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226 points cloudfudge | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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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.

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1. rnkn ◴[] No.41885908[source]
I'm surprised at this. I find music discovery easy. Some tips:

On Bandcamp: in addition to obviously following artists I like, I follow several fan accounts of those artists, then I can see what they buy. I also try to sample the Bandcamp album of the day.

On NTS.live I have a bunch of favourite hosts and try to listen to every show they release, and note the track listing. Too many to ever get through.

Podcasts: NPR All Songs Considered, and Resident Advisor when I can.

On Apple Music there's the algorithm. Hit or miss.

Back in the heydays of music blogs I would find a lot of great stuff on Hype Machine, but alas, I think those days are gone.

Just with these few sources I find there is far too much great new music to get through in one lifetime. Godspeed!