Guide on how to find new music

I’ve been meaning to share the methods I use to find new music for a while, so I decided to do now during the downtime. The guide is structured in sections to make it easy to skim through and read.

1. Identifying sub-genres: Knowing what kind of music you like and following up on that is a great starting point. The resources below should be sufficient and have example tracks as references.
   • Monstercat Fandom genres: The fans do a decent job with the categorization and descriptions, and each style has example songs you can listen to.
   • RateYourMusic genres: If you want to delve into specific sounds, RYM is an incredible site. Consider it as the IMDB or Letterboxd for music. Each sub-genre page showcases the most prominent albums ranked by community votes, user-generated lists (consisting of mostly popular songs) and the Hierarchy column on sidebar where you can niche further down. Songs or albums list the genres, so look up your favorite records and find relevant songs.
   • Ishkur and EveryNoise: I find them less user-friendly, quite opinionated and with lots of made-up genres, but worth listing nonetheless.
2. Live sets and radio shows
   • 1001Tracklists: A great way to find new music (and sometimes unreleased music) is by checking out festival sets and weekly DJ programs. 1001TL is an awesome database with lots of active contributors. This time around, DJs usually publish End-of-Year (EOY) mixes, so it’s worth having a look. An alternative website is MixesDB, mostly focused on techno and hard dance scene, and less feature-rich.
   • Podcast apps (MusicBee for Windows, PinePods for self-hosting, Pocket Casts for mobile): Usually when I travel or work long hours, I put on a radio show from my favorite DJs and note down songs I like based on the included playlist in episode description. For people new to electronic music, I’d probably suggest Friday BBC Radio 1's Essential Mix.
3. Digital music stores
   • Beatport + Crates.co: While many people may not like Beatport (higher prices, no file redownloads etc.), it is undeniably the biggest store with the largest catalogue. And paired with Crates, it becomes faster to navigate and more powerful.
   • To get the most out of Beatport:
     • follow or bookmark record labels
     • add tracks you like to the cart and check the suggestions (it’s actually quite good)
     • checking “People Also Bought” section in the single / EP / album release page
     • check labels’ yearbooks or monthly complications
     • search for #BeatportDecade lists.
   • To get the most out of Crates.co:
     • when playing tracks, check “Included on charts” section on the bottom left corner. DJs curate playlists that include the song you like and similar ones
     • when using crates to go through label’s catalogues or long compilations, consider using “Dig Deeper” option, checking “Hide Rereleases + Muted Tracks” and using shortcuts.
   • Juno Download: I think they do a splendid job with genre categorization. Juno Recommends playlists are awesome.
   • Traxsource: An alternative well-known storefront for house music, mostly minimal, chill and deep tunes (in my experience). “Featured” and “Spotlights” submenus are great tools to utilize.
   • Bandcamp: Using the site is such a pain in the ass, but it’s a treasure trove to finding music from independent artists. I have two methods of finding music there:
     • Using its Discover page. Pick the genre, use “Digital” as the category and play around with the filters.
     • On the album page, there is a “supported by” section. Click on supporters’ pictures and see what else they like. They won’t mind you stalking.
4. Streaming sites
   • Soundcloud
     • Recently, the platform added “Fans” section underneath the track’s waveform seekbar. Similarly to Bandcamp, click on top fans’ names and check their Likes and Playlists.
     • Follow curators and check your Feed from time to time. If you do it right, you literally have other people do all the work for you and just get a full page with only bangers.
   • YouTube
     • I have a personal channel dedicated to listening to music and nothing else. The algorithm is really good at identifying what you like and gives decent suggestions.
     • Add songs you like to your private playlists. At the bottom of the playlist, there is a “Recommended videos” section with similar songs.
     • Many DJs upload their live sets, bedroom mixes or on-road mixes (I may have seen the entire Germany thanks to Chris Luno’s car trips). Most of the video descriptions have Spotify links with played songs, which is relevant to the following section*.
     • Follow channels who upload specific types of music you like. Curators like MrDeepSense and UKF Dubstep etc. are probably some of the biggest and oldest ones around, but you will find smaller channels over time.
   • Spotify (or Apple Music): My least favorite method, as their algorithm is really bad (at least in my experience), but it has lots of user-curated playlists. What I sometimes do afterwards, I search the song in Crates and go on from there (check section 3).
     • As mentioned above*, DJs compile Spotify playlists for their YouTube mixes.
     • Search for moods or genres you like. You will find existing playlists based on your query. Alternatively, you can start with The Sounds of Spotify’s playlists.
     • Google “site:open.spotify.com/playlist <term>” and replace <term> with the genre, mood or details of what you seek.
5. Charts
   • Music news websites: Outlets occasionally post lists with new music, like Dancing Astronaut’s New Music Friday or Mixmag’s Best Of…
   • National charts: Many countries have record charts, which are updated on weekly basis. If you want to know what’s popular, you may consider them. I follow “The Official UK Charts - Dance Singles” and “Belgium's Ultratop Vlaanderen Charts”, but you can find more online.
6. Remixes: This should be obvious, but if you wish a song sounded different, search for remixes on YouTube or Soundcloud. Artists publish remixes and bootlegs with pop lyrics all the time, remix their own songs (VIP or acoustic versions) or exclude the vocals entirely from the track (Instrumental or Dub mixes). If you want to make a karaoke version or extract as acapella, you can use AI to separate stems from a track (with FL Studio, x-minus, Deezer Spleeter etc.).

Hope you find this useful and have fun digging. If you know more ways to find fresh tunes, feel free to share on comments.

Note: I had to remove all links because the post gets removed by Reddit’s filters. If you have trouble finding any of the listed content online, I'll try my best to share the links in comments.