4 ms·
Ask HN: how do you discover new music?
Well... the title says it all. Most of what I listen to came from hanging out with friends and parties, sometimes even from a car idling next to me in traffic. I guess that's called "old school" of acquiring personal taste in music. Very slow and time consuming.
I've tried using some social music sites too. Trying one out takes a lot of time and they usually end up recommending me what I already know and listen to (or used to listen). Or maybe I didn't use them right.
So, I'm wondering if there's something I haven't tried.
- iloveyouocean 18y agoThe Perceptron ( http://theperceptron.com http://theperceptron.com ) Search driven music recommendations. In my opinion, very high quality results. The Perceptron strives to make music recommendations based on the actual music rather than popularity/genre/etc.
- maryrosecook 18y agoThanks very much for the shout-out.
- mindviews 18y agoPandora (http://www.pandora.com/ http://www.pandora.com/) Create a station with a seed artist and then it suggests other music you might like. Rate each song played and pandora will refine the suggestions.
- teej 18y agoI love Pandora to death, but it is terrible at getting caught in local maxima - I've ended up with 8 stations that play the same 8 songs.
- mindviews 18y agoMaybe I do something unusual - I pick a completely random seed artist in an genre I don't usually listen to. Then I do the Pandora rating voodoo and before very long I've got a channel I like. I've had good luck finding new classical and jazz music this way. (Pop/Rock Top N I can get anywhere, and I haven't seen many indie bands on Pandora anyway.)
- dominik 18y agoI like using both Pandora and last.fm through PandoraFM: http://pandorafm.real-ity.com/ http://pandorafm.real-ity.com/ That way I get last.fm's recommendation to provide seed songs/artists for new Pandora stations.
- yan 18y agoI think The Hype Machine (http://hypem.com http://hypem.com) is what you're looking for. I always keep it open.
- JohnN 18y agothesixtyone.com - yc alums!
- bporterfield 18y agoIf you use iTunes, check out Genius. I only tried for the first time yesterday, but was amazed at the degree of interesting new music that matched my tastes.
- zupatol 18y agoI trust David Byrne. http://www.davidbyrne.com/radio/ http://www.davidbyrne.com/radio/ For some reason I stopped listening to new music around 1990. Recently I tried to find new stuff on the internet. I made my favorite discoveries on David Byrne's playlist. He posts a new playlist only once a month, but it's not always new music. I don't know much about how music evolved after the eighties. I hope David Byrne has followed this better than me. We may be both merely listening to new oldfashioned music.
- martythemaniak 18y agoallmusic.com and friends
- volida 18y agoisn't that one of the killer apps of youtube?
- villageidiot 18y agoNPR Music http://www.npr.org/music/ http://www.npr.org/music/ WNYC (New York Public Radio) http://www.wnyc.org/ http://www.wnyc.org/
- Tunecrew 18y agoI listen to online radio stations that play the genres I'm interested in- preferably ones that provide playlists or song titles. I find the various recommendation sites require work- with streaming radio i keep Stickies open, and just listen while I work- if I hear something I like I note it in Stickies then look for it later on.
- chris11 18y agoCherrypeel.com is decent. It's pretty much like a reddit for indie music. The music is submitted by the artists themselves, so unless you have heard a ton a of music, there will probably be something new there. I don't have an account, but I go there every now and then to hear some indie bands.
- rms 18y agoWaffles -- nothing comes close. I have two invites available right now: first two emails to me get them, unless I get requests from people that have previously asked that I was unable to fill. I ask that you only request the invite if you intend to really use it, not if you're just curious to check Waffles out.
- ddemchuk 18y agoI play my tunes through Winamp and have the Last.fm plugin installed so it uploads my track data for each song I listen to to the site...then the last.fm site recommends similar music based on what other stuff other people listen to who also listen to what I listen to... Works pretty well, but one day I would really like to do a mashup that better allows someone to start at a certain band and branch away to newer artists as they explore similar bands. Just not enough time in the day....
- mattdennewitz 18y agohuzzah for last.fm's rec engine. even with a wide spread of genres, it recommends very well. the configurable level of obscurity in the engine is pretty great, too.
- ddemchuk 18y agoagreed. I think it works so well because they didn't try to beat the system with crazy advanced prediction algorithms but instead just harnessed the listening habits and preferences of people who use the service. That's why I really want to work on a mashup of Last.fm, probably Seeqpod, and a link to a place to buy tracks if someone has that desire, all wrapped in a design I've thought of that I think would be pretty cool to use
- maryrosecook 18y agoI think that mashup already exists. last.fm lets you stream and buy tracks...
- mattdennewitz 18y agohow about generating mixtapes of recommended music w/ download links to itunes, emusic, etc? last.fm lets you play your recommendations, but you could use their api to get streamable tracks, mix in other music apis for recommendation QA or range, and maybe annotate entries w/ data from onellama (radio station api).
- rozim 18y agoAnyone remember Firefly from the late 90's? I got some great suggestions that I'm still listening to - B-Tribe I believe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(website) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(website)
- light3 18y agoIf you like classical try youtube and Nathan Milstein, not only a pleasure to listen to but also to watch.