Discovering new music
Is the human recommendation still king?
This tweet reminded me that it’s been 10 years since I posted on here in a piece called Crowd sourcing your music discovery about being content relying on blogs and fellow humans for those music & playlist recommendations.
I’m wondering is this still the case, do people still care about discovering new music? Do humans still have a place in music curation or has AI already taken over?
Since 2014, I have been finding recommendations by checking out newsletters dedicated to music playlists, (which have basically replaced personal music blogs) and most recently I came across Deep Voices. I particularly liked the 100th edition because of the reader submissions:
To celebrate the 100th edition of Deep Voices, I invited readers to send in a song they think is under-loved. This week’s playlist is made up of those songs.
And this is the beauty of the human recommendation:
This is the stuff my musical dreams are made of: a discovery of what was there all along.
Another newsletter worth checking out is a weekly playlist from Ghostly record founder Sam Valentini IV, called Herb Sundays with guest curators which he has been running for the last few years.
I still read music articles, Bandcamp Daily and occasionally buy a physical music magazine such as Mojo or Uncut, depending on the featured artists. Film/TV Soundtracks and documentaries such as Other Music can still offer up something special too.
It was this prompt from their Top Sellers list and their championing of Scottish indie favourites Belle and Sebastian, that encouraged me to go back and take another listen to the band. I have since began to collect their discography on vinyl after falling for their “If You’re Feeling Sinister” album via the track ‘The stars of track and field’, their music holds up very well!
I was always interested in finding out a bit more context and I still enjoy discovering great music at random, whether it’s a new release or an old nugget resurfaced, but I especially like when bands recommend other acts to check out or another human goes to the effort of blogging, writing or posting something about an act rather than an algorithm suggested it.
An example of this would be Cymande, a 70s British funk band whose debut self titled album was brought to my attention by one of my favourite Canadian acts, Broken Social Scene when they shared a playlist featuring the track ‘One more’. It would take some time for an algorithm to surface a nugget like that, if ever.
AI’s Impact on Music Discovery
If you are a fan of If you like this, then that, an example of which is going into your favorite artists profile on YouTube or Spotify, where you’ll find related artists or artists with similar categorized music genre/style, you will enjoy using GNOD, the Global Network of Discovery created by Marek Gibney.
Gnod is a self-adapting system that learns about the outer world by asking its visitors what they like and what they don’t like. In this instance of Gnod all is about music. Gnod is kind of a search engine for music you don’t know about. It will ask you what music you like and then think about what you might like too.
GNOD offers a choice of discovery, using AI discover where it prompts you to enter 3 bands and offers up a suggestion of a band you might like based on those 3.
And the other option is Music Map, a visual linked graph, which prompts you to enter a band you like and it returns similar type bands by proximity in a visual representation where you can continue to traverse the genre.
The Most Serene Republic were a pleasant surprise discovery in one of my recent visits.
Other visual tools include searching by genre at Every noise at once created by former Spotify and Echonest employee glenn_mcdonald which includes a Spotify playlist for that genre:
And available on desktop, is Discover Quickly created by Aliza Aufrichtig and Edward Clement Lee, which once you provide Spotify credentials allows you to hover over a grid view of album covers and get a preview of each:
But more and more these days, what is being surfaced from the music tech community, is them proclaiming about a more immersive music discovery experiences for music lovers and reshaping music listening for fans.
As AI continues to evolve, so will its role in shaping the future of music discovery. With natural language processing and contextual understanding, AI-driven recommendation systems will become even more intuitive, offering users an immersive music exploration experience.
Spotify appear to be continuing to press ahead with it’s commitment and continued investment in AI as they declared their future of music discovery is with their “AI DJ”.
The more you listen and tell the DJ what you like (and don’t like!), the better its recommendations get. Think of it as the very best of Spotify’s personalisation — but as an AI DJ in your pocket.
Personally, I don’t want any “in-app” messages to encourage me to use Spotify’s AI DJ to play similar music. This is not the future I wanted, I still prefer self-directed or human curated music discovery. Their algorithmic effort reminds me of the passage from the The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
Human curation still exists
For someone who is from Generation X, I’m working against that feeling of an old man screaming at the clouds but exploring for new music on the web or Twitter/X just doesn’t make the new music discovery experience a pleasant one currently. It is beginning to feel like a bit like that It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia episode, where Dennis Orders a Boba Tea.
Discussing with Gen Z Members, I spoke to my now grown up children about how they look for new music and they informed me it is mostly through their TikTok feed where an ‘edit’ video they like if not labelled will make them go look up the lyrics to track down the song and artist, they then check out the artist on Spotify or Youtube. In this example, my daughter being a Doctor Who fan was drawn to this edit video and started to listen to more from DJO.
The BBC’s Later with Jools, is one of the few TV music shows that remain on air and worth watching. Currently the show is in series 64, and has been ongoing since 1992. I still watch it as Jools continues to have the ability to serve up a surprise offering through an eclectic curation of new solo and established artists, and bands from a wide range of genres. The most recent record I bought was the ‘Tangk’ record after this Idles performance on the show, without any algorithm assistance! (Idles weren’t new to me, but I viewed differently after this)
Another vinyl purchase example was a surprising record “Any Other City” from a Scottish band Life Without Buildings that I missed out on completely when first released in 2001, until I read something on it after Tiktok users were engrossed by it.
After streaming the album, this led me to buying it. Incidentally, on the Quietus music site on the 20th anniversary of ‘Any Other City’, Life Without Buildings talked about their short productive life and their incredibly long tail.
NPR’s All Songs Considered
Bob Boilen may have moved on from NPR’s All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts but his legacy continues, with the Tiny Desk Concert series still very much alive and their New music Friday offer a guide to new releases.
KEXP
Seattle’s KEXP excellent online radio is a terrific resource. They have In Our Headphones which offers a five song recommendations every Monday from KEXP’s DJs and also have a New Music Review each week. Their YouTube video channel is a great source for live performances to check out.
Closer to home, Dan Hegarty and his show The Alternative, along with his Twitter feed is always good to uncover something new while promoting new Irish and international debut albums.
But currently, my favourite YouTube channel and a great example of bands recommending other bands is from The Amoeba record store. “What’s in my bag” features artists going record shopping at Amoeba Music and discussing whats in their bag. It has been my most joyful music discovery journey providing some of the most truly unexpected finds from a whole range of genres and eras. After watching one of the older videos featuring Jason Mantzoukas, he was so good in Brooklyn Nine-Nine as Adrian Pimento, he had some great recommendations. I picked up the “Bark Your Head Off, Dog” album by Hop Along, after his pointer to the Philli band with Frances Quinlan on vocals. I never heard of them before that.
Other favourite artists episodes in season 16 include Makaya McCraven, The new Pornographers, tennis , drummer Dave Lombardo, and Built_2_Spill, who provided such a varied stellar list of recommendations:
- EERA — Reflection Of Youth (LP)
- Perla — Prism Bitch (LP)
- Fanny — Charity Ball (LP)
- Fanny — Fanny Hill (LP)
- DRCARLSONALBION — Gold [OST] (LP)
- Oruã — Romã (LP)
- X — Wild Gift (LP)
- Loma — Loma (LP)
- King Tubby — The Lost Midnight Rock Dubs Chapter 1 (LP)
- Scientist — Wins The World Cup (LP)
- Eddie Floyd — Knock On Wood (LP)
- Broadcast — Tender Buttons (LP)
- Various Artists — Rocksteady Fever (LP)
- H.E.R. — H.E.R. (LP)
- Esperanza Spalding — Emily’s D+Evolution (LP)
- The Sweet Inspirations — What The World Needs Now Is Love (LP)
- Rush — Starman Patch (MISC.)
- Takashi Kokubo & Andrea Esperti — Music For A Cosmic Garden (LP)
- Lady Wray — Piece Of Me (LP)
- Lee Fields — Sentimental Fool (LP)
Apple taste maker Zane Lowe offered up some worthwhile records to explore including a blast from the past in Big Country, who happened to be the first concert I attended in 1983 thanks to my older sister for the ticket, Thanks SIS!
There are some interesting points in this article from the The Art of Longevity podcast on the continued demise of music journalism, and while lamenting the loss of “the written word as the central focus”, I think the music fan rather than just acquiesce to the algorithmic suggestion must become their own music journalist and enjoy reading and researching albums on their own, discovering new and old music recommendations through other humans in whatever medium they can find!
