How to Find New Music You Really Like

Some people may be digging up great music like magic or have friends in the industry to keep them informed. Others are completely happy with their weekly Spotify Discover playlist. But if you need more ways to find music, here are some ideas from Twitter users, writers from all over Lifehacker publisher G / O Media Group’s sites, and my own habits. Some of them are obvious, some are strange, some are embarrassing, but they all helped people find a new favorite song or even a new favorite band.

Browse the lists of the “best”

Whether you are entering a new era or a new genre, or simply want to “make more music,” you may enjoy taking a tour of works that have already received critical acclaim. Consider this comprehensive list of famous songs and albums.

• Rolling Stone Magazine’s Top 500 Albums of All Time : Complement your knowledge of canon popular music with one of 2012’s most famous “Greatest Music” lists. This list is a mixture of music so popular it’s painfully clichéd, and important albums that you probably missed if you weren’t in the right generation.
• Pitchfork collects 100 or 200 best albums of each decade – 1960 – x , 1970s , 1980s , 1990s , 2000s and 2010s . Pitchfork digs a little deeper than Rolling Stone and cares a little less about the album’s massive appeal. If you’re looking to expand your playlists, the site has also been collecting ratings of the best songs of each year since 2006, and going back to the 1960s, it lists the best songs of the year by decade.
• Culture Blog Slog loves to tell you what Pitchfork missed .
• If you’ve noticed that most of these top lists focus on male artists, you’re not wrong. Check out NPR’s list of 150 Greatest Women Albums for a crash course you probably missed.
• AllMusic’s annual Best Album lists are beautifully presented, with album covers and concise descriptions that lead to a more in-depth review. AllMusic does not rank its lists, but breaks down the alphabetical lists by genre.
• Search for “best [genre]” and find a source you like. Pitchfork and Rolling Stone will appear many times, as well as NPR, Complex and Uproxx. But in the same way, there will be sites entirely dedicated to this genre, which will choose deeper and more distinctive abbreviations. (I’ve previously worked on 40 space rock albums from Q Magazine and 50 of Rolling Stone’s greatest prog rock albums .)
• Rate Your Music has over 40,000 user-created lists; scroll to the Popular Lists section (current top score: Please Sorry My Dark, Ambient Swag ) or browse the Ultimate Box Sets list , which brings together the best niche genres such as Belgian techno, neoclassical dark wave and mumble rap.
• “The 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die” : A stack of book that reviews all major albums from the 1950s to 2005. Discogs has a free list.

Follow Music Review Sites

If you find a site that suits your taste, great! If not, you can still use them, if only to keep an eye on what’s coming out this week.

• Metacritic Music collects mid-range critical reviews, so it’s a good starting point and shows what is causing controversy or general acceptance. From there, you’ll find review sites like these:
• “I check Pitchfork every morning to see what just came out; they publish 4-5 album reviews a day. I don’t actually read and don’t care too much about what they say. Pitchfork ratings are arbitrary! – Joel Kahn, Senior Video Producer, Lifehacker.
• Consequence of Sound uses a letter system for reviews and streams new tracks as they come out (sometimes before they hit Spotify or iTunes).
• Needledrop maintains a permanent “favorite list” of its new favorite songs. (via Peter Saz, Managing Director of GMG Hungary)

Rest of the Internet

The internet really wants you to listen to new music.