←back to thread

226 points cloudfudge | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
freedomben ◴[] No.41882074[source]
I think this is great, but I do hope thought is being put into solving the hardest problem of all IMHO: Music Discovery

I have bought a lot on Bandcamp, but would have bought 10x more if I could just find stuff I liked. The existing system makes discovery nearly impossible unless you happen to like the stuff being mainly bought and curated or are in a lucky genre.

Discoverability is especially hard because 99% of the music people create sucks. This may not seem true if you mainly listen to "radio" and playlists, but if you ever get access to a large catalog of independent music, try picking stuff at pseudo-random and take notes. As much as I love good art (and I do), most art is not good art. You can't go on popularity because some of the great artists (especially on Bandcamp) are relatively unknown and therefore are not popular. For example, Thousand Needles in Red is a phenomenal band with great albums, and almost completely unknown. These Four Walls is similar (but at least they are on Youtube Music/Spotify/etc). I'd buy the crap out of similar albums, but discovering them is very challenging. I mainly found those two out of random luck.

Anyway I'm rambling, but I do hope you can figure out a good means for discovery. I think finding and grouping people with similar tastes is among the best ways, and also having artists that a person likes recommend other artists can be super valuable.

replies(13): >>41882220 #>>41882254 #>>41882413 #>>41882664 #>>41882844 #>>41882884 #>>41883148 #>>41884081 #>>41884158 #>>41884351 #>>41884652 #>>41885908 #>>41886016 #
1. pdntspa ◴[] No.41882254[source]
That's very simple...

a) Find good DJs playing music you like (YouTube is very helpful here, as is partying)

b) Listen to their sets

c) Shazam (or just trainspot) the tracks you like. (Shazam has a really nice integration with SPotify that dumps everything it IDs into a Spotify playlist)

I am a DJ and constantly on the hunt for new music, this is how I find most of it. No algorithms necessary!

replies(2): >>41882435 #>>41882533 #
2. ebiester ◴[] No.41882435[source]
That only works for a subset of music. It works well for electronica. It works less well for singer songwriters.
replies(1): >>41884126 #
3. freedomben ◴[] No.41882533[source]
Sorry for what's probably a stupid question, but how do you find DJs on Youtube? Do you literally just search for stuff like "Hard Rock DJ" and then start clicking through results?
replies(1): >>41887389 #
4. anigbrowl ◴[] No.41884126[source]
But there are so many channels that specialize in that sort of thing, NPR Tiny Desk being the most mainstream online curator. Also lyrics sites, if the singer-songwriter isn't completely marketing shy.
5. Ylpertnodi ◴[] No.41887389[source]
It's a limited field of one person, but John Peel (BBC dj) sure introduced me to so much. Never found anything like the show for making me realise how much music I was missing...so thought fuck it...can't listen to everything, so I won't bother trying. I write my own music for me. It's on a yt channel (no images), so if anyone does discover it all....it's yours. And everyone elses.