music discovery

In various conversations this past week I’ve been struck by the different ways people discover music. Subsequently I’ve started asking others about their preferred methods and preferred gatekeepers. At GÂRDEN, for example, we use the Smarter Playlists tool that Bas wrote about back in February. The list we distil from the tool gets filtered by our founder and CEO and then finds its way to our listening team. They say whether they like a track or not and whether they think it fits the GÂRDEN artistic profile. The songs that make it through all of these stages can be found in our GÂRDEN Seeds playlist.

In our personal lives, we maybe don’t want to set up an elaborate playlist tool and certainly don’t have the luxury of a listening team. I came across many other ways to discover new music and have my own recommendations as well.

Gatekeepers

First off, let me give my own favourite gatekeeper a nod of appreciation: MaryAnne Hobbs. I religiously listen to her New Music Fix on BBC6 Music. It’s a mix of an hour, and it’s always full of great music, some of it known to me and some of it new to me. My number one recent discovery through her New Music Fix is quest?onmarc, who’s crazy FACT Mix I recently highlighted in our newsletter. And while we’re in the BBC6 Music realm, there’s Gilles Peterson, who isn’t just a great gatekeeper, but who also opens up the worlds of other gatekeepers through Worldwide FM. My personal tip on Worldwide FM is Coco Maria, whose Wednesday morning show always brings new Latin-infused music to my ears. BB

Of course, MUSIC x has its own weekly nugget of great music in each newsletter. And we’re not the only one to bring to attention great music. First Floor, the weekly newsletter by Shawn Reynaldo, always has great tips in the electronic music/house/techno space.

In conversation with my students this week we touched upon Pitchfork, once my own go-to place for music discovery but I can’t remember the last time I read a review on their site. Other music recommendation engines that rose to prominence around the same time, at least for me, are still going strong, such as Hype Machine. I do feel, however, that many of these types of websites have lost some of their strength as gatekeepers as we’ve moved into a world more dominated by the endorsements of individuals.

And that leads me to the number one answer I got when asking a bunch of people how they discovered new music: through friends. Those close to you are your best gatekeepers apparently.

Lists and playlists

To get the obvious one out of the way: Discover Weekly by Spotify. I was briefly enthusiastic about this playlist when Spotify just launched it 5 years ago. However, I quickly grew tired of the choice of tracks that came into the playlist. That said, it got mentioned quite a bit in my Q&A’s the past couple of days.

I’m more inclined to follow playlists curated by people than algorithms. And if you’re into Drum & Bass music you’d do well to follow The Freshest Drum & Bass playlist on Spotify, curated by Simulate. It gets updated every week following the Friday releases.

If you’re so inclined you can also follow my own quarterly playlists where I collect new music upon its release, with a clear focus on albums over singles. The current one is, of course, 2021 – Q3. I trawl a lot newsletters and websites to find out about new releases but my first port of call is always the releases section of Album of the Year.

I’m not personally on Reddit, but I did hear the following two subreddits mentioned more than once: r/Music and r/listentothis. The latter one, especially, seems like an amalgamation of a lot of music I’ve never heard of. What’s more, the person who sat next to me on the train today was using it as I asked him how he discovers new music.

Labels

A great way to find new music is to find a label that releases consistently great music. Here’s some of my favourites:

Bedroom Community, founded by Valgeir Sigurðsson and home to the likes of Nico Muhly, Ben Frost, Heliochrysum, Mizzy Mazzoli, and many more.
Ilian Tape, founded by the Zenker Brothers and home to great techno and electronic music from Andrea, Skee Mask, Kas, and Stenny
Gondwana Records, founded by Matthew Halsall and home to one of my favourite current artists: Hania Rani. Besides the beautiful piano-based neo-classical music of Rani, they also have the singer-songwriter Caoilfhionn Rose and the, supposedly, jazztrio, but in essence much more leftfield, GoGo Penguin.
Warp Records, so many releases on this label have meant so much to me, from Aphex Twin to Squarepusher and from Battles to the most recent release by Nala Sinephro.
Tzadik, the label founded by John Zorn and home to all of this great projects such as Moonchild, Bar Kokhba, but also the Lunatic Fringe of Mike Pathos or the compositions of Lisa Bielawa.

Gaming

I’m not a massive gamer myself, but gaming soundtracks are a great gateway into new music. I’ve been struck, for example, by the DOOM OST, which is such a layered musical experience. Definitely something to enjoy beyond the game itself.

Another gaming soundtrack that veers heavily into the epic is that of Skyrim. The OST has it all, including the theme which sets the tone with its 30-strong choir.

Besides games, there are also labels that have a strong allegiance to gaming. The best example is Monstercat, who have actively pursued gaming partnerships, such as with Rocket League. These kinds of partnerships have two main advantages: 1) direct income in the form of synch licenses; 2) new audiences and increased plays on DSPs.

Video

The final part I want to dig into is video-based music discovery. There’s several examples out there of organisations who have established both an aesthetic and a sound. The first one people mention is COLORS with its bare aesthetic and sound it has found an audience of its own who will happily watch each new artist put on their screens.

Immediately following a mention of COLORS is NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. While a more cluttered aesthetic than COLORS, Tiny Desk brings another form of intimacy and has the benefit of audience feedback which you can always see the artists feed off of. My favourites are the ones where the band doesn’t really fit around the tiny desk, such as with Tank and the Bangas. Especially since they also switch it up in terms of performance to accommodate the setting.

Local radio channels in the US can have quite a big cultural impact and KEXP is one of them. Moreover, because they record awesome sessions with great artists. I’m not a fan of the lights in the studio but the sound is always so good. Brittany Howard is one example of an artist who seems to enjoy the studio-recording style setting.

How do you discover music?

Let me know via my Twitter or LinkedIn. Music recommendations are welcome too!

Radio, streaming services, social networks – everyone has their own way to discover new music. Meanwhile, there are dozens of entrepreneurs out there who believe they have a better way. Here are some of the best ones out there.

cmd.to fm

http://cmd.to/fm

cmd.to fm screenshot

How it describes itself: This is not your mothers radio. Listen awesome tunes from cmd.fm’s curated playlists.

How it works: It’s radio powered by a command-line interface. To keep it easy, it lets you click on the most essential commands. Player controls are activated by typed commands. All music appears to come from Soundcloud.

First impression: Fun! And I’m pretty sure this is how hackers listen to music. Does this make me a hacker?

MagicPlaylist

https://magicplaylist.co/

MagicPlaylist screenshot

How it describes itself: Get the playlist of your dreams based on a song.

How it works: You type the name of a song in a search box and it automatically generates a Spotify playlist with 30 other tracks.

First impression: It succeeds because it doesn’t let itself fail: generating a playlist from one track doesn’t create huge expectations, so it doesn’t disappoint. The playlists are not amazing, but it works as a quick way to pick a theme and have some music to listen to.

Cymbal

https://cymbal.fm/

How it describes itself: Discover songs the world is falling in love with.

How it works: Cymbal is a music social network that looks and feels a lot like Instagram.

First impression: Easy to use, because they make use of familiar interfaces. They make it easy to share content outside of the app, which is important in the early stages of social networks. Upon first try they really show you where the content is, so you immediately have something to check out. The onboarding process has too many steps and needs work. Ideally, you let people use the app ‘immediately’ and guide them through it, nudging them step by step to connect other accounts, etc.

As a social network, you need a certain critical mass to let users retain each other, so they should consider how to improve sharing the content outside the app in such a way that:

Users will use the app, even if their friends are not on there;
The content becomes so engaging that their friends will join.

trbble

https://trbble.com/

trbble screenshot

How it describes itself: Discover new music by listening to a song’s best part first!

How it works: trbble sources music from Soundcloud and lets users define the most important part of the song, so others can get a quick impression of it. This 30-second clip is then called a trbble. The playback and upvote count of your trbbles is displayed on your profile. So there’s an incentive for active users to provide music for passive users.

First impression: Found it hard to get used to the interface, but there’s a use case to explore. trbbles could perhaps provide a passive stream for DJs to listen through a lot of music, instead of actively skipping through tracks. I think conceptually it could be interesting, but needs to simplify its interface.

A Song a Day

http://www.asongaday.co/

A Song a Day screenshot

How it describes itself: Music from humans, not robots, delivered to your inbox every day. Because people are cool.

How it works: Give your email address, select which genres you like, and maybe select a curator. From that point you’ll receive new music recommendations, every day, in your inbox.

First impression: What I really like about the way it’s designed is that at every moment in the sign-up process, you can either give your preferences or say screw it, just send me some music. Simple and does what it says. I could imagine this having some growth potential.

Rising.fm

http://rising.fm/

Rising.fm Screenshot

How it describes itself: Music charts powered by Soundcloud.

How it works: It looks at data from “social media sites” and has a simple ranking algorithm to come up with charts. It’s basically an easy way to discover popular and trending music on Soundcloud.

First impression: Works well for the default tags and very popular search phrases, but if you go a bit more obscure, you get no results (eg. psytrance, goa). Even ‘trance’ returned just 6 results of which 3 were not trance. Perhaps it’s just not tracking the right blogs for that.

22tracks

http://22tracks.com/

22tracks screenshot

How it describes itself: 22tracks is a brilliantly curated playlist service, run by 120 expert and influential DJs from Amsterdam, Brussels, London and Paris.

How it works: The service appoints curators for genre-based playlists in each city. The curators are mostly local DJs, journalists, etc. with many being known within their scenes worldwide. Each playlist consists of 22 tracks and is updated regularly. You can save tracks to your own 22 track playlist.

First impression: Very cool concept, and so simple. They seem to monetize through brand partnerships, but I imagine they should be able to monetize part of their userbase at a low price point (between $1 and $4 per month) for additional mobile features like offline syncing, personalization, and perhaps exclusive premiers.

Chew.tv

https://chew.tv/

Chew.tv screenshot

How it describes itself: DJs everywhere. Right here.

How it works: DJs can livestream their DJ sets on the platform, but you can also rewatch sets later. You can find all kinds of electronic music on the site, basically: if you can imagine it, they’ve got it.

First impression: Fun. Takes me back to when I would put Boiler Room sets on my TV all day long. This is a bit more personal, as you can follow DJs and also engage with other listeners through the chat function. In terms of music discovery, it would be nice to have some type of dynamic tracklist, but having a phone with Shazam handy has done the trick for me so far. And else you can always just tweet a DJ to ask about that track you must find!

Check out my interview with Will Benton from Chew.tv.

Wonder

http://wonder.fm/

Wonder screenshot

How it describes itself: Wonder is a platform that simplifies indie music discovery — a place to hear what’s new as soon as it’s released.

How it works: Wonder uses some ranking mechanism to find trending tracks on Soundcloud and then presents 99 one of them to the user. Some research suggests that after the algorithms surface tracks, some human curation is involved.

First impression: Wonder is a great way to find hot new tracks before they make it to the charts. I personally enjoy Primary and Whitelabel off-shoots more, which represent hiphop and dance music respectively. Very high quality tunes. Throw out your radio.

Muru

http://murumusic.com/

Muru screenshot

How it describes itself: Create your own music journey.

How it works: You pick a genre as departure point, another genre of where you want to go and then the app creates a playlist that builds from the former to the latter. You can adjust the tempo, energy, popularity, and vocal-drivenness of the tracks in your playlist, as well as the length of the playlist.

First impression: There’s quite a bit of work to be done. For one, it’s currently iOS-only, and you have to connect to Spotify. The authorisation process is a bit of a pain in the butt when first launching the app, especially if you just want to try it. I’d move the ‘Connect to Spotify’ step to after playlist creation. That way you already have commitment from the user. To avoid disappointment, the necessity for Spotify should be communicated upon launch. I also wasn’t able to find the genres I prefer, because they’re not available in the app yet.

There’s plus points too: the app’s design is neat and the playlists it creates are interesting. This is in part by the concept of genre journeys: you immediately start to wonder how the app is going to transition from Blues to EDM.

Tag: music discovery

10 Lesser-Known Tools for Music Discovery