We live in an era of absurd musical abundance. Streaming services put the (in)complete history of recorded music at our fingertips, with sophisticated recommendation algorithms that promise to tailor us the perfect playlist. More than 100,000 new tracks are uploaded every day to platforms like Spotify, Apple Music or SoundCloud. As the hip-hop innovator Kool Keith put it in a 2020 interview: ‘There’s so much new music out there that it’s just too much for the average antique person.’ It can be too much for any person, antique or otherwise. We’re saturated, inundated with the stuff. But the problem isn’t just abundance: it’s what we do with the musical riches at our fingertips.
So, I have a spotify playlist of about a thousand songs that are my “favorites.” Of course, not everything there is amazing to me nor do I memorize the lyrics. It’s just what I play when I’m bored and don’t have anything in mind but I wanna listen to music.
My tip is the use youtube’s algorithm. I know a lot of people here hate that algorithm and for good reason but it is absurdly good at recommending music. Literally just play an artist you like, maybe one of their more niche songs or a song that’s a bit more unique and you’ll start getting recommendations for very similar music. It’s especially great at electronic music. I genuinely never would have found a lot of the artists I listen to without it. It would’ve just slipped into the void.
The community playlists on youtube music are hit-or-miss but I’ve legitimately discovered new music that I like on there.
For sure. YouTube also can auto generate mixes of you search for stuff enough.