity and not an activity in and unto itself.
|
| Maybe. But then you get t-swizzle teenagers with turntables
| who rediscover the idea of sitting and listening to an album.
| stavros wrote:
| I'm the bane of any recommendation algorithm. They just give me
| random crap because nobody, not even me, can figure out my
| taste. I like a little bit of virtually everything, with no
| rhyme or reason.
| Nition wrote:
| I like music with good lyrics, which similarly no algorithm
| can figure out.
| guappa wrote:
| "You once listened to a cover from Metallica of an Ennio
| Morricone song? Here's Metallica entire discography as a
| suggestion!"
|
| -- the recommendation algorithm
| gregmac wrote:
| I too listen to different genres of music depending on mood,
| and I hate when they mix. I used to make mix tapes and later
| audio CDs like "Alt Rock #" and "EDM #" and I had dozens of
| those.
|
| Since I went to digital music, I've had the same problem with
| practically every bit of software and streaming service. They
| all seem to have some mode where it wants to just mix stuff
| between genres and it drives me nuts.
|
| My current service is Google Music, and the (auto-generated)
| "likes" playlist, which really contains only songs that I
| genuinely _really_ like, even annoys me due to the mixing of
| genres.
|
| I've found what works best for discovery is to make playlists
| (by genre, of course) and then from there pick "Start Radio".
| That is my main way of discovering new music, and when I find
| songs I enjoy I try to add them to the playlist, too, and
| "Like" them if they're especially great.
|
| But I do always feel like I'm against the grain, wondering how
| anyone can ever use any of the auto-generated playlists that
| aren't constrained by genre, and why anyone would ever build
| such a thing.
| ysavir wrote:
| I use Pandora and I'm able to maintain genre-specific
| stations pretty well. Sometimes it will try to mix something
| new in but I just dislike that song and it happily keeps
| playing the genre(s) that I chose for that channel.
| gregmac wrote:
| I don't know about Pandora, but I've always been cautious
| to use "dislike" in that way, because I don't know the
| scope. There's a difference between "I don't want to ever
| hear this" vs "I don't want to hear it on this station". I
| use it for the former but not the latter.
| SamBam wrote:
| Yeah, the opaqueness of your actions in Pandora and in
| other streaming services is always annoying.
|
| Likewise, Pandora allows you to create a station with
| multiple seeds, or (is it the same?) like songs within a
| station.
|
| I used to use that, and then I felt like it was narrowing
| the breadth of the station. I realized that in my mental
| model I wanted it to be a station of Artist A _plus_
| Artist B, so a more expansive station, but Pandora seemed
| to be treating it as "Artist A [?] Artist B," i.e. just
| the small intersection.
| ysavir wrote:
| My experience has been that dislikes are station
| specific. I regularly dislike songs on channels in order
| to shape the genre, even if I actively listen to that
| song on other stations. Pandora's whole identity revolves
| around stations, so it would be weird if dislikes were
| global.
|
| I've found the pandora community post below that seems to
| confirm it, though I'm not sure whether the community
| admin answering the question is actually a pandora
| employee or not.
|
| https://community.pandora.com/t5/My-Collection/What-if-
| you-l...
| wbl wrote:
| WQXR plays an extremely shallow list. Very little 20th century,
| minimal baroque, sticks to the more well known romantics.
| ta2112 wrote:
| Me too, but it may be because as a teenager I listened to heavy
| metal. It was awesome, and I still like hearing those songs
| occasionally. But it's so loud and exhausting that I don't seek
| it out. Instead, I'm usually drawn back to Motown and R&B from
| the 60s and 70s, which is definitely before my time.
| ddingus wrote:
| They use a set of researched tracks by Arbitron and others
| seeking to maximize AD revenue by demographic.
|
| There is a TON of great classic rock to enjoy that never sees
| airplay and the reason is the researched tunes have "known"
| demographics that can be sold.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I have started a little research project wherein I have been
| harvesting the feeds of various Internet-active radio
| stations so I can look for the "deep cuts." Not just for
| classic rock, but for various "new wave" stations, as well as
| combining old "top 500" lists, and so on. I am nowhere near
| done, but I have made some notes that confirm old suspicions.
|
| One, you're quite right about classic rock having a lot of
| deep cuts that just don't make it outside of some specific
| instances. On the other hand, not only was new wave not
| entirely congruent to the 1980s, but a lot of what gets
| called new wave on various stations is only music that
| existed in the 1980s, rather than being actual new wave. New
| wave was fairly tight and the rest is padding.
|
| "Darkjazz" really came and went, and it's unfortunate. I'm
| still working my way through it but there was a hell of a
| drop-off.
|
| Speaking of researched tracks, I think when an artist dies,
| there's a contraction of what of their tracks get played on
| air.
|
| Another thought, this one purely math. If you bought, say,
| ten CDs every year, new releases, well, the average age of
| your collection will age at about half your own age rate. The
| only ways to prevent that, if this concerns you, is to either
| jettison your old music or gather ever-increasing amounts of
| new music.
|
| All of this is to say that, unless your preference is
| "whatever is on the radio ... played a reasonable volume"
| (Pictures for Sad Children), you're swimming upstream,
| against the fantastically evolved. Taste gave way to
| faddishness, then payola, and now, well, The Algorithm. It's
| a fight to find what you might like rather than what is just
| being extruded like soft serve.
| amatecha wrote:
| Aww hell yeah, dark jazz is great. I assume you know Bohren
| & der Club of Gore and Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble?
| (curious of any recommendations if you know more good
| stuff!)
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I am working on one of my Master Lists, but the
| /r/darkjazz subreddit _was_ good. Now, it is mostly dead
| but for spam from randos who aren 't within miles of the
| sound trying to flog their own efforts. Black Chamber,
| Free Nelson Mandoomjazz, you might try those for giggles.
|
| I had expected that some of Badalamenti's stuff would
| have opened up since his death, like his score for _Witch
| Hunt_ , but no luck. His stuff was sort of a wellspring,
| among others, which intermingled into that little creek
| we called darkjazz, for a while.
|
| I originally got into it as a primary component of a long
| set of mixes for a particular mood, namely that I would
| have instrumentals (primarily darkjazz) buffering slow
| tempo "torchy" kinds of songs (Mel Torme, Julie London,
| Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday) and the "once every ninety
| minutes" track which was a little newer. The idea being
| that the darkjazz doesn't call too much attention to
| itself and keeps the mood going.
| ddingus wrote:
| Indeed! Your comment resonates with my own thought and
| experiences.
|
| In another comment, I said it helps to be around others
| seeking new tunes. It helps a lot! Their bias into our
| system can bend things back into a fairly normal curve. It
| is like rolling back the clock on our music age.
|
| Right now, I am living that with people at their music
| seeking peak. Super fun and very invigorating.
|
| Recommended.
| danieldk wrote:
| I'm similarly weird. I grew up in the 90s and listened to a lot
| of grunge when I was 14 (the music age we seem to prefer
| according to the article). But I can barely listen to the music
| from that time anymore. It just sounds so dated, maybe because
| I listened to it too much? Something like Pearl Jam or
| Soundgarden just sounds so dreadful now.
|
| Instead, music has become much more timeless for me. 50/60ies
| jazz, 70s prog rock, Bowie, 2010s hiphop, it's really all over
| the place.
| lloeki wrote:
| > It just sounds so dated, maybe because I listened to it too
| much?
|
| Something like that happened to me, again and again.
|
| Overlistening things I love (not necessarily because of me,
| sometimes it's third parties piling upon my own listening),
| then at some point I start to not like it anymore to a point
| ranging from "I have no interest in it anymore" to "it makes
| me cringe".
|
| Then if I manage to avoid it for some time, often I end up
| rediscovering it (often by accident) and like it again, but
| the reason I re-like it is usually deeply different from the
| original one, and certainly far removed from nostalgia.
| danieldk wrote:
| Not listening for some time indeed sometimes helps. I now
| try to avoid listening music I _really really_ like too
| often. It 's something beautiful you take out of its box
| every few months/years. Stuff like Ole Coltrane or Miles
| Davis' Filles de Kilimanjaro.
| anthk wrote:
| On rock, try this:
|
| http://s2.stationplaylist.com:9460/guerrilla
|
| On Jazz, Archive.org has full legal backups of Revolution Void,
| some gem I discovered wiatth the K.Mandla/Inconsolation blog
| (now defunct).
| inopinatus wrote:
| Statistics are not descriptive of an individual. This data
| should not be used to make boundary assertions about anyone's
| actual preferences.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Why's the writer listening to james blunt still, that your
| beautiful song sucked when it came out too lol
|
| I used to be really into music, writing, releasing, curating
| everything. But yeah around my 30s idk, i lost interest i guess
| like any other hobby. I listen to podcasts now when I drive. In
| my 20s finding music was like hard work. I went through a lot
| music all the time.
|
| One thing I think is interesting is older music seems to be
| sticking around more. Like maybe in the 60s and on more timeless
| music was written? like in 2000, Idk anyone that listened to 40s
| or really 50s music, music that would be 50-60 years old at the
| time. But in the 2020s, 1960s, 70s, 80s music is still around. I
| think still has a lot of cultural relevancy. Or maybe the kids
| today don't care about the beatles or jimi hendrix? I find that
| hard to believe though. In 20 more years are we going to say
| Queen and ACDC sucked and never listen to it again?
|
| What do rebelious kids and angsty teens listen to now? Who are
| the red hot chili peppers, and weezers and blink182s right now.
| latentcall wrote:
| My old process (still the same) was going on RateYourMusic and
| looking at the user lists. If a list has a title that resonates
| with me I tend to find some really cool albums in there. I'll
| listen to a sample on YT and grab it on Soulseek, and if I really
| like the album I buy it on vinyl.
|
| I used Spotify for 10 years or so and it never seemed good at
| recommending me music. Within the last two years I cancelled my
| subscription and have returned to the old ways.
|
| The sad thing is, life is too short to hear all the amazing music
| out there!
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| I was looking forward to my kids introducing me to new music as
| I've stagnated. Their favourites?
|
| - Nirvana - Weezer - Blink 182 - Jimmy Eat World
|
| :-/
|
| (although my new favourite band is The Beaches)
| cchi_co wrote:
| Overall, music plays its own specific role for each person. For
| some, music is a significant part of life, almost like a whole
| life, while for others, it's simply meant to be in the
| background.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| My music tastes were pretty much static since highschool until I
| started using Spotify 5 years ago
| TedHerman wrote:
| Not being a user of Spotify nor other services, I can only say
| that I continue to find new music in each decade. And I like much
| of newer music better than the old classics (which is saying
| something because I started listening in the 1960s). Thus what
| Parris says doesn't speak to me.
| llsf wrote:
| Funny, when I was maybe 10yo, I got scared when I realized that
| given the number of notes is finite, the number of different
| melodies would be too, and so we would have one day to put new
| lyrics on old melodies.
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder... that was about the age when I found out:
|
| "twinkle twinkle little star" = "abc song"
| vundercind wrote:
| A story especially for you:
|
| http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
| esafak wrote:
| Since song have no time limit, and notes can be combined in
| numerous ways to form chords, there is no limit to the number
| of melodies. And that's before you consider musical
| temperaments.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| or even "ancient" lyrics on old melodies? Ma Ton Dia:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5fA6dTnyrE
|
| (come to think of it, putting new lyrics to old melodies is
| much of what cabaret is about)
| javajosh wrote:
| For those interested in finding new music, let me strongly
| recommend some good radio station youtube channels. KEXP and KCRW
| both come time mind. In that vein, sometimes you can find good
| new music through labels. For example, 4AD. I'm not sure why, but
| YouTube often suggests good stuff seemingly at random, especially
| in the electronica genre. Radio stations have music only streams
| on their websites, too. I've often found artists I like going to
| local shows and paying attention to who _they_ like. YMMV
|
| It also helps to pay attention to the bands you like and where
| they end up. For example, the band Marriages split up and Emma
| Ruth Rundle went solo and the guitarist started Drab Majesty.
| tzs wrote:
| For people in their mid-30s and beyond I think a big factor in
| them commonly perceiving that today's popular music sucks
| compared to the popular music of their teens and twenties is that
| when they listen to music from their younger days _now_ it is a
| small subset of what they were actually listening to back then.
|
| For example my teens and twenties were in the '70s and '80s. If I
| decide I want to listen to music from those times now I would
| probably mostly listen to Cat Stevens, Neil Young, The Who, The
| Ramones, The Dickies, The B-52s, Devo, Queen, The Urban Verbs,
| The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, The Grateful
| Dead, The Moody Blues, Kansas, The Clash, The Dead Kennedys, Kate
| Bush, Synergy, Jean-Michel Jarre, Talking Heads, and a few I'm
| forgetting.
|
| If I decide I want to listen to some current popular music I
| might listen to something the the Billboard Hot 100 playlist on
| Spotify.
|
| Of course I'm going to find that nearly everything on there is
| not nearly as good as the music from artists listed above.
|
| But I'd find the same thing if instead of today's Billboard Hot
| 100 I listened to a playlist of a Billboard Hot 100 list from the
| '70s or '80s, or listened to a recording of a random day's
| broadcast of a '70s or '80s popular music radio station.
|
| And I'm sure that in 2040 if I ask someone who is 37 to make me a
| playlist of music from 2024 (when they were 21) that playlist is
| going to sound a lot better to me than the 2024 music I hear now
| when I decide to check out current music.
|
| Just like my list above is the '70-80s artists that I'm still
| listening to 50 years later, that 37 year old's playlist will be
| the 2024 music that he's still listening to 16 years later.
| listenallyall wrote:
| The more time passes, the fewer relics from earlier eras
| survive and stay relevant, like a funnel.
| grugagag wrote:
| Or like a sieve. What's timeless stays and the rest filters
| out with time.
| 48864w6ui wrote:
| Are you including Tom Tom Club in Talking Heads?
| LegitShady wrote:
| a lot of this is your choices. You may be choosing to engage
| less with new music.
|
| I spend at least an hour each week doing something that I can
| also listen to new music at the same time, and I add it to my
| favorites, so that those dark AI recommendations start adding
| similar recommendations to my listening mixes. I don't listen
| to top 100 because by and large I don't like it. In modern
| music my taste has shifted away from prog rock and classic into
| techno/psytrance/etc. All it took was spending a bit of time
| looking, every week, to enrich my taste in music and make sure
| I wasn't repeating the stuff I heard on the radio growing up
| forever.
|
| It's up to you to do it. It's your choice to make.
| acdha wrote:
| > it is a small subset of what they were actually listening to
| back then.
|
| I think there was also more variation on that than there is
| now. Music cost a fair amount of money to buy so what you heard
| as a kid depended on what people around you were spending
| hundreds of dollars on, and radio stations were far more
| diverse in the era before ClearChannel bought everything and
| consolidated onto a handful of choices. My wife and I had
| relatively similar suburban upbringings in many ways but there
| are a ton of 80s and 90s bands I was more familiar with because
| I happened to live within range of two different college radio
| stations at different points, and she basically had only very
| big commercial options.
|
| There's still variety these days but I think it's undercut a
| lot because every teenager with a smartphone has access to
| pretty much anything, and the social media pressure to like the
| big names has never been stronger.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I listened to the radio and watched music videos (Boston had an
| OTA channel that was like MTV) as a teen, and was the public
| relations officer and then engineer at the KTEK college radio
| station, which exposed me to more music.
|
| In my 20s though I was in grad school and monomaniacally focused
| on my work and I avoided mass culture almost completely. Around
| the time I turned 30 I got interested in new music again and it
| was first east coast hip hop (KRS One, M.F. Doom) then
| psychedelia and classic rock adjacent music (by that time I was
| really sick and tired of overplayed classic rock, one time I was
| tripping on acid at 2 am and called up the local college station
| to complain about the Doobie Brothers song they played that is on
| a twice a day during drive time and the program manager picked
| up, I told him to play what he thought was good music and he put
| on Miles Davis.)
|
| Since then I have had pulses of being interested in "new" (to me)
| music but it's usually been a bit old. The last round has been
| the Super Furry Animals (Mwng for the win!) and similar UK bands
| like The Charlatans. I just found out that I like some of Cyndi
| Lauper's later albums. Before that it was early Japanese
| electronica like Yellow Magic Orchestra and Isao Tomita. Before
| that _Synthesizer_ by Information Society was a revelation.
|
| Recently my son got into the big hits of Fleetwood Mac but I was
| amazed that they made a lot of music before they hit it big and
| some of it I like.
|
| I don't listen to a lot of "new" music in the sense of "released
| in the last few years" and I'd be inclined to blame the
| prevalence of auto-tune for that. People I know in the music
| industry make all sorts of excuses ("Don't you like the vocoders
| on Daft Punk?", "... look I like the vocoders in Laurie
| Anderson's work and in Neil Young's *Trans&", "Isn't T-Pain
| talented?", "... I got no problem with T-Pain, I've got a problem
| with all the other rappers who sound like T-Pain") but if I hear
| something on the radio that is auto-tuned I'm pretty quick to
| change the channel.
|
| My next project is to learn something about traditional and
| contemporary Chinese music.
| _sys49152 wrote:
| that boston ota channel? v66 from framingham.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2yGuGdeB7Y
|
| if you were into mtv in the 80s, early 90s the v66 doc is a
| great watch
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Oh yeah. The last day they were on the air the VJs were all
| so bad because they were about to be replaced by the home
| shopping channel.
| lapcat wrote:
| I find it interesting that GenZ and Millennials show a much
| smaller preference for their own decade's music.
| https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...
|
| The 1980s are still doing quite well among all but the oldest
| generation.
|
| Is it possible that music may actually be getting worse?
| Corporatized, consolidated, computerized.
|
| Look at Hollywood now too: everything is a sequel, prequel,
| remake, reboot, or adaptation. There's hardly anything original
| anymore.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Music has become more stratified. The 90s through the present
| have been an ongoing escalation of music being democratized
| more and more, from the rise of the DAW in the late 90s to
| iTunes and P2P sharing to YouTube and music streaming. So there
| is vastly more music now, and people have more opportunity to
| find things that suit their tastes.
|
| People listen to a wider variety of music and the same
| Billboard notion of popularity doesn't really paint a useful
| picture anymore. What plays on the radio or in TV ads is the
| lowest common denominator corporate waffle, and is played
| heavily, but it doesn't represent what people listen to
| overall.
|
| I have personal playlists of everything from House music and
| 90s Eurodance to all kinds of J-Pop to 19th century folk music
| to early 2000s rock to 80s synth pop to orchestral music. I
| couldn't name a single Taylor Swift song offhand, but
| apparently she's pretty big.
| detourdog wrote:
| This seems like a really good take on the situation. I
| usually disagree that discoverability as a problem.
| Discoverability could be why my tastes have stagnated.
| racked wrote:
| Care to share a playlist?
| tpowell wrote:
| Try anything with a cover photo https://open.spotify.com/pl
| aylist/0KIAnFKMUOzSahATUBlR5f?si=...
| goosejuice wrote:
| Lots of good stuff in there!
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I enjoy music but its not a hobby or anything for me.
|
| There's tons of music out there and I find the plethora of
| niche subgenres now fairly overwhelming and don't even know
| how to classify the stuff I enjoy listening to.
|
| Recommendation engine feedback loops do not aid in discovery,
| just repetition.
| Hugsun wrote:
| On that note, to me, the current year has been the best year
| for music for a long time. Simply because of volume and
| variety.
| detourdog wrote:
| I certainly have plenty of biased but late 70s early 80s seems
| like a really good era. Especially because it was so diverse
| and not dominated by a single sound.
| js2 wrote:
| > Look at Hollywood now too: everything is a sequel, prequel,
| remake, reboot, or adaptation. There's hardly anything original
| anymore.
|
| Vs:
|
| > This may surprise some, but since 2000, just over half of all
| movies released have been original screenplays.
|
| https://stephenfollows.com/are-movies-becoming-more-derivati...
|
| The problem is they aren't blockbusters, so you don't remember
| them. From the same link:
|
| > While the number of movies based on original screenplays has
| been increasing since the late 2000s, their box office share
| has continued to fall. In 1984, 73% of the box office were
| original screenplays, whereas forty years later in 2023, that
| figure was just 30.6%. And that's despite their production
| share being similar (i.e. 60.4% vs 55.9%).
|
| And from a separate post:
|
| > Sequels were twice as frequent in the late 1980s than in the
| 2010s, if we use production figures as our measure
|
| https://stephenfollows.com/are-there-more-movie-sequels-than...
| lapcat wrote:
| I wonder who's producing those movies though. My comment did
| specify Hollywood. The indie film scene, most of which
| consists of original screenplays, is very active, and now
| it's easier than ever both to shoot a film--on a smartphone!
| --and to distribute a film--over the internet. (Likewise,
| it's easier than ever to record and distribute a music
| album.) However, those films aren't getting mass marketed,
| getting seen by the majority of people, or making a ton of
| money. Unfortunately, the linked articles didn't specify the
| producers, or even the absolute number of movies produced
| each year, which is also relevant. Whatever the cause, the
| public's appetite for sequels, as reflected in box office
| proceeds, has indisputably increased. Those are the movies
| getting seen the most. Is that a "natural" desire of
| consumers? Is it a result of marketing? Something else?
| js2 wrote:
| Here's an older post (2015) by the same guy about Hollywood
| films:
|
| https://stephenfollows.com/how-original-are-hollywood-
| movies...
|
| > 39% of top movies released 2005-14 were truly original,
| i.e. not an adaptation, sequel, spin-off, remake, or other
| such derivative work.
|
| I don't know, I watch most of my movies at home (I have a
| nice setup) and watch as many old movies as new. I never
| feel like I have any trouble finding an original film. The
| blockbusters may soak up all the ticket sales, but there's
| just no shortage of original films to me.
| npteljes wrote:
| That is indeed right. People confuse their own perception
| of their surroundings with actual changes in the world.
| We're human beings, with a rich inner world, which always
| evolves as we age and there is a lot going on in there,
| both on a chemical / biological level, and spiritually.
| We are not really built to be objective observers.
| lapcat wrote:
| > The blockbusters may soak up all the ticket sales, but
| there's just no shortage of original films to me.
|
| But my comment was not about you. ;-) My original point
| was "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference
| for their own decade's music." And if you "watch as many
| old movies as new", that's certainly not a ringing
| endorsement of new movies.
| js2 wrote:
| I'm GenX and a movie buff, but not much of a music
| listener, so I replied to the Hollywood part of your
| comment. There's always going to be more old movies than
| new and I watch enough movies that I run out of the new
| ones.
| Phurist wrote:
| > Corporatized, consolidated, computerized. wtf, pick a word
| and say it. Stop spewing nonsense
| atoav wrote:
| I am not sure about the whole thing. When I was a teenager (so
| roughly the decade from 2000 to 2009) I hated my guts of any
| contemporary music, most of what I liked was from the 90s, 80s,
| 70s, 60s etc.
|
| Nowadays I have quite some things in my record collection from
| my teenage decade, some of which I discovered only a few years
| ago, some of which I knew and liked back then, but it wasn't
| popular music back then.
|
| I always liked to think of this as some kind of survivor bias.
| There is trash music in everybtime period, but the good music
| will be listend to more often and thus shape the collective
| musical memory of a decade. The time we're in hasn't had the
| chance for that to happen yet, so it seems arbitrary and random
| as it happens and more defined in hindsight.
|
| It also matters where you look. The 80s have a very
| recognizable pop music, but it also has Punk and multiple other
| things.
| anthk wrote:
| In my case, I'm from 1987 and pop music from the early 90's
| was as bad as the one from 2000's, because I remember it well
| from my parents (and, well, by age 9-10 I was more than aware
| of the Spice Girls, as every girl in my Elementary school was
| into dances).
|
| Later, in 2000's, with P2P and streaming radios, I was
| astounded by some music genres. And, a bit further, with
| Jamendo and Magnatune, I found incredible gems not found
| _anywhere_.
| wittierusername wrote:
| As someone constantly seeking out new music (recently for
| example, I've been working backwards through the 1001 albums
| you must listen to book), I inherited some of my family's old
| vinyl collections including stuff that was like 60 years old.
|
| So so much of it is awful. It's interesting granted, but
| people ignore that the charts were filled with bland covers
| of other popular songs even in the 60's.
|
| Hip Hop is a great showing of survivor bias. Sure, Tupac,
| Biggie, Beastie Boys etc are classic but people are rarely
| listening to the bland safe music from that era. So so many
| songs where the rapper couldn't think of anything more
| inventive than "oh you're having FUN well wait till I go and
| get my GUN I'll shoot you dead and you'll be DONE"
|
| In 30 years, people will hear Kendrick's discography and
| think "god no one makes meaningful hip hop anymore" while
| forgetting about the "pop music but instead of a guitar solo,
| it's a bad rap verse" or the vast amount of
| emo/trap/SoundCloud stuff where the good stuff is rare.
|
| The exciting thing about living now is the ease that someone
| can send a link to me. Constantly my friends and I are
| finding recently released or decade old music that we can
| simply message the other and say "you'll love the production
| on this" - whereas for years, you saved up your pocket money
| and bought one album and that's all you had until you could
| afford another.
|
| People who say modern music is rubbish rarely make any effort
| to actually find any. You've kids now talking about bands
| like Arctic Monkeys but they don't realise the indie landfill
| of shite guitar bands that all had the same look, same twangy
| sound, same trajectory. For every Panda Bear/Animal
| Collective - there was 100 bland animal based bands all
| copying the same formula in the hope of being as big as
| Pigeon Detectives lmao
| lawgimenez wrote:
| When Kendrick released Section 80, I tweeted that Kdot will
| be one of the, if not the best rapper of his generation.
| Can't believe it became true.
| goosejuice wrote:
| Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only
| considering top charting music which is such a small fraction
| of what's out there. Even then it's highly subjective and
| behind almost every one of those songs or albums is a handful
| of brilliant writers, producers and session musicians you
| probably never heard of.
|
| I'd say it's never been better. Music is more accessible which
| means more folks get exposed to it earlier and in more variety
| and in turn we get more musicians.
|
| It's only going to get better.
| hnbad wrote:
| FWIW most of the top charting music of the 90s, 80s and so on
| were also "worse" and have mostly been forgotten. Few songs
| remain popular or regain popularity. A lot of chart hits are
| really just springboarding off "you had to be there" cultural
| moments or experiences or simply a general "vibe" that are
| fleeting and trivial enough not to stick around even in
| nostalgia.
|
| As an extreme example, I'd argue the popularity of David
| Hasselhoff's _I 've been looking for freedom_ in Germany is
| almost entirely a result of "retconning" (if not fabricating)
| its supposed popularity at the time of its original release.
| It would have probably been forgotten entirely if it hadn't
| been rediscovered "ironically" in the context of ridiculous
| claims about its influence on the fall of the Berlin Wall.
| Heck, I remember owning a casette of the album as a kid only
| because "it's the guy from Knight Rider". For adult women his
| claim to fame was co-starring alongside Pamela Anderson in
| _Baywatch_ as one of the few men regularly appearing bare-
| chested on daytime television - I 'd say his musical talents
| played a very small role in his original popularity and it's
| telling nobody remembers any other songs than the one he
| performed on a TV show. He was never considered good, he was
| just a familiar face (and body) and made a catchy tune.
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| I recently encountered the term 'Tempoflavanoids' - the
| flavour of a particular moment in time. I love the concept,
| it speaks to the artist in me.
|
| Though I thought David Hasslehoff's 'True Survivor' music
| video for the Kung Fury kickstarter was a banger.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTidn2dBYbY
| goosejuice wrote:
| I agree with this take.
|
| "Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a
| bad memory." comes to mind
| erikbye wrote:
| Of course, it's extremely subjective, but how about naming a
| few artists who have appeared in the last few years that you
| think make better music and are more talented musicians than
| those who came before?
| herbst wrote:
| I could spend hours writing a response to this. I am mid 30
| and my style of music changes with every season I am not
| within trends but most songs I enjoy most are not older
| than 3 or 4 years. Not all of them are well known.
|
| Even something established like Punk reached new heights
| with more modern approaches (ex. Sleaford mods, Team
| Scheisse in German)
|
| I think music is very subjective still but new music never
| stopped to impress me.
| kataklasm wrote:
| I just discovered Team Scheisse a week ago (they are from
| city!) and now I come across them on HN, what a
| coincidence (obviously this might be the Baader-Meinhof-
| Phenomenon at play but since they are a comparatively
| small band I would say the effect is rather small)!
| erikbye wrote:
| Team Scheisse, new heights? What exactly brings punk to
| new heights with this band?
|
| There's no hiding the "influence" of Sex Pistols, and I'd
| much rather listen to Sex Pistols, Ramones, and also
| Rancid than this band.
|
| Do not see the appeal.
| dman-os wrote:
| At the risk of just mouthing off my favorites, there are a
| lot of genres today are the best they've ever been. The
| post-punk revival out of the UK is great. The "chambery"
| Black Country, New Road and the "mathy" Black Midi are some
| of the best we've seen and there are other exceptional
| talents in that scene. Noisy-shoegazy-indie rock is also a
| great scene right now with artists like Jane Remover and
| Mitski releasing what will be important albums for ages to
| come.
|
| Note, Mitski debuted in 2013 but most of the strongest
| records over the past few years, from hip-hop, pop to
| experimental rock to metal, seems to be by artists or
| individual who've been making music for around a decade-ish
| roughly. Maybe this disqualifies the whole lot and you're
| trying to highlight some weakness in the debuts of the past
| few years. If so, maybe you should wait a decade? If not, I
| can assert that some of the most talented artists of
| history are making music today. By any metric.
| goosejuice wrote:
| There's a tremendous amount of talent in contemporary
| music. Comparing musician against musician is silly.
|
| Some of these have been around longer than others.
|
| Jacob Collier, Vulfpeck, Cool Sounds, Sylvie, Bobbing,
| Abigail Lapell, Big Theif, Tank and the Bangas, Richard
| Houghten, Kurt Vile, Thundercat, Little Simz, Nora Brown,
| Barrie, Dominique Dumont, Lusine, Cory Wong, Billy Strings,
| DoomCannon, Cory Henry, Mark Lettieri, Nate Smith, Yussef
| Dayes, Yumi Zouma, limperatrice, Slow Pulp, Vetiver, Bibio,
| Altin Gun, King Gizzard, Julian Lage.
|
| I could go on.. give me an artist you like or a genre and I
| could likely find you new music.
| jmkr wrote:
| Yam Yam and Karina Rykman would fit in your list. Thanks
| for it.
| goosejuice wrote:
| Rykman is awesome. I'll check out Yam Yam, thanks!
| erikbye wrote:
| Let me preface by saying I listen to a lot of genres, but
| that jazz & funk is not my "main expertise".
|
| Of course there's no denying we have lots of creative and
| talented new musicians, but very seldom do I think they
| beat "the greats", or are even on par. Usually they feel
| more like knockoffs, and I find I'd rather go back and
| listen to the original instead.
|
| I'm not familiar with these artists, but I had a listen
| to about 20 of them, and I will say that I can hear where
| a lot of them got their inspiration from, but they (not
| all of them) feel lightweight compared to artists from
| back in the day.
|
| In these genres I'd much rather listen to the following
| artists than any of the ones you mentioned:
|
| Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Townes Van Zandt,
| Earth, Wind & Fire, The Isley Brothers, Johnny Cash,
| Coltrane, Gillespie, Miles Davis.
|
| "Nate Smith" in particular sounds so much like your
| stereotypical modern artist. Everything from the
| production, melodies, his voice and vocal chain sounds
| like at least 20 other artists. Very uninspired in my
| humble opinion. This is what we can expect AI to produce.
| goosejuice wrote:
| Of course they were inspired by existing artists and by a
| greater set of them! This is central to my argument that
| music is only going to get better with greater exposure.
|
| Those are all great artists you listed but to attempt to
| quantify that they are any more talented or creative than
| contemporaries is a silly exercise. It's art.
|
| This is a small list of random artists that I've listened
| to over the past few years. Jacob Collier is a perfect
| example of exceptional generational talent who not only
| is technically mind blowing but also incredibly original.
| I bet every one of those artists you listed would say the
| same about him (if they haven't passed of course).
|
| Nate Smith likewise would be welcomed as the drummer in
| any one of those bands. Did you listen to the right Nate
| Smith?
| erikbye wrote:
| > Of course they were inspired by existing artists and by
| a greater set of them!
|
| Inspiration is a given, and nothing wrong with that. But
| I often feel like instead of inspiring to new heights we
| get a watered down version.
| goosejuice wrote:
| I don't know, maybe you're just not hearing what I'm
| hearing. Watch Cory Henry on Snarky's Lingus. Jacob
| Collier do his recent crowd work with the NSO. Cory Wong
| talk about Vulfpeck and their MSG show and never
| rehearsing. Hiromi and Tank and the Bangas on NPR's tiny
| desks. I'd say Abigail Lapell adds tremendously to the
| folk of the era you are referencing.
|
| Watered down is just not how I'd describe any of the
| musicians I listed
| d12345m wrote:
| I come back to that keyboard solo on Lingus every couple
| of months and it never fails to make my hairs stand on
| edge. Absolutely legendary.
|
| Larnell Lewis also delivered a world-class performance on
| that entire album.
| acureau wrote:
| You seem hyper focused on comparing all that you hear to
| what you already know you like. If you really want to
| appreciate new music, cut it out. You're introducing bias
| at the outset. If you approach a new artist as if their
| work is isolated, and give it some time to settle in, I
| think you'll be surprised.
| d12345m wrote:
| I think you may have found a different Nate Smith than
| the one goosejuice was referencing. They were likely
| referring to the drummer named Nate Smith (he's
| collaborated with at least one of the groups mentioned).
|
| The guy has a lot of interesting work, but I think the
| thing that blew me away the most is the composition
| 'Warble'. If memory serves, that's the piece where he
| explored 64th note and dotted 32nd note displacements in
| order to mimic J Dilla's 'wonky' swing. I've tried
| capturing the Dilla swing; it's nearly impossible to do
| on the drums without sounding like you don't know how to
| play the instrument. Nate Smith, on the other hand, makes
| it sound fantastic.
|
| The guy is a wizard.
| erikbye wrote:
| You're right, stumbled upon the wrong Nate.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only
| considering top charting music which is such a small fraction
| of what's out there.
|
| But there's a crucial difference between what's out there and
| what people are listening to. There's a lot of obscure stuff
| that not many people are listening to. Whereas the top
| charting music is what millions of people are listening to.
| It matters a lot what's getting marketed, what the majority
| of people are exposed to.
|
| Unfortunately, very few repliers are addressing the first
| point that I made in my comment: "GenZ and Millennials show a
| much smaller preference for their own decade's music."
| throw5323446 wrote:
| > Unfortunately, very few repliers are addressing the first
| point that I made in my comment: "GenZ and Millennials show
| a much smaller preference for their own decade's music."
|
| Seems very hard to accurately measure, could be that people
| don't know what was released in their decade but the stuff
| from the 80s is easy to pinpoint.
| lapcat wrote:
| > could be that people don't know what was released in
| their decade
|
| It seems implausible that young people don't know that
| new music is new.
|
| Why would the 80s be easy to pinpoint for people who
| weren't even alive in the 80s?
| goosejuice wrote:
| Define obscure.
|
| Musicians are more discoverable than ever. Unlike in the
| past it doesn't matter nearly as much what's getting
| marketing/ gets air play at the top of the charts, because
| if you have a desire to find music that you like you just
| have to try and it's all there for free with an Internet
| connection.
|
| If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because
| of what's being produced.
| lapcat wrote:
| > it's all there for free with an Internet connection
|
| The "Internet" is just hand waving. The internet is
| massive. Almost everything is available on the internet,
| but that's a problem, not a solution. Sometimes it's like
| finding a needle in a haystack.
|
| > If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not
| because of what's being produced.
|
| So what _is_ the explanation for "GenZ and Millennials
| show a much smaller preference for their own decade's
| music", which again, you haven't addressed.
| goosejuice wrote:
| You shared a single infographic without a source, but
| taking it as fact I would take a guess that it's easier
| to discover old music now and there's more music to
| listen to thus flattening the curve.
|
| I'm sorry that it's difficult for you to find what you
| like. My tastes are very broad and I find new artists
| every week just listening to Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube
| while working. My wife and I and our friends share music
| that we like with each other. We see live music and get
| exposed to openers we've never heard of.
|
| That said music is a big part of our lives.
| lapcat wrote:
| > You shared a single infographic without a source
|
| The source was the submitted article under discussion in
| these comments!
|
| > I'm sorry that it's difficult for you to find what you
| like.
|
| I never said that. I'm not even discussing me, or you for
| that matter. I'm discussing the aggregate differences
| between the generations.
| goosejuice wrote:
| Indeed it is! Shameful of me.
|
| Apologizes, when you referred to it being a needle in a
| haystack I thought you were referring to your own
| experiences.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| If you consider the top charting music and the typical fart
| noises uploaded to soundcloud which have 3 listens, yes it is
| worse.
|
| If you're only considering your 25 favorite new songs out of
| tens of millions then sure, it's better. But also there is
| recency/novelty bias which counteracts and may overcome any
| past/nostalgia bias
|
| In conclusion, if all you're doing is listening to music
| alone in your apartment then it's never been better. Until
| you step out into the real world and realize that, best-case
| scenario, everyone hates your music and everything that it
| represents. More likely they will be completely bored and
| indifferent.
| goosejuice wrote:
| Music only matters to the producer and the listener. It's
| deeply personal.
|
| I think you're missing the point.
| npteljes wrote:
| The return of the 80s is, or rather was, just a current trend.
| Next up will be the 90s/00s, which can already be seen in make
| up and fashion, and I'm sure media will follow soon as well.
|
| Wrt/ Hollywood: I think they are not the monopoly they used to
| be, because the powers are shifting by streaming, and short
| video services. Similar to how AAA games are more stagnant than
| the indie gaming scene.
|
| "Music" is too broad to "get worse". There are trends in music
| that can be considered bad, such as the lessening dynamic range
| of the recordings - the Loudness War[0]. But there is more
| music than ever, computerized or not, so if you find that some
| source of music is bad, you just need to look elsewhere. Music
| production is easier than ever, so even very niche sounds are
| kept alive, like the lofi sound of post-punk decades ago[1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
|
| [1] https://desmonddoom.bandcamp.com/album/doom-and-bloom
| lapcat wrote:
| > The return of the 80s is, or rather was, just a current
| trend. Next up will be the 90s/00s, which can already be seen
| in make up and fashion, and I'm sure media will follow soon
| as well.
|
| Is it a "return of the 80s", or is it a rejection of newer
| music? Again, "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller
| preference for their own decade's music." This is a
| difference from previous generations, which tend to hold on
| stronger to the music of their times. The current trends of
| current pop culture have always had a much stronger influence
| on young people than any "nostalgic" trends. When I was
| young, nostalgia from earlier decades had almost no influence
| on myself or my peers.
| npteljes wrote:
| I believe that music's role changed a lot first with the
| wide spread of the internet and then smartphones and
| streaming. The internet gave rise to a global culture, and
| a new channel where culture can form, and then streaming
| completely changed how people consume music.
|
| I see rejection, disappointment and disillusion as a
| general theme that's going on in culture, but I can't say
| that these weren't present in the past cultures as well -
| going back some decades, the popularity of punk and its
| offshoots show just how much these feelings resonated with
| the audience back then.
|
| I think that with the widespread access and nonexistent
| barrier to entry to past cultures via streaming, attention
| just spread over the existing cultural palette, resulting
| in lower average consumption of the new and current. It's
| not that the new and current is rejected - it's rather that
| long tail is longer and taller.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Music is certainly getting worse.
| pawelk wrote:
| I think it's the opposite of corporatization and consolidation.
| Computerization? Yes, of course, but it gave everyone the
| possibility to make music at a very affordable cost. A $100
| MIDI controller comes with a license for a full blown music
| production software and literally anyone can record, mix,
| master and release an album. I know several people who are not
| professional musicians, not even formally trained - just happen
| to like making sounds - who have their albums on Spotify and/or
| Soundcloud.
| erikbye wrote:
| Nirvana and early Linkin Park seem to be much more popular
| among GenZ and Millenials than their own music, and lasting,
| not just trending or being a fad.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Be aware that grouping things by the respondents "generation"
| is actually meaningless[1] and likely to make you combine
| several real processes into random "effects".
|
| Trying to explain these arbitrary aggregations with a single
| story is obviously fruitless and mostly a good way to make up
| nonsense arguments.
|
| [1] https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2021/05/26/open-
| lette...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Music was always like this. It used to be even more like this
| 100 years ago. How many twelve bar blues songs use the exact
| same chord progression? Maybe thousands if you managed to
| catalog them all. Maybe hundreds with the same lick between
| verses. As music started being recorded you had people writing
| dozens and dozens of songs a day to be owned by a label. They'd
| find some starlet with a voice and give her a book of these
| songs from the basement to record on the album and market her
| for a few years. If anything we are reverting to this model
| more today, as bands are no longer in vogue as much as
| individual artists whose material they perform has probably 20
| writers credited.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Music was always like this.
|
| This is not an informative response to the observation that
| "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for
| their own decade's music."
|
| Also, there has been a lot of corporate consolidation in the
| music industry, the film industry, in almost every industry.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I was born in 1980, so it would be before my musical "peak" so
| to speak, but I dislike pretty much anything from the 80s
| popular enough to have been on the radio in the 80s. Right now
| the 80s style is so popular, I find myself even disliking a lot
| of modern music that has that "80s retro feel"
|
| I was in the car with an older Gen-Z'er last year and they
| expressed jealousy at me having grown up in the 80s because
| they "like the music so much" and were shocked to find out I
| didn't.
| drngdds wrote:
| It's the opposite - we're way less centralized now. No one
| cares about what's on the radio or MTV anymore. We have
| infinite access to every song ever* for $11 a month, and the
| recommendation algorithms will happily show you music outside
| the mainstream and outside the current decade if that's what
| keeps you listening.
|
| *yes this is hyperbole
| lapcat wrote:
| > No one cares about what's on the radio or MTV anymore.
|
| Why not?
|
| > if that's what keeps you listening.
|
| That's the key, though. Kids are generally biased toward new
| music. This phenomenon is perfectly natural and consistent
| over the generations, as shown in the article. In the 1980s,
| it wasn't particularly hard to "discover" 70s or 60s music,
| and indeed parents might want their kids to listen to their
| music, but that's not necessarily what the kids want to
| listen to, because it's not cool. Parents are uncool. Kids
| want their own music.
|
| What's interesting, though, is that GenZ and Millennials
| appear to be less biased toward the new music and less biased
| against the old. The fact that every song ever is available
| for streaming doesn't mean that people want to listen to
| every song ever. My understanding is the streaming plays are
| very top-heavy toward the top artists, and smaller artists
| are struggling mightily under the streaming payout system.
| r1b wrote:
| Outlier here (musician, spend hours per week trying to find new
| music) - some thoughts:
|
| - The search space for music is really large and noisy. Most of
| the stuff out there isn't very good, and the stuff that is good
| isn't always discoverable with a single strategy - The best
| strategies almost always exploit human connections
|
| Some strategies I use:
|
| - Spatial locality, who is performing with or near artists that I
| like? - Publishing locality, who is on the same label as an
| artist that I like? - Artist locality, what other projects has an
| artist I like contributed to? - Fan locality, what other artists
| does a fan of an artist that I like enjoy?
|
| ----
|
| Note that none of these strategies are as effective as
| "relinquish control". For example, there is a freeform radio
| station near me that I listen to all day at work. I have a rule
| that I won't turn the radio off in the middle of a DJs set, even
| if I don't like a song. This has helped me "break through" to
| interesting artists I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.
|
| To the article's question, I think the main factor here doesn't
| have much to do with music. Cultural production has exploded, and
| it's really hard to navigate any cultural space in a non-
| obsessive way.
|
| I thought it was interesting that the effect of "generational
| preference for music released when teenaged" seemed to wane
| around Gen Z. I wonder if this is just exhaustion, perhaps with
| tendencies towards pastiche as a consequence.
| goosejuice wrote:
| How deep are you digging that you can say most that is out
| there isn't good? I find this surprising. Or do you mean good
| as in to your liking? The amount of talent out there is kind of
| mind blowing to me.
|
| Is this within a narrow genre?
| r1b wrote:
| This mostly an assessment at scale. By volume, irrespective
| of genre, and even accounting for subjectivity, most of the
| material that gets published isn't very good.
|
| That being said, I generally don't agree with conclusions
| like "culture is frozen". You are correct that there is
| _more_ high quality material available than ever before. The
| challenge is just that it's harder than ever to find it.
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| > there is a freeform radio station near me
|
| do you have any suggestions for similar online radio stations
| or playlists?
| Jipazgqmnm wrote:
| - https://radioparadise.com/ (!)
|
| - https://fip.fr
| shellfishgene wrote:
| Radio Paradise is really excellent, I think the name is
| kinda off-putting to people looking for good music though.
| hmm37 wrote:
| You can try some college radio e.g. some smaller colleges in
| WA, or U. Mich radio station. But for freeform, I think in
| the US at least WFMU is considered the best.
| https://wfmu.org/
|
| Davide of MIMIC Radio is good for classical music, as it's
| pretty much the only one I know that usually plays a whole
| classical music piece, and not a single movement, etc. and
| it's high bitrate as well.
| r1b wrote:
| WFMU is indeed the one I'm referring to here :)
|
| To get the freeform format with newer, "shinier", and often
| more electronic sounding music, I also like NTS.
| esafak wrote:
| A good reminder for parents to push beyond their comfort zones
| when playing music with their children, otherwise they will take
| the path of least resistance: popular music.
| haunter wrote:
| I've only been listening to the BBC Essential Mix since ~2005.
| Pretty much nothing else, it's always about the latest music and
| trends (especially if it's something from the UK like dubstep,
| grim etc.). 2x2 hour episodes are absolutely perfect for a week
| (there's a Classic show where they play the old ones again)
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| There was a time when SXSW released one track from each featured
| artist on a massive torrent. That kept me going on new music for
| nearly the entire year. Repeat.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| FOllow Professor Skye's Music rewview.
| davidw wrote:
| That Say Anything scene... originally was going to use a Fishbone
| song, because Cusack is apparently a big fan. It didn't really
| work for the scene though.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say_Anything...#Cultural_influ...
|
| Coincidentally, Fishbone was part of the wave of awesome music in
| the early 1990ies when I was finding new music because there was
| good music and before music started not being quite so good any
| more.
|
| It's such an amazing coincidence that they made the good music
| right when I was young. I got lucky, I guess.
| Yaggo wrote:
| My #1 source for finding new music: teen-aged daughter
| thom wrote:
| I listened to a lot of Apple Music recommendations while getting
| my three kids to sleep over the years. I would say that in my 40s
| I'm discovering more new music, and music I genuinely love, than
| I did in all my teens. I don't get to go to a lot of gigs, but I
| go to one big festival a year and it's the bands in a tiny font
| that I get excited about. Yeah most stuff is shit, but there's
| just so much of everything.
| dools wrote:
| Yeah I'm more open minded now than I was when I was younger.
| All my taste seems to stem from the same roots (for example I
| like a wide variety of electronic music but the common thread
| is sounds and/or harmonies rooted in funk/soul/jazz/blues) but
| when I was a teenager I was only interested in rap music.
| karl_gluck wrote:
| Any recommendations?
| Liquix wrote:
| want electronic jazz? check out cumulus frisbee
|
| or more electro funk with a gangster twist? vincent antone
| is superb
| dools wrote:
| Digging these! I will trade you one cumulus frisbee for
| one soul supreme.
|
| And in exchange for Vincent Antone, I will trade you one
| Chromeo
| dools wrote:
| Recommendations on rap music or electronic music? Or
| funk/soul/jazz/blues?
| pcdoodle wrote:
| I got stuck with apple music on a road trip. It was really bad
| IMO.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| ymmv. It works great for me. Especially the new discover
| radio.
| acdha wrote:
| What were you trying to do? After Rdio folded, I switched
| from Spotify after failing to get it to give me anything
| other than top 40 pop (no matter what I started with, it was
| two tracks and then "have you tried our top hits? You
| will!"). Apple Music wasn't as good as Rdio back then but
| it's gotten better even within relatively obscure sub genres
| in my experience.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| I don't believe music was better in my day but I do think the
| older you get the harder it is to find things that sound truly
| fresh (e.g. someone like black midi would probably blow me away
| if I was 16 now but instead they just keep reminding me of
| various acts I've heard before years ago)
|
| Similarly I find myself being a lot more interested in competent
| but not especially ambitious late period albums by acts where
| their comfort with knowing what their sound is and how to play
| with it can be the main source of interest.
| pedrocr wrote:
| I still don't get why after all this investment in AI Spotify
| can't just give me a seamless never ending stream of music. I
| need to keep selecting from playlists they generate which often
| repeat some songs extremely often. All I want from a Spotify
| interface is play/pause/skip/like/dislike. Then use those to
| continuously adapt the selection of the next song. If you want to
| be fancy add a warmup mode where you ask me some questions or
| show me some songs to like/dislike for that particular moment so
| that the initial selections start warmer. If I had that I could
| explore a lot more music. Because I don't I end up just listening
| to the greatest hits of things I remember and then that further
| pollutes the dataset to the point where my musical tastes must
| stagnate.
| thenewwazoo wrote:
| You've described Pandora.
| stavros wrote:
| Is it available outside the US yet? It's only been a decade.
| ericwood wrote:
| It's been a decade at least since I heavily used Pandora but
| I remember it being even worse than Spotify at this. The
| algorithm seemed to latch on to one or two tracks from any
| given artist and they'd continue popping up no matter how I
| trained it. Great as a discovery tool for artists I guess,
| but as endless radio Spotify does a way better job at least
| trying to reach into back catalogs and including more than
| one or two songs. There's still a lot of room for
| improvement, and it does seem to get hung up in similar ways.
|
| Maybe Pandora has improved since.
| notesinthefield wrote:
| 2 of my favorite Pandora stations have turned into a mix of
| the artist's discog and I suspect it only happened because
| I liked too many of their songs in the same day. The
| variety is better in terms of similar artists but I cant
| say I find much new music this way.
| nostrademons wrote:
| You can ban a particular song from appearing on a Pandora
| station. I've found this to be an effective way to get out
| of song ruts. The algorithm does have a tendency to replay
| certain songs more than is warranted, but if you get rid of
| them it recovers into a state with a decent amount of
| variety.
| SamBam wrote:
| I don't necessarily want to ban a song, just have it not
| play it every tenth song.
| tripdout wrote:
| Spotify's song radio / artist radio does this. There's
| like/dislike buttons and it just plays you different related
| songs.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| This doesn't match my personal experience at all. I hardly liked
| any of the music I heard on the radio as a teenager. (That would
| be the 90's). Later on, I found that I liked the current music
| better- and there are still songs from my 20's that I come back
| to. But each decade I discover new artists, I stay with those
| records for a while, then they start sounding dated and I move
| on. I do put deliberate effort into discovering new artists
| though. And, I'm a musician myself so maybe that's part of it. I
| really listen to almost nothing from my teenage years though.
| There is such an incredible amount of new music coming out every
| day that it's hard to keep up with it! Right now I'm listening to
| 100 gecs a lot, childish gambino, narrow head, ohtis, thee oh
| sees, fazerdaze, and wimps.
|
| Anybody who really just gets stuck on music from their teens is
| missing out on _so much_ I can't even express it.
| Thegn wrote:
| One problem I've run into with the music services is with older
| styles. For example, I'm specifically into black musicians from
| the 1930s-1950s who played swing style music. I have yet to find
| a service that actually will play more than 2-3 songs in that
| style before deciding that what I really want to hear is rat pack
| or swing by white musicians. No matter how much I thumbs down it,
| I get Glenn Miller/Frank Sinatra/Benny Goodman instead of Count
| Basie/Duke Ellington/Slim Gaillard. The services have that music
| (I can find the songs and seed stations from it) but for whatever
| reason all of the ones I've tried (Spotify/Apple/Amazon/Pandora,
| and I have a feeling I've tried others and forgotten) just don't
| want me to listen to the style I'm looking for.
| ImaCake wrote:
| The technical reason for this is just that the algorithm fails
| to distinguish between these two groups. Probably its just a
| hard problem to solve from a sample of what people listen to. I
| suspect a significant fraction of people that like black swing
| also like white swing and that results in the algorithm being
| unable to resolve that there are two features there and not
| one.
|
| You really need a level of manual curation that a big data
| statistical model just can't provided at scale.
| Thegn wrote:
| What I find curious about it though is that it's obviously
| recognizing the style - it plays 1-2 musicians from the
| "black" group, then circles into only playing
| Miller/Goodman/Rat pack and never comes back around to
| playing the music that I originally was trying to play. If it
| was behaving the way you are thinking, I'd expect it to mix
| the two styles.
| artichokeheart wrote:
| I think the problem is that the algorithms are based on
| statistical probabilities from other users. I.e users who
| listen to X also like to listen to Y. So we'll add Y to the
| queue. Then Y becomes the new reference point. I mean that
| is a gross simplification but essentially if your musical
| taste is outside of 2 standard deviations of the norm all
| the algorithms are gonna suck. For me they do.
| QuiDortDine wrote:
| So what you're saying is it's badly designed?
| rajamaka wrote:
| It's badly designed for your particular taste, but it
| probably works for most people which is why it's used.
| hedora wrote:
| I've definitely trained tidal that I prefer some pretty
| whacky sub genres (this Northern European country, but
| only metal with strong brass sections, or contemporary
| accordion, hurdy gurdy, and a dozen other clusters like
| that).
|
| I'd guess if you created a profile and loaded it up with
| just black swing bands from the 30-50's, it'd do OK.
|
| If not, and I understand their algorithm correctly, it
| would not only be because no current listeners make that
| distinction (as discussed up thread).
|
| It would also be because the metadata doesn't give any
| signal for it. They seem to use information such as
| record labels, song writers, producers, guest musicians,
| etc.
|
| If that metadata has no signal, then my guess is that
| you're trying to get it to racially segregate music that
| was produced before the big interracial marriage scare.
|
| People were worried that if their kids listened to the
| same musicians, then whites and blacks (or worse!) might
| marry, so they created white radio stations and black
| radio stations.
|
| Before that, I imagine there was a lot more interracial
| collaboration, and the metadata wouldn't find clean
| clusters along race boundaries.
|
| It could also be that the old metadata was never
| digitized.
| moomin wrote:
| I wonder if this is the case, or if the model just has year
| as a heavily weighted factor, because bluntly, Ella and Louis
| were vastly superior musicians to Frank and Tony. I honestly
| can't hear the similarity. It's like thinking "Oh. You liked
| The Killers, here's some One Direction"
| totetsu wrote:
| Last FM and music neighbors could have solved this.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| It is also my experience that Spotify reverts to what's
| popular and last.fm doesn't.
| nullify88 wrote:
| I haven't used last.fm for a long time and it seems like a
| shadow of its former self, pre acquisition. I've discovered
| so much music on there, and I'm getting really disappointed
| by spotifys repetitiveness. Is last.fm still good to discover
| new music or is it just harvesting scrobbles?
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| I'm a little puzzled as you're describing a music stylist on
| skin colour, black vs white. I presume you don't really mean
| that, so what distinguishes the two musical styles, black swing
| vs white swing? Serious question.
| VelesDude wrote:
| Not OP but I would assume that because they where still
| somewhat isolated groups in terms of directly lived culture,
| this would have influenced their works differently.
|
| Like how the Blues didn't come out of a comfortable
| lifestyle.
| acdha wrote:
| Also isolated by force in many cases: even in states which
| didn't have official segregation laws, things like
| redlining and police enforcement meant you had very
| distinct communities. This especially went for anything
| where alcohol is consumed (being drunk leads to deadly
| mistakes and could lead to crimes being ignored or
| minimized) or, especially, sexual contexts - if you're a
| young black man, you're probably not going to find it
| relaxing to be at a club where various white guys are
| stopping by to mention what'll happen if you look at a
| white woman.
|
| Looking of that period is a very sobering reminder of a
| very dark stain in our national history - and I've read too
| many stories about even well known performers being told
| they can't play at certain venues or have to leave
| immediately afterwards to think everyone wasn't aware of
| the stakes:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_U
| n...
|
| As an example of how widespread this was, it took Marilyn
| Monroe at the height of her fame intervening for _Ella
| Fitzgerald_ to be able to play at a club in Los Angeles!
| Not the Deep South, not 1917, but very modern California.
|
| > In October 1957 Monroe made a call to the Mocambo
| nightclub in Los Angeles, on behalf of Fitzgerald. Monroe
| used her social status and popularity to make a deal with
| them. If they allowed Fitzgerald to perform, Monroe
| promised that she would take a front-row seat every night
|
| https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/ella-
| fitzgera...
|
| The closest I can come to a silver lining for this is that
| it allowed more artists to find a niche where they weren't
| competing with the major national artists but that's
| nowhere close to compensation for so much tragedy.
| Thegn wrote:
| I admit I'm uncomfortable explaining it by skin color, but
| I've never found anybody who has been able to explain to me
| what the difference is, and I will admit lacking the musical
| knowledge to explain it. I fell into that style from dancing
| Lindy Hop; I was loving the music I was hearing when I was
| out dancing, so I went and bought an album from the only name
| I knew at the time - Glenn Miller. It was some of the most
| boring and trite music I'd ever heard in my life, and did not
| inspire me to dance.
|
| For me (and I don't judge people for thinking differently)
| there's a certain joie de vivre in the music that is just
| lacking from what white musicians released commercially. I
| know they were capable of it (I once found a recording of
| Glenn Miller swinging it just as hard as anything Basie put
| out) but they were playing to their audience at the time. As
| I've learned more about the history of Swing and Lindy Hop,
| this was a specific choice made to "civilize" (as the white
| people of the time would have said) Jazz's savage rhythms.
| There's actually posters from the Arthur Murray school in the
| 1940s saying this exact thing.
|
| (Aside, I had a friend who played a radio show in the 2000s
| playing old Jazz music. She told me once that if she put
| anything from a black musician on the show, she'd get hate
| mail from the listeners. Go figure.)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The simple explanation is that largely only white artists
| played on radio stations. Popular songs would be sanitized
| for white radio by recording what we would now consider as
| covers. However, it was also rather commonplace for a whole
| slew of artists to record a popular song at nearly the same
| time. The proliferation of covers wasn't so overtly
| motivated by bigotry since an original recording wasn't
| regarded with the same esteem as today.
| criley2 wrote:
| >I'm a little puzzled as you're describing a music stylist on
| skin colour, black vs white
|
| You may not realize this, but in the 1930-1950 era being
| described in America, there was something called
| "Segregation" where black people were considered legally
| inferior to white people. As such, there was a very hard line
| between "black" and "white", a line that was aggressively
| enforced by every level of society from lawmaking, policing
| and justice, to radio and TV access, to education, to
| neighborhoods, and frankly everything else.
|
| With that context, I think it's very easy to see how there
| can be "black swing" and "white swing" -- it was in a society
| that forcibly separated everything into "black X" and "white
| X".
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| You should be able to describe the sound differences if the
| music is that distinct.
| wbl wrote:
| Go listen to Straight Otta Compton and then Vanilla Ice
| and you'll get it. Or for Swing Count Basie vs. the
| slicker more commercial Glenn Miller but it's subtle.
|
| And then Coltrane and Orman and Davis come and change the
| whole jazz world.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I didn't ask for examples, I'm familiar with what race
| these artists are.
|
| My point is if the music actually is so different, it
| should be noticable and describable without knowing the
| race of a particular artist. So how would you describe
| the black music that describes only black musicians but
| not white musicians from this period, and vice versa.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Sure. 99% of the white musicians at that time were total
| sellouts who played extremely straight, boring,
| conservative and no-frills music without any
| embellishment or soul.
|
| The most obvious difference is the energy level and
| "rawness" of songs - those white bands had really
| carefully choreographed performances with minimal
| deviation, even solos were often written out in similar
| big bands.
|
| Black musicians often shouted, yelled or mugged during
| performances - all of these are completely absent in
| white performances at that time.
| damentz wrote:
| Ya you're not being honest in the slightest. The OP likes
| the music made by the group he mentions. You instead say
| he's being racist for liking music of that group. I'm
| having a hard time discerning if you're trolling or
| serious.
| hobs wrote:
| So describe the difference between NWA and Vanilla ice to
| yourself while everyone else moves on.
| SamBam wrote:
| "Should be describable" is a false metric. We can hear
| differences between categories and not be able to
| verbalize what we're hearing. It's the same for anything
| -- you could walk through a museum showing abstract
| expressionism and action painting, and feel that one of
| the styles speaks to you, and yet not be able to put into
| words how the two styles are different.
|
| The brain can categorize much more easily than it can
| create a concrete definition for those categories.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > We can hear differences between categories and not be
| able to verbalize what we're hearing. It's the same for
| anything
|
| For some reason, the view is widely held that internal
| thoughts are expressed in words. This would mean that
| anything you can think can easily be verbalized.
|
| The fact that this view is quite obviously false seems to
| bother very few people.
| contrast wrote:
| There's an assumption to your argument that I don't
| believe holds true, that there is such a significant
| difference that it should be easily describable.
|
| Talking about the arts is difficult. In everyday
| conversation, well known phrases for describing the arts
| include "I know it when I see it" and "if you have to
| ask, then you'll never know". I'm a fan of "writing about
| music is like dancing about architecture". It just isn't
| easy to describing differences in performance and
| interpretation.
|
| Since it's widely recognised that describing music is
| difficult, and since you're familiar with the artists in
| question, perhaps you could accept the point in good
| faith or put into words why you don't think they are any
| different?
| criley2 wrote:
| >You should be able to describe the sound differences if
| the music is that distinct.
|
| They are and I can, however the existence of Black Swing
| is in no way predicated on a difference in sound only.
|
| Consider this: white culture in America continually stole
| from a legally repressed black culture, including white
| swing which stole the black art and commercialized it.
| Even if a 1950 white swing song sounds similar to a 1940
| black swing song, there is still a "black swing" and a
| "white swing".
|
| Frankly, I think trying to reduce history of music down
| to "the sounds themselves" is a way to whitewash the
| history and destroy the true knowledge of what happened
| and why. The context is very important.
| watwut wrote:
| People not deep into music have hard time verbalize
| difference between metal and rock or hiphop and rap.
| Despite differences being super obvious when listening.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| That's extremely patronising, I know well about segregation
| of that era, and that segregation functionally continued
| far longer than the 1950s. Blatantly there's a difference,
| that was what I was asking about the effect of, which you
| ignored. At least @ Pannoniae provided an answer.
| ddfs123 wrote:
| Back in those period it's still very distinct / segregated
| black vs white culture.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I'm sorry, but wanting your music algorithm to key in on the
| composer's skin color is a ridiculous expectation. Listen to
| albums or make a playlist.
| KETHERCORTEX wrote:
| In this case it's not that ridiculous because "black" here
| isn't just a skin color, but primarily a subculture/subgenre
| with some distinct musical attributes.
|
| Nobody finds separating French electronic music into its own
| subgenre ridiculous. Same with Italian Disco.
|
| Such distinct movements are quite usual, so dissatisfaction
| about Black Swing on streaming services is understandable.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Also, the subculture exists in the US because of hundreds
| of years of intentional effort by the majority to destroy
| any preexisting cultures among black people and prevent any
| integration with the mainstream.
| goosejuice wrote:
| I think many here are missing the point being made. Of
| course there are stylistic differences between some groups
| of artists. The thing is that they probably aren't coded by
| skin color let alone period location etc, so of course it
| will bleed. Playing some swing and expecting it to continue
| to stay within very blurry racial lines is unrealistic,
| silly, and maybe irresponsible for a recommendation
| algorithm.
|
| As it's been said, there are better methods of discovery
| for this purpose. In your example, I'm sure there are
| Spotify playlists for Italian disco that have been curated.
| watwut wrote:
| But these were different music styles.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Spotify won't be able to keep those genres separate either.
| khazhoux wrote:
| No, he's saying that within the genre of mid-20th century
| Swing there are distinct musical traditions found in black vs
| white bands, which he wishes he could partition against.
| What's ridiculous about that?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Because they all borrowed from each other and the line is
| blurry if it even exists at all.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| You're probably wishing for a community playlist with people
| pitching in songs as they discover them ?
|
| Would be great to have options to add stuff but keep it private
| while keeping in sync etc. Could be done with a meta layer on
| top of the Spotify player for instance ?
| RhysU wrote:
| Reminds me of the old webring concept from long ago.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Or of the old mailing list concept from even longer ago.
| anukin wrote:
| Which swing tracks do you recommend to a noob who just got
| introduced to the swing music and dance?
| Thegn wrote:
| I'm personally a fan of the old stuff (Count Basie, Duke
| Ellington, Cab Calloway, Chick Webb, Jimmie Lunceford, Slim
| Gaillard, Ella Fitzgerald to name a few) but the best thing
| you can do is go to dances and lessons, and when you hear a
| song you like, go up to the DJ and ask them what it was. The
| best music is the music you like and that makes you want to
| dance, regardless of who made it.
| prepend wrote:
| I'd guess it's just because the algorithm is not smart enough
| and is just looking at the category as a whole and then playing
| the most played. So Glenn Miller and Count Basie are in the
| same category, but more Spotify people who listen to that
| category listen to Glenn Miller.
|
| Maybe one day, they'll get smaller clusters and lump you in
| with other listeners who favor black musicians within that
| category.
|
| This is my problem with these services in that they are very
| generic and smooth out the outliers. So it's good for pleasing
| the 80%, but people with specific tastes are out of luck. Big
| time regression to the mean.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Hey! I have a quite similar music taste. (my favs definitely
| include Slim Gaillard and Fats Waller, that kind of stuff)
|
| If you have Discord, I've been curating a musicbot with a
| similar music rotation since I've also been completely fed up
| with streaming services pushing more Glenn Miller/similar
| straight bands, not the hip ones :) If you are interested, join
| my server, the bot is running 24/7:
| https://discord.gg/wjsC2TUZPK
| Thegn wrote:
| Thanks, I'll check it out.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| I recently discovered everynoise.com, it can make a playlist of
| a genre for you, it has a lot of black*
|
| Edit: spelling
| ugh123 wrote:
| everynoise.com
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The other replies are interpreting this as the algorithm
| failing, but I have interpreted these sorts of things as
| intentional design choices, wherein they want the recommender
| to keep trying to diversify your interests so it's harder for
| you to just quit the service and move to another one which
| might not have the same variety (or where you'd have to try to
| "teach" the recommender again). They've determined that the
| potential benefit is much better than somewhat annoying you.
|
| This interpretation of their behavior is why I've stuck to
| buying my music (fortunately that's still common for the genres
| I'm into).
| Tagbert wrote:
| I've found that most algorithms tend to reinforce a taste by
| trying to provide more of the same. They rarely try to bring
| in something that diverges from the pattern. Of course, the
| libraries have limits and the algorithms will often match
| against characteristics that you do not consider relevant.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _trying to diversify your interests_
|
| In this instance - and others in my experience listening to
| the recommendations on this and similar services -
| "diversify" is used when "dilute" would be more appropriate.
| jahewson wrote:
| It's not really though - if it was known in advance that
| you did not like a track then there would be no reason to
| recommend it. It's the classic precision vs recall trade
| off: I can create a recommendation algorithm that only
| recommends your favourite song, forever, and that will have
| perfect precision but miserable recall. To increase recall
| we have to accept a drop in precision.
| mellosouls wrote:
| It's entirely possible to retain soul and widen
| reference.
|
| Offering up bland imitations of authentic artists is
| hardly simply a drop in precision.
| watwut wrote:
| I would love diversifying, but it does not do that. It does
| "revert to mainstream" trying to push you toward the most
| generic thing accestible by association from what you like.
| Galxeagle wrote:
| I encounter similar behaviour as you in an entirely different
| genre - I've long since suspected that Spotify keeps
| redirecting me back to songs that are either less royalties for
| them to play, or located closer to me on the CDN to save
| serving costs.
| hedora wrote:
| There are services like this that explain the behavior:
|
| https://artistpush.me/collections/spotify-promotion
|
| No idea if they work though.
|
| Artists can also pay Spotify to promote their music:
|
| https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/promoting-
| mus...
|
| I imagine that boosts "organic" engagement, leading to the
| same symptoms.
| c22 wrote:
| On pandora I find every channel I make eventually slides into
| the nearest "standard" repetive theme (often abandoning the
| seed content entirely). I always assumed it was nudging me
| towards the content with the lowest licensing costs.
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| For those looking to expand their musical pallet try bbc radio 6,
| consistently delivers various genres of quality music.
| omar_alt wrote:
| I find this argument interesting though I have found that the
| same Jungle music I listened to in the 90s is now cutting edge
| again similar to around 2007 when 80s Italo House was considered
| the most stylish and hippest thing to listen to.
| wrs wrote:
| I think my new music discovery slowed down because the music
| distribution system stopped propagating metadata. I discovered a
| lot of new music by looking at the back of the album cover or CD
| case and following the threads. Who else has this producer or
| session musician worked with? Who actually was the songwriter and
| what else have they done? What other albums are on this label?
| Now none of that is discoverable from streaming. It's just
| primary artist and song title--every track is just an isolated
| data unit apparently not even made by people.
| bsuvc wrote:
| Art isn't "found" it is created
| riversflow wrote:
| I hate this article. Can't we do some philosophical introspection
| instead of just this data driven drivel? There is even a clue in
| the empty nesters vs parents section but no discussion. Is the
| author just afraid of saying something offensive? Age being
| causative is just taken as fact.
|
| I'd suggest that music discovery is centered on having the
| _desire_ to do so. As people get older they often stop caring
| about being cool[+] (take a look at the author) and only
| listening to the same old music is lame. "We stop being
| interested in new music at $AGE" is just unimaginative, lazy, and
| counter to the facts.
|
| Being "with it" is a choice.
|
| [+] And, btw, nobody gets to decide what "cool" is(and your mom
| definitely doesn't), but it is by nature always changing.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Whatever. I find new stuff all of the time. Anything but show
| tunes, most country, and recent pop music is fair game. Tidal has
| good shit whereas Spotify will randomly reach into your account
| to delete playlists or remove content without warning. Also, the
| Spotify app no longer controls volume across devices uniformly,
| doesn't work at all on Apple TV, and is generally getting buggier
| and crappier with popups and moving things around for no reason.
| I'm downloading elsewhere to use with PlexAmp and buying vinyl
| because you just can't get everything via streaming.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| >the Spotify app no longer controls volume across devices
| uniformly
|
| I actually really enjoy this feature myself - all my devices
| need to be at different audio levels to not blow out the
| speakers, so having per-device (or virtual device via Spotify
| Connect) control is great.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| I'm saying it worked but now it doesn't work as well as it
| did. I don't use the Everywhere group. The Marantz app (or
| the iPhone app) is absolute shit because it starts at some
| random volume and goes up or down huge amounts. Instead, I'll
| use the Tidal app because that at least doesn't fuck with the
| volume or end up overdriving my mains and 5 kW sub.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >is generally getting buggier and crappier with popups and
| moving things around for no reason.
|
| When you have teams of developers employed, you have to keep
| them busy doing stuff to justify their existence.
| moomin wrote:
| I think the main thing that reduces music discovery as a parent
| is sheer exhaustion, you just don't have as many hours anymore.
| It's not just that you're listening to less new music, you're
| listening to less, period.
|
| Meanwhile, having a kid getting into music is fabulous. I've been
| forced to listen to every Taylor Swift album. I know who Olivia
| Rodrigo is. I managed to discover Wet Leg all on my own. Steve
| Lacy, Mitski, Zutomayo, sohodolls...
|
| And then there's The Crane Wives. Honestly one of the best things
| I have heard in a very long time. Try "Keep You Safe", if you
| don't like it the rest is probably not going to be your thing. If
| you do, there's a lot more like it.
| Beestie wrote:
| If I'm being honest, I'd say pretty much right after the music
| industry sucked the last drop of blood from the actual musicians
| which has brought to where we are today: session musicians on
| shoestring budgets performing tunes written by repurposed
| advertising jingle composers.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I'm old enough that I've seen Miles Davis and Fats Domino live. I
| am listening to more new artists than I ever have.
|
| Gnoosic is still a good source for me.
|
| I search torrent sites for users who upload obscure artists I
| like - and then mine their history for artist recommendations.
|
| I have a lot of regular listens I first heard on LastFM channels.
| It's the only streaming service I've ever used.
|
| I've 5 sons who turn me on to artists I wouldn't hear otherwise.
|
| The most utterly useless source for new artists (or music, or
| anything) is commercial FM radio. It has no redeeming value.
|
| In contrast, local indy stations are amazing.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Two sailant points to me:
|
| - With work from home, time spent with no one else around
| increases and it's never been easier to listen to ambient music.
|
| We see this in the lofi youtube channels uprising, or the whole
| "work music" genre, but I think most people will listen to
| whatever they like that doesn't need to be fighting against the
| open space noise anymore.
|
| I'd expect music discovery to be strongly impacting by that.
|
| - The impact of technology and rhe new platforms is understated.
|
| What my generation could listen to at 14 is a ridiculous fraction
| of what we have access to now. The author poses it as "need to
| sit down for two hours to find new stuff" problem, but if you
| watch tv shows, listen to podcasts it will happen organically,
| and even browsing random channels or checking ranking charts
| (spotify's top 50 for instance) will gradually inject new things
| without that much active research.
|
| All in all, I think the current state of tastes getting frozen at
| some point is an artifact of the older generations, and might not
| affect people growing up now.
| eweise wrote:
| My personal observation is that listening is different today than
| it used to be. I grew up in the 70s and 80s when bands focused on
| making an album that you sit a listen to. Today, kids listen to
| songs, not albums so to me, the artists aren't as interesting as
| they used to be. Also, recording has changed a lot and has
| impacted the feel of most music. Listen to Led Zeppelin and you
| hear a very practiced band that is good enough that their
| performance is what you hear on the album (for the most part).
| Today, bands play to click tracks individually and the DAW scrubs
| a and polishes the performances until they are perfect. This give
| a different feel to the music that doesn't sound quite right to
| someone used to listening to more lifelike performances. I do
| listen to a lot of newer music and have some favorites like Lana
| Del Rey and St. Vincent, but I have to admit, I don't give some
| music the attention it deserves because it often sounds like a
| copies of music I already know.
| mrieck wrote:
| I must be an outlier - I'm in my 40s and haven't listened to
| former favorites like Radiohead forever.
|
| Darkwave, Phonk, Witchhouse, Glitch Hop, KPop, and a lot of
| electronic music that crosses genres are what I listen to now.
| esafak wrote:
| I listen to a lot of music, and thanks to Spotify, regularly find
| new material across a decent range of genres.
|
| But at the back of mind, I hear the echoes of Steven Pinker's
| words: "music is auditory cheesecake". Capable only of conveying
| emotions, unless lyrics are involved.
| beaugunderson wrote:
| i'm a huge spotify user and my goal much of the time i'm
| listening is to find new music... last.fm tells me that 27% of
| the artists i listened to this week are ones i'd never listened
| to before (the yearly report says 55% of the 1,512 artists i
| listened to last year were new to me). i also like the "yearly
| rewind" and "recent rewind" playlists because it automates
| putting those newly discovered artists of tracks into my
| rotation.
| pxc wrote:
| I expect it'll never happen to me. My dad was still actively
| seeking out new music when I was a kid, streaming college radio
| via the Internet before Pandora, Last.fm, or Spotify were things.
| He's in his 60s today and he still listens to new music (in a
| range of genres) all the time.
|
| If novelty in music is actually important to you, this won't
| happen to you.
| SllX wrote:
| I had the realization a few weeks ago that I no longer listen
| to very much from before 2016. I didn't pay attention to how it
| happened, but less than 20% of what I have actively listened to
| in the past 3 years going by all these recap playlists is from
| before 2016 and I keep adding new music every year. Half of the
| music from before that cutoff point is basically music that was
| new to me in the last few years even though it's older.
|
| I couldn't imagine thinking that would ever happen 15-20 years
| ago. I've also realized that I'm not interested in trying to
| change that at all, because I'm now of the opinion that so far
| music has gotten better every single decade I've been alive;
| and the 2020s are off to a great start on that front.
| updatedprocess wrote:
| That's interesting. I'm of the opinion that music is getting
| worse as time progresses. I must be getting old
| Groxx wrote:
| Yeah - my taste has pretty steadily churned slowly over and
| over and over and that's how I like it.
|
| There's so much music out there. It's like asking "when do you
| stop finding new books": you only stop finding if you stop
| looking. I enjoy the looking, and I see no risk at all of
| running out even if no more new stuff is ever made.
| brnt wrote:
| > If novelty in music is actually important to you, this won't
| happen to you.
|
| Novelty in music of novelty of music? I never considered one
| could care about the former (it certainly seems orthogonal to
| popular music, which is all about being new but never novel).
| So you are actively seeking out to you new genres and artists?
|
| I'm not a completionist, so I'm OK with missing out. I do keep
| track of artists or (sub)genres to check out, but I very rarely
| have time to actually check some of it out. I have so much
| music that the past years I've been deleting more than adding,
| and I still haven't heard much of it well. Also by now I
| realize tastes change but also experiences, a song sounds
| different in different phases of your life it seems.
| pxc wrote:
| That's an interesting distinction that I didn't have in mind
| in my comment. For me, personally, I suppose I'm interested
| in both (sounds and styles I've never heard, _and_ music
| whose makings may be familiar to me but which I 've not heard
| yet).
|
| > So you are actively seeking out to you new genres and
| artists?
|
| Yeah! I generally find that the more music I know and enjoy,
| the more music I can connect with or appreciate. At the
| moment I'm developing greater appreciation and taste for
| house music and extreme metal, while my go-to genres for a
| long time have tended to be folk and indie rock of various
| kinds.
|
| > I'm not a completionist, so I'm OK with missing out. I do
| keep track of artists or (sub)genres to check out, but I very
| rarely have time to actually check some of it out. I have so
| much music that the past years I've been deleting more than
| adding, and I still haven't heard much of it well. Also by
| now I realize tastes change but also experiences, a song
| sounds different in different phases of your life it seems.
|
| I'd say I agree with all of this. I used to listen to new
| artists and genres extremely systematically and dedicate a
| lot of time to it (many hours every week). Now it's more
| irregular than that but it certainly hasn't stopped.
| paulannesley wrote:
| > If novelty in music is actually important to you, this won't
| happen to you.
|
| Assuming what's "actually important to you" remains fixed as
| you age. The article suggests otherwise, with caveats:
|
| > At the same time, stagnation is not a certainty. Research
| suggests that open-eardness and the discovery of new songs can
| be cultivated. Finding new music is a challenge, but it is
| achievable with dedicated time and effort.
| pimeys wrote:
| Yep. I'm in my 40's and I still every day check what new albums
| were released, and listen to as many of them as I can. Of
| course I take charades to old music every now and then, but
| over 50% of what I listen is new albums...
|
| I think already this albums thing might leak my age. I guess
| people don't really listen to albums anymore...
| mattikl wrote:
| On average, music is big for people during the teenage years,
| then other things in life take over and that same music
| continues the biggest music for them.
|
| This is very different if music is a lifelong hobby for you.
| I'm in my forties and some of the artists I most listen to
| today I discovered during recent years. Still I find articles
| like this interesting because I can learn something about a
| larger demographic while being different myself.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If novelty in music is actually important to you, this won't
| happen to you.
|
| One of the most traditional - and important - uses of music was
| to preserve the oral record, which existed in musical form to
| make it easier to remember accurately.
|
| I wouldn't expect novelty in music to be important to many
| people.
| pxc wrote:
| For me, at least, the desire for new-to-me music isn't paired
| with a disdain for repetition or tradition. It's more like
| that I want to discover more traditions and connect with
| them, and to develop a better intuition for how the
| constituents of my musical universe are interconnected.
|
| The traditional use of music you highlight really resonates
| with the way that I listen to music, incidentally. I joked
| recently with my roommate that for me, music is poetry with
| embellishments, while for him, it's drums with
| embellishments. Lyrical memorization has been a central part
| of how I've related to most of the music most important to
| me, too.
|
| I suppose you're right, though. Most people engage relatively
| casually with music, and that's okay.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Where did I say people engage relatively casually with
| music? I highlighted a form of engagement that is (a)
| extremely serious, but (b) actively undermined by novelty.
|
| You're right that a lot of people seem to view lyrics as
| being at best an annoyance; I've seen multiple people on HN
| argue with a straight face that in order to translate a
| song from one language to another language, it's not
| necessary for the meaning of the new lyrics to be similar
| to the meaning of the old lyrics.
|
| This is not a sense of "translation" that I'm familiar with
| for other linguistic phenomena.
|
| I've also seen people take offense at the idea that the
| concept of a "song" might involve singing.
| cainxinth wrote:
| Me neither, for two reasons. One, I was a DJ briefly as a young
| person and digging crates for new discoveries and hidden gems
| is still as fun as ever. And two, I exercise a lot, and you can
| only run to the same song so many times before it loses its
| juice (at least temporarily).
| tflinton wrote:
| I have discovered better music in my 30s and 40s and sort of
| regret my musical decisions in my teens and 20s.
|
| Music to me is linked to my emotional state and like I've matured
| I'd like to think my music tastes have too...
|
| but then I remember I've stopped listening to silly music of
| Fugazi and replaced it with the artistic stylings of Taylor Swift
| and I'm right back in my pit of despair knowing my musical
| sophistication is still out of reach.
| computershit wrote:
| Yeah but none of this music slaps as hard as it did in my 20s.
| Don't get me wrong I appreciate it the same I'm sure, there's
| just such a thing as youth and emotion and I wouldn't trade
| that exploratory musical phase for anything.
| popularrecluse wrote:
| Just happened to listen to Steady Diet of Nothing the other
| day. Maybe the first time in almost 30 years. That music is as
| good as ever. And could Reclamation be a more relevant song in
| 2024?
| oksurewhynot wrote:
| In my mid-30s and I can't imagine not being interested in new
| music.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I really enjoy music but realized after trying to follow several
| hundred artists--and failing that it is merely a question of
| bandwidth. For example the Doobie Brothers have released new
| albums post-2020, while at the same time I'm trying to be up on
| the latest from B. Eillish for a nearby young person. Just can't
| keep up.
|
| Haven't even mentioned my weirder tastes. At some point something
| has got to give if you have a job, family, or another interest or
| two.
| ilvez wrote:
| I really love to dig new old music. Still discovering artists
| from 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, 50s, 20s. I like that the list
| grows naturally. Been on the train from 90s.
| mellosouls wrote:
| The conclusions of this study - that musical open-mindedness
| drops off in the late twenties - is consistent with the fact that
| (pop) music creators also peak in their twenties, with a rapid
| decline into creative insignificance afterwards.
|
| There's a lot of comforting analysis here on social and cultural
| development reasons why that might be, but the likely ugly truth
| is the same faced by creatives in some other areas - a clear
| cognitive decline, it's just too universal within those fields to
| be anything else than a physical cause.
|
| With very rare exceptions old people don't make good pop music,
| there's no reason to expect listeners to not mirror the decline.
| longdog wrote:
| What are those other areas which display age-based creative
| decline? Other creative fields I can think of off the top of my
| head - scientific research, animation, fiction writing,
| architecture - are overwhelmingly dominated by older people.
|
| Even in pop music, I'd argue that artists are doing very little
| of the actual heavy lifting compared to the producers and the
| writers. Pop singers have a much shorter shelf life than
| producer/writers due to the importance of image in appealing to
| younger fans. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin for
| an example.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Eg. Maths, physics, poetry. All dominated by the young, as
| pop music.
|
| Note that I'm talking about creative brilliance - ie the
| outlier contributors that define or excel in the forms - not
| workmanlike producers of commercial trustworthiness as in
| your example (though I would assume that generally the same
| trend holds).
|
| I said "some" because I'm aware that some fields (eg
| literature) do not follow the clear example in those.
| dqh wrote:
| I suspect that it's not cognitive decline, but that everyone is
| just too tired to make music.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| I think there is developmental biological factor, but how
| quickly you've leapt to cognitive decline betrays an underlying
| ageism. First, cognitive abilities don't drop suddenly at the
| age of 30, and crystallized intelligence continues to grow for
| at least couple of decades past 30. Second, you need to square
| your conclusions with the fact that the average age for the
| best work by classical composers was 40 rather than 30, and
| this was in a period where health outcomes were much poorer.
| Further, writers, working in perhaps the most creatively
| demanding field of all, have their best work often in their
| 40s, 50s, and beyond. Need I mention the great painters of the
| last 500 years too?
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10400419.2016.11...
| mellosouls wrote:
| _how quickly you've leapt to cognitive decline betrays an
| underlying ageism_
|
| This is a belief I've developed over years, I used to believe
| the same as everybody else - that social etc factors like
| raising kids got in the way.
|
| But its too universal within pop music (and I think some
| other fields mentioned in another comment) to be explained as
| anything but age-related cognitive decline - which _by
| definition_ will be "ageist" if you want to resort to that
| sort of language.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| Pop songs are typically written by songwriters who are much
| older than the performer. I'm estimating, but that's probably
| true of most pop songs in the top 100 history. Maybe someone
| has the stats on that.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _(pop) music creators also peak in their twenties, with a
| rapid decline into creative insignificance afterwards._
|
| Die Toten Hosen and Leningrad would like to have a word.
|
| If you're reliant on the machine, then of course you'll suffer
| "creative insignificance" once the machine ceases to have a use
| for you.
|
| compare "New Kid in Town" (1976)
| mellosouls wrote:
| Like I also said, there are very rare exceptions.
| matt_j wrote:
| I'm in my 40s and still vibing on a mix of novel and nostalgia. I
| don't know what my secret is but I've never been in a position
| where discovering new music was difficult. I don't listen to much
| radio, but when I do, it's a community station with people that
| care about music. I don't use any streaming services. I have a
| large, physical music collection that I still add to, both CD and
| vinyl, supplemented by a digital collection from places like
| Bandcamp. I explore a bit on Youtube and Discogs, I read music
| zines and local whats ons, I take recommendations from friends, I
| go to gigs: local pubs, concerts, festivals. Music seems to come
| easily if I put myself in front of it.
|
| I went to a gig last night and saw a great band I found a few
| months ago with two other new (to me) bands and came home with a
| head full of tunes, strengthened friendships, and a CD from the
| merch stand.
|
| It's just part of my life and I give it some time each day. :)
| Semaphor wrote:
| I'm 38, and I don't think my exposure to and discovery of music
| has ever been so high.
|
| I joined a metal discord last year (though my favorite album of
| the year so far is actually chamber folk / Americana from a
| recommendation there):
|
| * general recommendations
|
| * seeing what other people listen to
|
| * "themed history months" (Screamarch for Screamo, Finlapril for
| Finnish metal etc.),
|
| * sampling of any new release that seems slightly interesting
| (usually about 20 releases per week that I spend a few seconds to
| minutes with to gauge my enjoyment)
|
| All those expose me to a constant stream of new and old music
| that I usually never even heard of before.
|
| But then, not using streaming services probably makes me a
| statistical outlier anyway.
| ThomW wrote:
| I'm 53 and love Spotify and Reddit's 80s subreddits for music
| discovery.
|
| I love finding new stuff (IDLES, Shame, and High Vis are recent
| faves) and finding old stuff that's new to me (I flew across the
| country to see The Cult playing in LA as their old band name --
| Death Cult -- and never knew there was a live album version of
| Dreamtime that's terrific from back in the day).
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I'm in my 30s and still pretty open minded with music, and don't
| listen to all that much of my teenage years stuff.
|
| I think I just sacrificed my ability to enjoy new video games
| instead.
| kstenerud wrote:
| Most of the music I enjoyed was made before I was born. I don't
| listen to music anymore. I stopped when I went fully remote a
| decade ago and didn't need anything to drown out the office noise
| anymore. I'll play music on an instrument, but that's about it.
|
| I actually bought a nice stereo system with bose 901 speakers to
| set up in my house, but it's still sitting in storage 9 years
| later.
| drones wrote:
| Most people stop making an effort to expand their taste in art at
| a young age because it's not useful for them. People can afford
| to have narrow tastes and still enjoy music. If parents made
| being exposed to different types of music as important to one's
| growth as being exposed to different types of vegetables, I doubt
| we would have this cultural phenomenon.
|
| Theoretically, I should have given up trying to find new music
| years ago, but that hasn't happened. This is because music is the
| only artform that resonates with me on a spiritual level. Finding
| new music is important to me because it is a part of my identity.
| Contrast this with the fact I haven't been to a cinema since
| 2022. I don't broaden my taste in cinema because it has little
| impact on how much I enjoy films.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _as being exposed to different types of vegetables_
|
| I am told there was a time in ireland when every restaurant, no
| matter what the cuisine, offered a "meat and two veg" plate for
| the grandparents; somehow I doubt there was much variety in
| those vegetables.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| I'm almost 40 now and still actively seeking out new music,
| bands, albums.
|
| Is it something to do with genres? I have been listening to punk,
| metal, hardcore, rap music, alt since I was in grade school.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I deleted/tossed my entire music collection,
| subscriptions/accounts about two years ago. I decided it was kind
| of keeping me in a mental rut and reinforcing old patterns rather
| than supporting new ones im modifying my life with.
|
| I think it helps. Kinda like being 16 again.
| tpurves wrote:
| I am 45+ and constantly and exclusively seek out new music,
| rarely listening to anything more than a year old. However... I
| think this may have as much to do with a life-long novelty
| seeking manifestation of ADHD than anything entirely
| neurotypical. But I'm okay with that!
| milesward wrote:
| I'm just diehard I guess, serious evolutions in my preferences
| and new artists I love almost weekly. Huh!
| yagami_takayuki wrote:
| I find the soundtrack for EA Sports FC (the video game) exposes
| me to a lot of different types of music that I otherwise wouldn't
| be exposed to.
| graeme wrote:
| For anyone who wants a good source of random music, radio Canada
| has a great French station with an excellent show "l'effet
| pogonat".
|
| You won't understand the host if you don't speak French but the
| station is mostly songs and I've found so many good ones there.
|
| The Montreal Gazette had a good write up:
| https://montrealgazette.com/news/pop-goes-the-world-ici-musi...
| inbetween wrote:
| This is fantastic, thank you so much. It reminds me of the
| Bernard Lenoir show on France Inter back in the days. Will be
| spending days digging this new treasure trove from Montreal :)
| ddingus wrote:
| When we quit seeking.
|
| It helps a lot to be among other people seeking new music.
|
| Without that, many of us stop mid life.
| webworker wrote:
| I discussed this with a friend pretty recently. I wondered
| whether I was getting "older" because I couldn't find anything I
| liked about the current rappy-pop or soft, high-pitched chic-pop
| that you hear over loudspeakers at the grocery store, gym, etc.
| It's grating to listen to, majority of the stuff I can't even
| determine what the melody is supposed to be.
|
| Then I realized that I'm listening to new alt/indie stuff that I
| didn't know about three years ago, and that it's probably not me.
| It's probably just that this mass-music for the masses is indeed
| awful.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| And at the same time, publishing music has never been easier.
| There is so much good stuff out there but you aren't going to
| find it if your process for finding new music is letting the
| same guys that made top 40 with payola jam their same lowest
| common denominator shit down your through with algorithmically
| generated playlists.
| webworker wrote:
| Interesting thing I found the other day:
|
| > In 2006 Slichter said that payola was how his band
| Semisonic turned their song "Closing Time" into a hit.
| Slichter stated: "It cost something close to $700,000 to
| $800,000 to get 'Closing Time' on the air."[4]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Slichter
|
| Damn near a mil to push that song up the charts, in the
| 1990s, and it wasn't even a crap song. I think of that track
| as iconic of the late-90s, I was surprised they had to run
| payola at all.
| jsemrau wrote:
| I am wondering when Suno.ai or similar are replacing licensed
| background music like radio with AI generated hyper-optimized
| streams?
| stagas wrote:
| I find soundcloud's autoplay to consistently give me fresh new
| music that i enjoy and many times in a style never heard before.
| histories wrote:
| Now I want a tool that analyzes my last.fm history and tells me
| how many new artists (= artists I never scrobbled before) I
| scrobble every year.
| guappa wrote:
| Whenever I sit in a venue that has background music, I realize
| that I know all the songs that are being played.
|
| I think the problem is that new music isn't as played (except of
| course for the corporate pop that is imposed on us).
| NegatioN wrote:
| There seems to be a focus on something about the brain
| "calcifying" or people getting stuck in their own pattern over
| time here.
|
| That may be a component, but I think anothet thing that
| correlates heavily with the graphs presented in the article is
| simply: When you have enough spare time to prioritize music.
| (although you could explicitly prioritize it like some commenters
| mention)
|
| I still find lots of new music, but it always comes in periods of
| my life when I have some leeway, and those are fewer and farther
| between now.
| Lerc wrote:
| I find as I get older the period that the music I listen to
| extends in both directions.
|
| While most of the popular music released these days is crap, that
| was the case when I was young also. The things fondly remembered
| is the good stuff.
|
| It's quite fun to look at old top 10 lists to see masterpieces
| sitting alongside fluff.
|
| Recent discoveries. Klaus Nomi, Kirin J. Callinan.
| cesaref wrote:
| The useful metric with these sorts of things is to ask yourself,
| when was the last time you tried something that you didn't like?
|
| For expensive experiences, say, going to the theatre, it's hard
| to see shows you don't think you are going to like, as the price
| pressure makes you choose 'safe bets' as the cost/reward is
| somewhat weighted in one direction.
|
| For something like music, the above used to be the case, as
| typically we find our tribe in our early teens, and money is
| tight so again, you buy what you know you are going to like.
|
| I imagine though that streaming may change this, since you can
| dive into just about anything. We really need music search which
| follows more interesting routes through content rather than just
| 'people who like this also like' or 'here's another album by
| someone you already listen to'.
|
| I'm lucky, my musical taste has always been broad, and if
| anything, it's got broader as i've got older. I do find myself
| reaching for older stuff that i've not heard for a while rather
| than new music, so when I catch myself doing this too much, the
| 'i've not heard something I don't like' alarm goes off, and I
| track down something that a session player I like has played on
| that i've never heard before, and try and find something new.
| eloisius wrote:
| > We really need music search which follows more interesting
| routes through content rather than just 'people who like this
| also like' or 'here's another album by someone you already
| listen to'.
|
| I agree with this so much. We've had about a decade of this
| kind of robo-curation in every single aspect of our media
| consumption. Read books like the ones you like, listen to bands
| like the ones you listen to, more videos like this one, etc.
| I'm so sick of it.
|
| The way to branch out of your rut is other people. Some band
| I'd never have listened to, and if I accidentally had, would
| have skipped it 30 seconds in, have become my favorites simply
| because someone I had a connection with played it or
| recommended it. Movies I wouldn't have picked, but watched with
| someone else, are often better than anything I'd have picked
| based on my past preferences.
|
| These days, more and more, I am realizing how rewarding it is
| to read a book or try a new restaurant based on nothing except
| that a friend with completely different taste likes it. If it
| turns out to be a dud, it's worth it for when I find something
| completely new that I do like.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I suspect it's the notion of a "feed" that's at fault, but
| then again I'm an old codger who likes to rummage in the
| cupboard and actively search for my content instead of being
| stuck in the high chair and passively waiting for somebody
| else's algorithm to feed it to me.
|
| (in another domain, at some restaurants it's possible to
| order dishes which don't appear on their menu)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > in another domain, at some restaurants it's possible to
| order dishes which don't appear on their menu
|
| I've experienced this in Italy. Our host took us to a
| restaurant where he knew the manager and looked at the
| menu. He then asked 'but what have you really got?'. After
| a long very Italian debate (which I didn't understand) with
| a lot of gesticulation etc we were brought a multi-course
| meal that was absolutely delicious and involved various
| things that had just come into season, things that the
| manager kept back for friends, etc.
| sim7c00 wrote:
| the joy of discovery is lost. its discovered for you and
| fed to you. where did the journey go? :D
|
| if you have more content, but someone filters it for you to
| 'your taste', you will end up with less content, and no
| more exciting discoveries. you'll learn what to expect from
| the feed quickly and everything becomes boring. hence the
| required upward spiral in ridiculousness, to counter the
| natural encroaching boredom.
|
| the last maybe a little grim take, but i dont think
| invalid.
| vidarh wrote:
| I'd skip less if I could trust that the algorithmic playlists
| followed "reasonable" paths. But all to often the transitions
| are really jarring.
|
| (Also, big pet peeve: they need to take into account time of
| day and factors like weather to do well, as well as habit; I
| will not respond the same way to a track on a rainy grey
| winter evening as on a sunny summers day)
| sim7c00 wrote:
| you touch an important thing. music is a common thing between
| people that's shared, and a way to express, which is usually
| also meant for sharing (you can make music to express to
| yourself too.). hence i think most people develop their taste
| in these things mostly through social interactions which
| algorithms cannot provide. additionally as a result, the
| memories/experiences attached, influence heavily how it
| tastes, exactly as you say.
|
| these numbers presented seem a bit from a narrow dataset. all
| the people likely from one culture or even sub-culture, with
| one sort of social pattern that impacts this kind of stuff. -
| i live in a northen country, and find often in the south
| people are more actively outside and socializing at later
| ages. sharing more music and food, and likely the peak ages
| would thus be later too, or less of a peak.
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| >We really need music search which follows more interesting
| routes through content rather than just 'people who like this
| also like' or 'here's another album by someone you already
| listen to'.
|
| I wish we had something like /mu/ flowcharts[1] but in a more
| general way. So after playing a song you can get a question or
| a prompt of what you liked and get some suggestion based on the
| input.
|
| But IMO, music recommendation peaked 10 years ago with Last.fm
| and it's only been downhill since then, which is a shame
| because we had a lot of cool music in the last years, but the
| exploration is getting harder. But who knows, maybe I'm just
| getting old and I don't hang around the hip places anymore.
|
| 1: https://4chanmusic.fandom.com/wiki/Flowcharts
| tyrust wrote:
| last.fm is still around, although I don't use it for
| recommendations.
|
| I've recently enjoyed using RYM to find music. Start with an
| artist/album I like, click on the genre, and try out the top-
| rated artists/albums.
|
| It's a manual version of the flowchart, you're right that
| it'd be neat to automate that. I haven't even tried using RYM
| tags, but they'd probably be useful input, too.
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| Yeah, when I mentioned last.fm I meant last.fm radio, a
| short lived service that if I remember right, it was only
| supposed to be available on the UK, although with the
| easily bypassed checks of that time.
|
| The description you make about rym sounds similar, so maybe
| i'll take a look.
| dlivingston wrote:
| I really enjoyed 8tracks back in its prime: it was a social
| network for user-created playlists, and it made finding cool
| new music really easy. The playlists were often very well
| thought out; nothing like the playlists you'll find on
| Spotify.
|
| There is rateyourmusic.com, which is positioned as sort of a
| Letterboxd for music, but I haven't used it much.
|
| Music discoverability is a big problem I'd like to solve,
| especially now that I'm in my 30s and don't really have the
| sort of social circle these days that would expose me to cool
| new music.
|
| I've toyed with the idea of making an 8tracks-like service,
| where tastemakers can create playlists to share, and the
| streaming happens via the API of whatever streaming services
| you're subscribed to (Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, whatever).
| If anyone is interested in a project like this, feel free to
| reach out.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >I imagine though that streaming may change this, since you can
| dive into just about anything.
|
| my theory is maintaining a single complete playlist as the best
| way to not get stuck with only the safe and boring.
|
| https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-complete-playlist-e8eb3...
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I think it is the reverse. 20-30 years ago, you'd listen to
| radio or MTV a lot more. They would introduce you to music
| outside "your tribe" of virtue of having to play a little bit
| of every genre that's popular.
|
| Back then, I'd say investing in a album was always safe, not
| because you went to the record store and asked for a new rock
| album, because you had heard 1 or 2 singles (unwillingly) and
| read a review (willingly)
|
| Now, you can just ask the algorithm to play "something I like".
| yobbo wrote:
| > you'd listen to radio or MTV a lot more
|
| The selection in these channels _was the tribe_ back then.
| They were the "bottleneck" of pop culture.
|
| From around 2000 with broadband etc, "payola" (broadcasters
| being coerced by record companies to play their flagship
| songs "in heavy rotation") is less and less effective.
|
| As a consequence, I think the "current fashion" of music
| seems less defined.
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| I believe this is the origin of the '90s kids' meme. Not
| too long ago there was _one culture_. Then the internet
| came along and there was a gathering place for fans of
| every obscure anime and political system.
|
| I don't miss the restrictiveness of a single culture and
| the expectation to fit into it, but with the benefit of
| hindsight I can't say it was a terrible culture, given all
| it had to do.
| cthalupa wrote:
| There have always been multiple cultures. This is such a
| weird statement I don't even really know how to argue
| against it since to me it seems so self evident, but I
| suppose I'll try. Since the subject is music, I suppose
| we can start there.
|
| The sort of people you found at, say, a metal show in the
| 80s and the sort of people you found at a dance club
| playing the early era of house music were wildly
| different. Even if you keep it within rock, the overlap
| of the audience seeing The Cure would be wildly different
| from those seeing Judas Priest.
|
| Anime? Even before the internet became what it is today,
| you could go to a comic book store and hang out. There
| was significant overlap between the comic book/dungeons &
| dragons/anime crowds.
|
| There have been social spaces and places to meet people
| within specific cultures for forever.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| There was never _one_ culture, but the fragmentation was
| far more coarse.
|
| I was into D&D, so I was exposed to anime, comics, Monty
| Python, Mel Brooks, and Tom Lehrer, because those were a
| certain subculture.
|
| I was never a comic-book nerd, but I could probably name
| a dozen different series from _image comics_ in the 90s
| because I was surrounded by people who read them.
|
| I flat out dislike watching Mel Brooks movies, but I can
| quote about 90% of _Spaceballs_ or _Blazing Saddles_
| because that was a part of the vocabulary of that group.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Before the internet, there has always been a gathering
| place already for each culture. In my teens, it was the
| weekend punk hardcore matinees. Before internet, kids
| passed out fliers to their upcoming shows. Kids invite
| fellow kids because there isn't much going on during
| weekends.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I think putting Britney Spears, Rage Against the Machine,
| Moby, Ol'Dirty Bastard and Santana (all had top hits in
| 1999 with rotation on MTV) into the same "tribe" is
| painting strokes as broad as the ocean.
| watwut wrote:
| There were multiple sub-cultures warring against each other
| and especially against pop MTV back then.
|
| Mainstream always coexisted wirh smaller cultures.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's a mixed bag; on the one side I agree that during that
| era, people were exposed to a somewhat broad range of musical
| styles if they watched TV or listened to radio - early to mid
| teen me would be exposed to the likes of Madonna, Rammstein,
| Eminem and Slipknot all in one day. But as someone else
| pointed out, it was all within the "bubble" of what was
| popular at that time, and the options to break out of there
| were limited because there were only so many music television
| and radio channels, and they would have a limited playlist of
| <1000 songs at a time, probably even less than that.
|
| Nowadays if you have a streaming subscription or even
| Youtube, you have instant access to millions of songs and a
| multitude of curators creating playlists to fit any mood.
| Granted, Spotify and co will curate some popular playlists,
| and discovering curators outside of that bubble takes some
| more effort. But it's there.
|
| We live in interesting times where on the one side we can be
| overwhelmed by choice, while at the same time delighted with
| new discoveries. Where budding artists can create from their
| proverbial basement and self-publish to a potential audience
| of billions.
| killerstorm wrote:
| I started with a very narrow taste as a teen: pretty much just
| metal, and mostly just black & death.
|
| But it grew broader over time, so that's possible. Now I might
| dig pretty much any kind of music.
|
| I feel like trying to understand new types of music has an
| effect beyond just getting familiar with them: brain adapts to
| process a broader range of stimuli, so that also helps to
| understand other unrelated genres in future.
|
| I experienced biggest change with Autechre: it was rather
| difficult to listen to (and I specifically took it as a
| challenge), but after Autechre I can listen anything :)
|
| And in teens I had to listen something at least 5 times to
| start enjoying it. Now I can dig it right away. So it feels
| like brain processes music differently now
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > The useful metric with these sorts of things is to ask
| yourself, when was the last time you tried something that you
| didn't like?
|
| 100% the case. I keep telling my kids that, but they don't seem
| to get it.
|
| > I imagine though that streaming may change this, since you
| can dive into just about anything. We really need music search
| which follows more interesting routes through content rather
| than just 'people who like this also like' or 'here's another
| album by someone you already listen to'.
|
| So much so. Spotify became really popular when I was in my 30s
| and I tried it, listening to the "Discover weekly" for about 6
| months. It was 10 weeks before I heard a track I had not heard
| before and the closest it came to playing an artist I hadn't
| heard before was a track from a 1-album super-group with two
| frontmen I was familiar with from their other groups.
|
| Doing the math: I didn't play the list religiously so figure
| about 20 weeks worth of songs would be 600 songs. I had heard
| over 80% of the songs before. I had heard nearly all of the
| artists before. It played a single digit number of songs that I
| didn't like. If I'm liking 99% of what I'm hearing, something
| is wrong.
| transitivebs wrote:
| This is how I've solved this problem for myself: by using monthly
| playlists as a forcing function to motivate myself to find new
| music every month, where the whole ends up being greater than the
| sum of it's parts: https://transitivebullsh.it/my-10-year-music-
| diary
| inopinatus wrote:
| The unstated underlying assumption that only a commercially
| constructed popular zeitgeist qualifies as "new" for self-
| discovery purposes is corporate lickspittle fawning at its most
| conceited.
|
| The author also appears to trip over the ecological fallacy in
| responding to population results as though they apply to
| themselves the individual. They do not. This is broad information
| of interest to anthropologists and marketing droids, it doesn't
| define or describe a person.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I wish there was a music service that actually provided
| recommendations based on features of the track itself, like
| similar chords, tempo, rhythmic composition, emotional tone, etc.
|
| Instead it all seems to be variations on "people who liked this
| also like", which--while obviously easier to code--is rather
| disappointing compared to what I thought we'd have by now.
| inopinatus wrote:
| I only have one criteria and it is "high production values".
| After that I have no century or genre constraints. So far there
| is no recommendation algorithm up to the task.
| holri wrote:
| > When do we stop finding new music?
|
| for me never. The older I get I find more interesting new music.
| Maybe because I play an instrument and live in a very diverse and
| rich physical cultural context, not in a playlist or AI generated
| content.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| I've found two somewhat surprising effective ways for new music
| discovery:
|
| 1. Spotify Weekly Discover (personalized) ~ Still can't work
| their silly UX, but their recomms are good. Is it time yet for
| "Bring Your Own Client" to their API ??
|
| 2. Online Communities: Many a twitch streamer has music bots or
| accept music request while streaming. Has been a great source for
| new discovery.
| 10729287 wrote:
| I'm mostly into punk/hardcore myself but music is probably one of
| my numerous passions that never seems to fade and nowadays I love
| to listen to radio to be exposed to music I wouldn't be exposed
| thru algorythms. Sometimes I don't like it and it's ok, but I
| often encounter great discoveries. https://www.radiofrance.fr/fip
| is perfect for it. Give it a try !
| dghughes wrote:
| It's like junk food next to you in versus in a cupboard upstairs.
| One you eat now impulsively the other you won't eat due to the
| effort needed as minimal as it is it still slows you down.
|
| If you put in a cassette tape and let it run you would usually
| always listen to it in order. To some extent a CD too but it and
| vinyl were easier to jump song to song.
|
| Radio was even more uncontrollable it made you wait for your
| favourite song while it played other songs. Sometimes a day or
| two waiting for that new song to appear. Radio mercilessly teased
| you too. Even Top 40 radio shows you had to wait not knowing was
| your song now higher up making you excited but it meant you had
| to wait, excitement grows. Or was it lower down and it played
| sooner (a dreadful feeling) or you missed it completely!
|
| I've noticed this over the years that more and more I rarely
| listen to anything new just what I know from years past.
| bearmode wrote:
| My musical tastes have changed a lot, I've found new bands and
| artists pretty much every year of my life. I listen to music from
| my teenage years now & then, but more often than not I'm
| listening to completely new music.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Intersting question is when does humanity stop finding new music.
| Or when did it stop.
| gcanyon wrote:
| I know the article is mostly true, but I'm apparently the
| contradiction that proves the rule. I've listened to music from
| the current decade for decades, but also discovered old stuff
| that was new to me along the way.
|
| Life is too short to listen to the same music over and over.
| baerrie wrote:
| Instead of slowing down my discovery of music at 30, i started
| releasing my own! Check it out if you are interested:
| https://open.spotify.com/artist/0gzvd38Qse9LCxpmJUWLaN?si=MC...
| koromak wrote:
| I find and listen to plenty of new music, for some reason I find
| it hard to listen to the teenage stuff. Even though I love it,
| its too fraught.
|
| But, its not like I _love_ any of the new music I find. I can
| like it, but I 'm never going to blast it on repeat for weeks on
| end like 15 year old me could. Its hard to make an emotional
| connection like that as an adult.
|
| As a result, I care less about music discovery. I know I'm not
| going to find a revolution in my own tastes. I know I'm not going
| to convince a whole group of friends to do the same, like you
| might in highschool. Its just a little more colorless now.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I never did stop, even though I'm a graybeard. I wonder if that
| might be because I didn't really start to enjoy music until after
| I was done being a teenager. I don't have any music I fell in
| love with when I was that young.
| cyphereal wrote:
| The article might describe a common scenario, but there are
| plenty of outliers. I hardly listen to music I liked in my teens
| and early twenties. I love discovering new music.
|
| Many comments here are very insightful and discuss phenomena like
| high music diversity, music proliferation and easy of producing
| music, and automated recommendations.
|
| One thing that has been occupying me is that curation is still
| harder than I'd like when using streaming tools like Spotify,
| YouTube Music, Apple Music, Tidal. Pandora had good roots with
| its music genome project, and have built on that. (I can't use it
| without a VPN since they discontinued supporting the country I
| mostly live in). It's probably a function of how I consume my
| music today - no longer desk-bound at work, but on the go, so
| iPhone (and Apple Watch) are primary tools. Being able to
| select/skip/preview/tune what I'm listening to is nowhere near as
| powerful as I'd like. I've written library curation tools in the
| past, these always expected me to spend significant dedicated
| time in front of a screen (e.g. a similar tool like the cool
| looking https://github.com/kristopolous/music-explorer, I think).
|
| This has strong parallels to how older people consumed music -
| either totally passive curation (radio), or very deliberate, like
| finding music in record stores, at a friend's place. Also replay
| involves selecting records/CDs in your own bookshelf. Today's
| ephemeral digital libraries are much lower effort, are huge and
| curation/selection tools are not easy enough to use, so I tend to
| fall back onto old favourites or recommendation engines that
| usually don't satisfy me.
|
| A solution might be a much more configurable curation assistant
| that is also super easy to use (and, in my case) very accessible
| on a mobile device with 0-1 clicks (because I'm busy doing other
| things). Music discovery tools that don't allow in-situ music
| playing is thus also a no-go.
|
| It wouldn't be super hard to build an interactive tool, but as
| always, making a super intuitive and useable UX experience is the
| hardest part. Most streaming tools are giant swiss-army knives
| for listening use-cases.
| cthalupa wrote:
| I'm convinced it's not that we stagnate in our ability to like
| new things, it's just that we stop exposing ourselves to it, and
| it's reinforced by the algorithms focusing on stuff we do like
| when we rely on them for recommendations.
|
| If you purposefully seek out exposure to new things, you'll find
| stuff you like, regardless of age. I have a friend that brings me
| along to all sorts of concerts that are well out of the
| wheelhouse of what I listened to as a kid, or even 5-10 years
| ago. I frequently get home and purchase their full discography
| the next day. There are subgenres of the broader genres I like
| that are quite different from what I am used to, and I keep an
| eye out for new ones - I've long been into various types of
| metal, but it was the Judas Priests, Iron Maidens, Megadeths,
| Slayers that dominated my teenage years. In my 20s it was power
| metal and then death metal and black metal. In my early 30s, it
| was prog metal. Now I'm listening to a ton of math-y stuff and
| djent. I have had many detours into jazz and blues, electronic
| music, and every now and then very mainstream pop artists make
| their way into my collection.
|
| I don't think I'm wired in some special way that lets me keep
| liking new things, it's just that I seek them out when I know a
| lot of people my age just don't.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The more novel the thing is, the more likely it is that you
| won't like it. I can tell if I'm truly exposing myself to new
| music by how often I hear a song and say "Yeah, that's just not
| for me." It makes sense that by the time one is in their 30s
| they say "I have 1000 songs I know I like, why do I need to
| look for more songs, many of which I won't like"
|
| Which is basically a long winded way of responding to:
|
| > I don't think I'm wired in some special way that lets me keep
| liking new things, it's just that I seek them out when I know a
| lot of people my age just don't.
|
| With:
|
| There's a non-zero cost to seeking out new things, so the
| "special way you are wired" involves considering that cost to
| be worth it.
| madmountaingoat wrote:
| Music as an art form is simply not that important to a lot of
| people. It's more a mood drug. And you're right about the
| algorithms. In general, the algorithms are judged by the amount
| of listening that occurs because of them. It's a poor metric
| for user happiness, but it's what gets used. And in an A/B
| test, the one that plays familiar tunes is going to win over
| one that plays challenging tunes.
| mindcrime wrote:
| OK, I didn't read TFA yet, but here's some anecdata for you:
|
| I'm 50, and literally 15 minutes ago I'm on a conference call
| with some colleagues in Brasil, and while we were waiting for a
| pipeline to run, I started asking those guys about other
| Brazilian heavy metal bands (other than Sepultura) that I should
| listen to. They mentioned Sarcofago, and in the process of
| reading about Sarcofago on Wikipedia I discovered Ratos de Porao.
| So now I have two new bands to listen to as soon as I get a break
| where I'm not on a call.
|
| I love discovering new music, both "new" in the sense of "just
| released" and in the "new to me" sense. For example, there are
| still plenty of old NWOBHM bands I have never listened to, and
| occasionally one will pop up and I'll discover them and just be
| thrilled to death.
|
| Beyond that, I keep branching out into new genres. I grew up as
| mostly a metal-head (if you couldn't tell) but around 2000 or so
| I started listening to a lot of rap and hip-hop. Then I started
| getting into a lot of
| synthwave/retrowave/darkwave/horrosynth/etc. around 8-10 years
| ago. And I've picked up a little bit of interest in blues and
| jazz over the last year or two.
|
| I dearly _hope_ that for me, the answer to "when do I stop
| finding new music" is "when I am dead."
| karlgrz wrote:
| I'm just 40 but it sounds like we are like minded in a lot of
| ways. Never stop being curious. There's always something new
| out there. The joy of discovering some obscure metal band with
| 7 followers on Spotify or bandcamp that you intensely resonate
| with is unmatched. It's one of my favorite experiences.
|
| One of the things I've learned about myself over the past
| decade is I'm an outlier in terms of the listener profile. I
| crave albums over songs. That crafted experience an artist
| creates for the listener makes it all for me. Perhaps it's
| because I'm also a musician, but something about a group of
| songs becoming greater than the sum of it's parts has an
| endearing, emotional impact on that listening session. I think
| a lot of playlist driven listening loses out on that.
|
| Cheers, thanks for sharing.
| JackMorgan wrote:
| I think I've got possibly the opposite problem of most people. I
| quickly tire of music. I'm always building brand new playlists,
| adding 1000 amazing beautiful songs to it, and then getting so
| tired of it all I just slam skip through 70% of it. Eventually
| the playlist gets so bogged down I have to make a new one and
| start over again with all fresh music.
|
| Each time I start over I say to myself "only the best ones get in
| this playlist" and sure enough I'll only add the very best, my
| favorite music. Songs that'll be stuck in my head for days. But
| alas, I fall back to earth and loathe the whole set of them and
| the cycle repeats.
| Octokiddie wrote:
| The article hints at, but doesn't really nail the strong
| associations between music and our past that develop as we age.
| The older we get, the more listening to old music takes on the
| role of time machine, teleporting us to an earlier time where we
| can forget all the bad parts, leaving just the good.
|
| Strangely enough, the same thing can be said about cars, and even
| software.
| anjel wrote:
| Streaming Radio is often narrow-casting and an excellent if
| overlooked genre-based means of new music discovery. e.g Prog-
| Radio
| subpixel wrote:
| This doesn't resonate with me at all.
|
| I'm always looking with my ears.
|
| A current fascination is the unnamed genre of popular American
| music from the era when jazz and ragtime and vaudeville sort of
| intersected with jug bands and blues:
| https://www.youtube.com/live/GGxIeMxG5l8?si=RLaYnnWGqQkfMXk1
|
| I also listen to a ton of music in languages I don't understand,
| from Balkan dance music to Brazilian pop and psychedelia.
|
| And there's a certain DJ in New Orleans (Mark LaMaire) I listen
| to every week who has turned me onto a whole mountain of music
| I'd never heard of before.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I am so happy that this is not the case for me. What I listened
| to back then was awful.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Between SomaFM, radiooooo.com, and the occasional recommendation
| from the record store I have no problem finding the occasional
| new thing.
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