Discovering new music without the algorithm

The first band that i would say that i discovered for myself would be First Aid Kit, and i discovered them because they were playing at a festival i was going to, and i was going through the line-up deciding who sounded interesting. I would read the descriptions and, if the sound appealed, search the artist on google play music. I discovered several bands and artists this way, including fleet foxes, neutral milk hotel, and the vaccines.

Some time later, i realised that i’m not just restricted to looking at the line-ups for festivals i attended. If a festival has a lot of music i like, or a particularly compelling side stage, it’s easy to find the line-up for different years. Furthermore, if i know i like an artist, i can find out what festivals they have performed at, and see who else is performing there. This is probably how i have discovered most of the music i enjoy.

A great thing about this method is that festival programmes often have nice designs, and you can see the evolution of the style and how they try to present themselves over time.

Even outside the realm of film nerds, many people have some association between directors and their aesthetics. Wes Anderson, Alfred Hitchcock, Tim Burton, Christopher Nolan, or Greta Gerwig’s names each set a different expectation. Outside of pop—and inside of it as well to a certain extent—the same is true of labels and producers. Many labels specialise in a particular kind of sound, and many producers like to work with artists with similar characteristics. So find an album you like and see who produced it and who released it. Find other collaborators and signed artists and give them a listen, see what you think.

When i say “word of mouth”, i don’t necessarily mean literally, but this is a great place to start. Find a friend and ask them their desert island discs. Listen, and never see them in the same light again.

But there are other ways to get recommendations from people. One of my favourites is last.fm, because it makes it easy to also look at labels and producers. I can see who scrobbled an artist recently, and look at what else they are listening to.

Another method similar to this is to ask bartenders or baristas what’s playing if you like a song you hear in a bar or a café. This tends to have a lower return rate, because most bars and cafés tend to play music you’ve probably already heard of, but there are some exceptions. This was how i discovered black midi, for example.

That covers the three main ways that i use to easily find music without using the spotify algorithm. These methods have a higher risk factor involved, as they are not so personalised to you. But i think they also have a higher reward factor, because in my experience the spotify algorithm tends to funnel you towards very safe bets, musically speaking. Although there are some bands that you may like, there is little variety between them. It could be personal, but i’ve found that if i like a band in a niche, although i may like other bands in that niche, i won’t listen to them as much as a band which is in a different niche, because my quota for that style of music is already filled by the first band. Now they could get displaced, but this style of listening to a variety of very similar bands likely works better in platforms like spotify where the focus is the playlist rather than the album.

There’s no right and no wrong way to listen to music, but with very little effort you can find lots of great bands by yourself. If that’s the sticking point stopping you from moving off spotify, give it a go. You might find your next favourite.