[r1b]

Outlier here (musician, spend hours per week trying to find new music) - some thoughts:

- The search space for music is really large and noisy. Most of the stuff out there isn’t very good, and the stuff that is good isn’t always discoverable with a single strategy - The best strategies almost always exploit human connections

Some strategies I use:

- Spatial locality, who is performing with or near artists that I like? - Publishing locality, who is on the same label as an artist that I like? - Artist locality, what other projects has an artist I like contributed to? - Fan locality, what other artists does a fan of an artist that I like enjoy?

——

Note that none of these strategies are as effective as “relinquish control”. For example, there is a freeform radio station near me that I listen to all day at work. I have a rule that I won’t turn the radio off in the middle of a DJs set, even if I don’t like a song. This has helped me “break through” to interesting artists I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.

To the article’s question, I think the main factor here doesn’t have much to do with music. Cultural production has exploded, and it’s really hard to navigate any cultural space in a non-obsessive way.

I thought it was interesting that the effect of “generational preference for music released when teenaged” seemed to wane around Gen Z. I wonder if this is just exhaustion, perhaps with tendencies towards pastiche as a consequence.

[goosejuice]

How deep are you digging that you can say most that is out there isn't good? I find this surprising. Or do you mean good as in to your liking? The amount of talent out there is kind of mind blowing to me.

Is this within a narrow genre?

[r1b]

This mostly an assessment at scale. By volume, irrespective of genre, and even accounting for subjectivity, most of the material that gets published isn’t very good.

That being said, I generally don’t agree with conclusions like “culture is frozen”. You are correct that there is _more_ high quality material available than ever before. The challenge is just that it’s harder than ever to find it.

[dudefeliciano]

> there is a freeform radio station near me

do you have any suggestions for similar online radio stations or playlists?

[hmm37]

You can try some college radio e.g. some smaller colleges in WA, or U. Mich radio station. But for freeform, I think in the US at least WFMU is considered the best. https://wfmu.org/

Davide of MIMIC Radio is good for classical music, as it's pretty much the only one I know that usually plays a whole classical music piece, and not a single movement, etc. and it's high bitrate as well.

[r1b]

WFMU is indeed the one I’m referring to here :)

To get the freeform format with newer, “shinier”, and often more electronic sounding music, I also like NTS.

[Jipazgqmnm]

- https://radioparadise.com/ (!)

- https://fip.fr

[shellfishgene]

Radio Paradise is really excellent, I think the name is kinda off-putting to people looking for good music though.