Ask HN: How do you discover new music?

21 points by hemezh 11 years ago | 19 comments

I am planning to build an app for music discovery through curation of youtube videos. Although it can extend into discovery of videos but currently I am planning to go with music only.

Is music discovery still a problem? What's wrong with the current available solutions(if anything)?

mbrownnyc 11 years ago |

Yes, music discovery is still a problem. Take a look at the first iteration of Audio Galaxy, which I thought was the best possible music recommendation platform available. You'd have a client opened. Humans would join groups. Humans would push tracks to groups. This is how I discovered DJ Shadow, DJ Food, and several other artists back in the day (read: 2001) all because I was part of a trip-hop group. People would post discussion threads, organize, etc. There is a difference between computer recommendation services and human recommendation services... you know, soul... and I haven't found a single thing that's similar to that iteration of AudioGalaxy yet. Tomahawk does look promising.

I shudder when I wind up listening to Kaskade because I started an Astral Projection station on Pandora. Last.fm was a bit better, but just not the same as AudioGalaxy of yore. Algorithms don't push barriers and take risk (or at least do either "properly"); it's the exact opposite of what they're trying to do.

hemezh 11 years ago | |

I also feel that algorithm based recommendation services are not going to be better than humans at least for a long time. Algorithms can recommend related stuff well(?) but that's not enough as our tastes keep changing and as you said they don't take risk.

I am thinking of building a radio like service where the playlist is curated by people listening to it. Do you think it's worth building? Any other inputs you'd like to add?

neilsharma 11 years ago |

Youtube playlists / individually curated mashups.

Youtube is a horrible discovery platform, the audio quality is lousy, and bandwidth is wasted on video. But the sheer volume of content + remixes + covers make it worthwhile. I can't think of a single song in any language of any genre and from any point in time that's not on the site.

8Tracks.com does a good job with discovering hand-curated playlists using youtube as its source.

I have a very global taste in music, and change favorite genres every few months (after exhausting most everything I can get my hands on). Spotify does a decent job in some categories, but the lack of content (especially international and instrumental) kill it for me. Pandora's recommendation engine always eventually recommends the pop hits. Even piano my piano instrumental playlists end up with Katy Perry.

TheDom 11 years ago |

I discover new artists mostly through these ways:

* Media: When the name of an artist repeatedly pops up (on tour announcements, on music sites, on social media accounts of artists I follow,...) then I usually go check them out at some point. I also trust some sites with their reviews and listen to well rated records.

* Last.fm: I submit every track I listen to to Last.fm since 10 years (Over 100k "scrobbles" at this point) and therefore their recommendations for me are really good by now.

* Friends telling me to listen to something. With some friends I also exchange a "Best of 20XX" Spotify playlist at the end of the year.

Interestingly enough, I attended a few hundred live shows in my lifetime and it only happened very rarely that I became a fan of an artist I didn't know in advance.

ue_ 11 years ago |

I use 4chan.org/mu/; usually there are "chart" threads, in which people post large images filled with albums they enjoy. There are also threads in which 5x5 or 3x3 charts are posted.

nicolasd 11 years ago |

I discover new music with spotify playlists and this works really well for me now. But I've never tried an music recommendation or discovery app... so it could probably be better for me.

thebenedict 11 years ago | |

Same. I've had more success with Spotify's recommendations than other services I've used (most recently Pandora and 8tracks).

reucks 11 years ago |

Electronic music radio mixes/podcasts and DI.fm

If my tastes were less centralized and more mainstream, though, I'd be in trouble. The shareversizing economy has polluted most music discovery avenues into a wasteland of cash-grab garbage.

I guess the ideal solution to music discovery for me is excellent curation to tastes, with a tight filter on letting crap (or just too much content) in.

jpwright 11 years ago |

A combination of Pandora, Youtube playlists, Bandcamp (http://bandcamp.com/#discover), Pitchfork (http://pitchfork.com/best/), and /r/listentothis.

veeti 11 years ago | |

For the really lazy: https://www.reddit.com/r/listentothis

freetonik 11 years ago |

Mostly Spotify. I browse playlists and recommendations, and once I hear something I like I check the similar artists in Spotify.

Reddit also helps with subreddits like /r/music/, /r/listentothis and other subreddits (there is an extensive list of links in the sidebars of said subreddits).

gjmulhol 11 years ago |

Maybe this is terribly unindy, but I actually really value All Songs Considered on NPR. They have wide coverage, and I usually find a least a track or two each week that exposes me to an excellent new album that I would not have found otherwise.

I also share a Spotify playlist with a friend.

intopieces 11 years ago |

I frequent a private music tracker and use their related artists feature, as well as their top 10 list. For me, it is the purest, simplest form of discovery. Other services are too flashy, complicated, or ask for too much of my personal information.

cyberjunkie 11 years ago |

I quite like forums for recommendations. There are specific threads made for genres. One massive resource is http://www.head-fi.org/f/9/music.

joelanman 11 years ago |

I use radio mode on Google Music, and follow various people on SoundCloud

kalagan 11 years ago |

Hype Machine (http://hypem.com/) is trying to solve this problem by aggregating some music blogs.

computerjunkie 11 years ago |

Youtube for mainstream music and Soundcoud for upcoming/new/promising music.

killerpopiller 11 years ago |

there are sub-reddits for certain genres with best album of the month/year and lists of recommended bands often with videolinks to youtube-links or spotify-playlists for easy evaluation

MichaelCrawford 11 years ago |

I keep a text file open while listing to http://www.radioparadise.com/

They play quite a wide variety of music, however at times it's a little too head-banging for my taste.