The Best Ways to Discover New Music
Tons of great music is out there. You just have to know how to find it.
I’ve had dozens of conversations in recent weeks with people who fall into one of two camps: there are those who say there is just no good music anymore, versus those who don’t embrace the “they don’t make music like they used to” argument, but who simply don’t know how to actually find new music that suits their tastes.
It’s far too easy to become complacent when it comes to music, boxing yourself in to what you already know, and failing to venture out of your comfort zone in search of something new. I get it because I’ve been there too.
Have no doubt, there is most certainly an abundance of great music still being made.
As a matter of fact, there’s now more music being released on a daily basis than any of us could possibly consume within our lifetimes. In the last fourty years, our global population has doubled, and so based off of the numbers alone, we can infer that more people are making music today than ever before in the history of the world.
The odds are in our favor that a tremendous amount of that new music is indeed going to resonate with our unique personal preferences. Make no mistake: discovering new music takes some effort on our part, but the math tells us that the music we want to find is out there—it’s just a matter of knowing where to look.
That’s where this helpful guide comes in…
Streaming Platforms
We begin with the most obvious, if not the most ubiquitous discovery tool: music streaming platforms.
These days nearly everyone, even the most die-hard vinyl collectors, maintain an account on at least one music streaming platform. Here’s a quick breakdown on the top ten platforms and the number of active users on each:
Spotify: ~550 million active users (of which ~220 million are paying subscribers)
Apple Music: ~100 million subscribers
Amazon Music: ~85 million users (including Prime subscribers)
YouTube Music: ~80 million subscribers (including YouTube Premium)
SoundCloud: ~76 million active users
Pandora: ~50 million users (mostly free users)
Deezer: ~16 million users
Tidal: ~5 million subscribers
Qobuz: ~1-2 million subscribers
Bandcamp: Bandcamp doesn’t release specific user numbers, but it remains a major platform for indie music sales and streaming.
For the purposes of this article, and for the fact that they are arguably the best of the bunch, we’re going to focus on the top two: Spotify and Apple Music, each boasting the same approximate number of available songs—around 100 million.
Spotify
It’s my opinion that the streaming platform with the most active users is also the best in terms of features. In this case, after having personally tried out each of the top ten platforms, my conclusion is that Spotify offers the best tools for new music discovery.
Release Radar: For starters, the Release Radar and the What’s New section in Spotify is, hands down, unparalleled in terms of surfacing newly released music by the artists you follow. Neither Apple Music nor any of the other streaming platforms offer the same level of comprehensive listings for all new music releases from the artists you already listen to. This makes it effortless to remain on top of new music releases every week.
Discover Weekly: Any Spotify user’s first stop in the search for new music should be the Discover Weekly playlist, a personalized, algorithm-driven playlist that updates every Monday, offering users a curated selection of around 30 songs specifically tailored to each listener's unique tastes. This playlist uses data from each user’s listening habits, liked songs, playlists, and the behavior of similar users to suggest new tracks. It’s perhaps the most powerfully accurate tool for music discovery, if for no other reason than the work of finding this new music is done for you automatically.
Artist Pages: Artist pages on Spotify are little goldmines. Every artist’s page on Spotify offers a number of ways to find music similar to that artist. Look up your favorite artists and scroll down their page to see sections like “Fans Also Like” which is a listing of similar artists, or “Appears On” which is a selection of different playlists on which that artists’s music appears alongside other similar music. The same goes for the “Discovered On” playlists. Both of these playlist sets are great for discovering music with a similar vibe. Depending on the artist, they may have also created “Artist Playlists” which are curated collections of songs that either highlight the artist’s own discography or often include songs from other artists that they enjoy or are inspired by. Most artist pages also have a “Featuring” section showing public playlists on which that artist is featured, and often those playlists contain tons of similar artists.
Playlists: Of course, the lifeblood that flows through the heart of Spotify are the millions of user-generated playlists. Browsing the search page on Spotify reveals thousands upon thousands of curated playlists broken down by various categories like genre or mood. This is the deepest rabbit hole you’ll go down when searching for new music because the playlist options are virtually limitless. Want an indie rock playlist? Pfft. That’s easy. How about a “relaxed bossa nova for dinner vibes” playlist? You’ll probably find dozens of those. Get creative and specific in yoru searches. More often than not, you’ll be plesantly surprised. Users have created playlists for every genre, sub-genre, mood, sub-mood, season, activity, or environment you can possibly imagine. One could easily spend the rest of their life exploring Spotify playlists and never run out of new music to discover.
Lastly, with regard to Spotify playlists, if you scroll to the bottom of any playlist, be it one of yours or someone else’s, you’ll see a list of “Recommended” songs which are algorithmically chosen to fit well with the songs already on that playlist.
Song Radio: Right-click on any song, select Go To Song Radio, and Spotify will generate a playlist of 50 songs similar to the one you chose, but comprised of various artists in the same or similar genre.
Follow Other Users: Lastly, there is the social component of Spotify which allows you to follow your friends (or complete strangers.) This can be a powerful way to discover their shared playlists and see what they’re listening to. You can also see who they are following and discover other users and other artists that way.
Spotify alone offers nearly a dozen uniquely distinct ways to discover new music, and as you build a library, listen to music, add songs to your “Liked” playlist or any other playlist, you are actively training the algorithm which will, in turn, reward you with so many great music suggestions you’ll soon have more to listen to than you have the time for. That, in my opinion, is a good problem to have.
Apple Music
With Apple Music on every iPhone and hard-baked into the operating system itself, it’s an obvious choice for most Apple users. While not nearly as feature-rich as Spotify in terms of discovery tools, Apple Music does boast better audio quality (at least as of the time of this writing. Where’s that hifi audio you’ve been promising for years now, Spotify?)
New Music Mix: Found on your Apple Music homepage, this is sort of a combination of Spotify’s Release Radar and the Discover Weekly playlist. Apple Music’s New Music Mix contains new music from artists they think you’ll like based on the music you listen to. There will be a few artists on the list you already know, but many new ones you don’t. The mix is comprised of 25 songs, refreshed every Friday when most new music is released.
Discovery Station: Aptly named, Discovery Station is one of the best tools for discovering new music that Apple Music offers, and unlike a playlist which is finite, Discovery Station has no play limits. It’ll just keep feeding you new music based off what it thinks you like until you manually stop listening.
Artist Pages: Similar to Spotify, Apple Music artist pages offer Artist Playlists which often include songs from other artists that the artist likes or is inspired by. At the bottom of each artist’s page are a list of Similar Artists to browse through which can often surface other music you might like.
Radio Stations: Right-click any song, select Create Station, and Apple Music will begin playing similar artists. One way that Spotify bests Apple with this feature is that Spotify shows you the playlist which makes up the “station” you just created so you can see who is on it and what’s coming up next—with Apple Music, this information is obscured so it leaves you guessing about what’s in the play queue, though the play queue is unlimited and will keep going indefinitely.
Follow Other Users: Again, like Spotify, you can follow other users on Apple Music to see their playlists as well as the other users they are following. Unlike Spotify, Apple Music only shows you the users someone is following. At the time of this writing, it does not show you the artists someone follows.
Bandcamp & SoundCloud
I do want to mention both Bandcamp and Soundcloud here since both sites are helpful for discovering a wide variety of independent artists, both established and emerging, and the importance of that cannot be overstated.
The homepages of both sites feature a number of discovery options. Bandcamp lets you filter based on genre and other criteria such as best-sellers, new arrivals, or artist recommended releases which is incredibly useful. Bandcamp also offers Bandcamp Radio, a streaming feature similar to Spotify and Apple Music, that surfaces music curated by the editorial team (or sometimes guest hosts) and often highlights specific genres or themes.
SoundCloud offers no such radio feature at this time, but the SoundCloud homepage is like one big discovery engine with various charts, trends, and recommended artists shown based off who you already follow on the platform.
Note: It should go without saying that you’ll need to spend some time following artists on any streaming platform before that platform’s recommendation engine can function properly for you.
Substack
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that a large part of what Zappagram does is offer weekly opportunites for new music discovery. The primary way I do this is via the Weekly Playlist included in every newsletter on which I include at least ten new songs I think you should hear. There is also a Master Playlist that contains all of the music I’ve ever featured in the weekly playlists, all combined into one very long mix. In addition to these playlists, I also feature album reviews and various recommendations in the Z-Rex section, so be sure to subscribe and check those out each week.
I also can’t fail to mention all of the other insanely talented music writers in the Substack community who also offer up great music recommendations on a daily basis. As there are too many to mention here, I’ll direct you to the Zappagram homepage for a list of Recommendations of other great music writers on Substack. I wholeheartedly endorse everyone on that list and encourage you to check out their work and subscribe to their newsletters.
Social Media
With social media you get out of it what you put into it, and in the case of music discovery, I’ve found that the more you feed your interests into the algorithm, the more you will be rewarded with relevant music recommendations. This is particularly true on video-based platforms like TikTok and YouTube, but I’ve also found it to work on Instagram and Threads. Follow all of your favorite artists. See who they are following. Maybe follow them too. Once you’ve done this for a while and have trained the algorithm, each platform begins to suggest similar artists usually in the form of suggested or promoted posts. I’ve discovered a ton of new music this way.
In addition to this method, there are also tons of music-based content creators who put out videos in the “if you like this artist, then you’ll also like these artists” format which I find quite helpful.
TikTok: Accounts that offer tons of great music recommendation content include @fuegostine, @amandasplaylist, @elenas_favs, discoveringartists.irl, and dandiscoversmusic. I’ve discovered dozens, if not hundreds, of artists by way of these extremely talented and knowledgable creators.
YouTube: There are tons of music-related creators on YouTube who are great for music reviews and recommendations like Derrick Gee, Kelsie at The Yellow Button, Professor Skye’s Record Reviews, Anthony Fantano’s TheNeedleDrop channel (as well as his secondary Fantano channel,) KEXP, KCRW, Amoeba’s “What’s In My Bag” (one of my favorites.) Another of my top picks is Oliver Kemp’s Deep Cuts, not just good for discovering music that’s new to you, but for intense deep dives into various artist’s catalogs. (Oliver has gone on hiatus for now, but his channel still has dozens of incredibly well-researched and well-produced videos.)
Reddit: Try subreddits like r/indieheads or r/listentothis are great for finding new music recs, though I tend to prefer the former to the latter. You can also search Google for the phrase: “reddit bands who sound like XYZ” or “reddit more artists like XYZ” and find tons of great Reddit threads full of suggestions scattered throughout the site on various artist and genre subreddits.
Opening Acts
This is one a lot of people don’t think about. Check the websites of your local concert venues, or sites like SongKick, to find out what bands are playing as opening acts for the artists you like who are on tour. Odds are if you like a band, whoever they booked to open for them will be someone you’ll also like also.
I discovered someone who instantly became one of my favorite artists of all time when I saw that an artist named Butch Bastard was opening for another one of my favorite artists of all time, Father John Misty.
Research Your Favs
Google your favorite artist or band followed by the word “interview.” Ideally, you’ll find press that will not only give you more info on that artist, but on who inspired them musically. Admittedly, this requires some research on your part, but an even easier way to find out who your favorite artist listens to is via Amoeba Record’s “What’s In My Bag” YouTube series where they invite an artist into the store, let them shop for records, and then interview them afterwards about the records they chose and why they chose them. This is my #1 go-to method for finding out who my favorite artist’s favorite artists are.
Music Publications
There are tons of great online music publications; from the big ones you probably know like Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Spin, Stereogum, NME, Consequence, and Paste, to smaller, independent ones like Fluxblog, Aquarium Drunkard, Brooklyn Vegan, and Treblezine. All of them feature album reviews, some feature live show reviews, and this is how I get turned on to a lot of new music, especially from emerging artists I would not have otherwise heard of. Naturally, the larger publications tend to cover more of the artists who are already signed to labels, while the smaller pubs lean more heavily on promoting undiscovered indie artists, but occasionally, you will discover some good emerging artists on the larger pubs.
Cross-Referencing
Any serious music lover knows about Discogs, the online database and marketplace for music enthusiasts, primarily focused on cataloging physical music releases such as vinyl records, CDs, and cassettes. On Discogs, you can look up any album and see the credits for that album which typically include the musicians that played on the record, but also the engineering team behind it. See who produced or engineered the album. Click their name, go to their profile, and click on “credits” to see what other albums they’ve produced by other artists. This is a lesser-known trick, but one that I’ve found to be incredibly useful in the search for new music.
College Radio
College radio specifically—not sucky corporate-owned mainstream radio—typically plays an extremely diverse selection of music from a wide range of genres. College stations often focus on promoting independent, underground, and local artists who don’t get airtime on commercial radio (this is a good thing.) As a result, listeners get exposed to unique and eclectic artists they simply won’t hear anywhere else. If you don’t have any good college stations in your area, you can check out Campus.fm which let’s you listen online to college radio stations from all over the country, no matter where you are.
Explore Film/TV Soundtracks
Most film soundtracks and many TV show soundtracks are available on the major streaming platforms. For those that are not available to stream as an official release, there are typically users who have compiled a playlist comprised of all the songs on the orginal soundtrack.
Case in point, the official release of the original soundtrack for Pulp Fiction is not available on Spotify, but a user has gathered the songs from the soundtrack into a publicly available playlist. I once compiled a playlist of every song used in the TV show Lucifer. That’s 515 songs (30+ hours of music) and it took some work, but now it’s available for others to enjoy the vast mix of devilishly good music featured in that show. “Fame” by Bowie in the same list as “Sinnerman” by Nina Simone? Yes, please!
Recommendation Websites
Though not as relevant as it once was, Last.fm can still help you discover new artists similar to ones you already like. The same goes for sites like Hype Machine, Indie Shuffle, and Rate Your Music which are all good for finding highly recommended music. While newer services dominate the streaming space, these sites still serve as valuable tools for exploring niche and independent music scenes.
Another tool which can be fun to use is Music Map which let’s you search for a band or artist you like and then it sort of explodes with a mind-map-style constellation of similar artists. You can keep clicking and drilling down, going down an endless rabbit hole that’s guaranteed to surface artists and bands you’ve never heard of. Keep in mind, this will only give you the names of similar bands or artists—you’ll still have to go look them up elsewhere on your own.
Local Record Stores
Never underestimate the power of walking into your local record store and talking to the person behind the counter. Be observant. Pay attention to what music is playing in the store, what’s up on the walls, what’s in the new arrivals bin. If someone works at a record shop, odds are that the only thing they love more than music is talking about music. These people are typically a wellspring of knowledge. Strike up a conversation. Ask questions. What have you got to lose?
If you aren’t already aware of where your local record stores are, and you have some aversion to using Google, you can try RecordStores.love to find all of the shops in your area.
Record Labels
Look up the labels your favorite artists or bands are signed to and see who else is on that label. I’ve discoverd tons of bands this way. Odds are if your favorite band was a good fit for that label, there are others you’ll appreciate too. For example, two of my favorite independent labels are SubPop and 4AD. In addition to regularly checking out their websites—which is probably the best option for discovery—I also follow their socials to stay updated on their roster of artists, as well as special announcements, tour updates, and exclusive content that isn’t found elsewhere.
Word of Mouth
Friends. You have some of those, right? Whether we’re talking friends you know personally or friends on social media, ask them what they’re listening to right now. This opens the door to deeper conversations about the music you love, and you just might discover your next favorite artist or band from someone whose opinion you already trust.
Another idea in this vein is to start a shared playlist on whatever streaming platform you and your friends are all on, and have everyone start adding songs to it. When collaborating on shared playlists, I’ve found the more, the merrier. It’s more fun (and, frankly, easier) to discover great music when several friends are adding music to a playlist at the same time. Maybe have one “everything goes” playlist where you and your friends add anything and everything, then collaborate on themed playlists—think dinner party, chill out, various holidays, etc.
Lastly, it is possible to share your personal Spotify Discover Weekly playlist with friends and they can share theirs with you. What better way to get to know someone’s musical taste and discover music that’s new to you than by letting Spotify do the heavy lifting for you?
Final Thoughts
As you can see, music lovers have countless ways to relieve the boredom of listening to the same music all the time, and though I’ve suggested as many methods as I could think of to help you in your quest for new tunes, I’m sure there are some ideas that I missed.
Please let me know in the comments if there are any methods you use for discovering new music that I didn’t include here, and let me know which of these methods I’ve outlined resonates most you. Which of these will you use the next time you’re on a quest for fresh sounds?
Discovering new music can be an art form in and of itself, but it should be an enjoyable process driven by the excitement that comes from finding that new band or artist that ignites a spark inside your soul.
Above all, remember to support the artists you love—both your longtime favorites and new discoveries—so they can keep making music, and so others can enjoy the same thrill of discovering new music that ultimately serves to inspire, comfort, and connect us all.
I have to include all of NPR's various music shows, podcasts, and email newsletters. I've found so much new music that way. In aggregate, maybe more than anywhere else. I do look forward to adding your suggestions to my search list.
This is exactly the kind of post I've thought of writing over the years - and you nailed it! Of course if I had written it, I would have recommended my podcast, Discover Music with AnEarful, which gives you monthly opportunities to find your next favorite artist across an unmatched range of genres (latest episode: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jeremy-shatan/episodes/Monthly-Listening-September-2024-e2p75q5). But, seriously, even if you only follow half of Chris's suggestions, you will find yourself being served an embarrassment of musical riches!