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> You can go on YouTube right now, search for any niche genre, and instantly access thousands of artists. And while that’s undeniably convenient, I do think it cheapens the experience.

I feel the opposite. Finding gems in all the trash and bland music streaming services have on offer does give the trill of the hunt. How is it better to send a money order and spend your time "just waiting" when you could be spending that time digging past whatever streaming services push at you and diving deeper.

Search for a genre on youtube and you get a bunch of artists. Search for those artists, find their channels, and check out the songs youtube's algorithm doesn't surface. You can still use recommendation services and websites outside of youtube and streaming services to get leads on good stuff to try. It's a whole lot more exciting than throwing cash into the void and hoping something good comes back at you.

I also don't understand the "you can't find anything that everyone else doesn't already know about" stuff. I love comparing playlists with friends and family because the massive amount of available music means that they always have music from artists that I've never even heard of before. If everyone knows about every song you're finding you aren't looking very hard. I don't really care much about being the first person to learn about a cool song or artist, but even on youtube I find good songs with very low view counts all the time. It doesn't make me feel special though. I kind of think it's frustrating and just think "Why don't more people know about this! This deserves more attention!"