How I discover new music
Why care about music?
Listening to music that you deeply connect with is a spiritual experience. I'm not sure about the latest theories, but it seems like experiencing music taps into something fundamental in our biology, perhaps an evolutionary necessity, or maybe it's something spiritual. It seems as if we need music. And not only do we need music, but it appears that we benefit by having new experiences with music. In other words, finding new music that you connect with gives us something that we can't find anywhere else. But I have a problem...
Finding new music can be hard (for me)
I tend to listen to the same songs on repeat. I have acquired a decent amount of music over the years, so listening to the entire library on shuffle gives me enough variation that I don't get bored with it. But there's a difference between being entertained and having an experience. Maybe this is how my particular flavor of Autism manifests. I'm the same way with movies and TV: more often than not, I will watch or listen to the same things over and over again.
It could be because I put a high value on my time and I find it difficult to take a chance on content that could waste it. It could be because my mind is in survival mode, and I'm only looking for something that will entertain me or distract me from the current moment to survive until the next one. I find it a much easier to explore new things when I have some inner peace and mental space--yet another reason for applying the ideas in the Go touch grass post I wrote a few weeks ago. Check it out if you're interested.
All of this is to say that finding new music is essential for me, but it's also an incredible challenge. I have to make a specific effort to discover new music, otherwise I'll end up just listening to the same tracks over and over again.
But the effort is always worth it. There is nothing else in the world like experiencing a new song that causes you to feel and hear things you never thought existed before. So, how do I discover new music, then?
How I discover new music
Two problems need to be solved. First, how do I make it easier for me to take a chance on new music? And second, how do I go about finding new music?
Solving the first requires the most effort from me. I have to set aside specific time to listen to new music. And pairing music discovery with another activity makes it much easier for me. It's difficult for me to sit in one place and only listen to music. Pairing music discovery with some other activity makes it easier for me to take a chance on new things, because hey, I'm also doing something else I enjoy too. The risk of wasting my time becomes almost nonexistent.
I go out in nature every weekend morning to walk and meditate. I've found that a great time to listen to new music is on the way back from these walks. I'll walk and meditate out in nature as long as I need to, and I'll take the entire time on the way back to listen to new music.
I've also found that listening to new music while I do chess puzzles is a great time. There are other things that I do, but the point is to pair some other activity with listening.
Solving the second problem is a bit easier. The most obvious way to discover new music is to use a streaming service with a recommendation algorithm. I happen to care a great deal about audio quality and have iOS devices, so naturally, I use Apple Music because it streams lossless/high-res audio files. There is an app on Windows that allows for high-res streaming but I don't think there's one with this capability that runs on Unix/Linux (kill me).
Apple Music has a discover station that helps you do just that: discover, but particularly I like the New Music Mix playlist. It's a playlist created every Friday that contains recently released music from artists you already listen to and new artists that the algorithm thinks you'll like.
But the problem with music recommendation algorithms (at least the ones I've used) is twofold:
- The recommendations tend to pigeonhole me into one or a few specific genres. The ML model finds that you like a genre, so it feeds you that genre, and then you keep telling the model that you like it, so it feeds you more of it. It's a cycle that seems to narrow the type of music you listen to rather than expand it.
- I feel that I lose the connection with everything surrounding the music when I'm spoon-fed recommendations. I used to know the names of albums and feel connected to the artists because I had to put in effort to find them.
Both of these problems lead me to believe that organic music discovery is much better than algorithmic recommendation. I find a wider variety of genres and feel more connected to the music when I look for it myself.
I've also found that often--but not always--the producer has more to do with the general vibe of a track than the artist. The artists can be more like performers than music creators, though plenty of artists do produce their music; it's not a perfect pattern. The point is that I can leverage this fact to find new music that I like. I'll look at who produces a track I like and look for other tracks with the same producers. I've discovered some great stuff by paying attention to producers.
I'm sure there are a lot of other things that I could do to find great music. I'm open to suggestions.
How do you do it? Is finding new music difficult for you too? Email me if you want to talk about this some more.
-Mitt
amittengames@gmail.com