[JonnieCache]

You can follow the musical graph manually, like people have always done.

Look for artists from the same label as artists you like, look for labels owned by the artists you like, look for artists that have appeared alongside them on compilations, look for compilations/mixes playlisted by them, look for other artists they've collaborated with in the past, look for reviews of records you like and see what other music they compare it to, look up old shows theyve done and see who else performed, look at other shows organized by the promoters of those shows, etc etc etc.

Never be afraid to listen to something just because you like the name or the cover. Also, it pays to check out any record that has the word "afro" in the title and/or a photo of the band standing in front of a spaceship. You can develop your own heuristics :)

http://discogs.com and http://allmusic.com are useful in this regard, as well as good old wikipedia, and reading the notes on the records themselves. And the great thing about spotify et al is that all this can be done in seconds, rather than years.

The big secret to knowing about good music: listening to a lot of shit music until you hit paydirt.