YouTube still works like that. I get maybe one or two AI recommendations a month and just click the “don’t show me this crap” button

I ditched YouTube Music and spent two weeks downloading all the albums I only had on there to my old iTunes folder which I stopped updating in 2018.
Now I can expand all the individual artist folders in Mac OS’ file browser to give me list of every album in my library, copy and paste that into an LLM (Deepseek in my case) and ask it for analysis and recommendation based on my taste.

It works incredibly well and lets me ask for specific recommendations for whatever I’m in the mood for. Same with movies. 10/10.

A mix of BBC radio 6 and recommendations from my cousin who works in the music industry. I can’t give you my cousin’s details, but radio 6 has a great range of music from some of the DJs.

Bamdcamp daily, people i follow on bandcamp, warez websites and features and collaborations

Bandcamp new and notable

Bands I like touring with other bands

Record labels I like put out new stuff

From shows I watch and games I play. I don’t really go out of my way to search for music. If I find something interesting, it’s usually on YouTube.

YouTube music is still pretty good for me, the canned playlists sometimes turn up good bands I’ve not heard of, and recommendations about as good as they ever were, not great but good.

But there is a community radio station here with a variety of shows, a couple are ‘alternative’ and those DJs have good taste and stay on top of new stuff.

Also opening bands at shows, and sometimes at yoga class, oddly.

I can recomend moderated Internet-/DAB-Radio like “egoFM”, “ParadiseRadio”, or “byteFM”.
https://feddit.org/post/16991458

Or Bands of Newcomerfestivals like “Ab geht die Lutzi”, “Tollwood”, or whatever is near to you.

Instead of YT you can use NewPipe, or freeTube, or a good add-blocker.

I do it by playing the long game.

Back in 2007 I embarked on a three year radio production degree, and the costs associated with that, all so I could start my own radio show 18 years later where I get people to suggest songs and I play them. And many of them I’ve never heard of.

spotify discover weekly. its been so finely tuned over the years that 90% of them are at least put in my liked playlist, and maybe 50% into my favorites playlist

i used to follow this “greatest _____ album” tournement thing on facebook, but stopped doing that because i dont use facebook anymore

you can also do the 1001albumsgenerator, which will give you a random album a day from the book “1001 albums you must hear before you die”

https://www.music-map.com/

You type in an artist and it gives you a visual map of related artists. The artist you searched for is in the middle and the further you go out from that, the less similar the artists are.

NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert is another one. You’re discovering artists at random but I’ve found some bangers that way.

YouTube, I go country by country, from period to period. I even have my own favourite medieval piece of music!

By purchasing new video games.

Like 90% of my tracks in Spotify are videogame soundtracks.

• Blogs/sites like Pitchfork for internationally hyped releases
• Smaller sites for more local content
• I check local calendars for release parties or concerts
• I talk with my colleagues.
• I go directly to labels that I trust and check out all of their new releases
• I stop by my local record stores and ask the staff for a couple of album recs
• I use the search functions of Bandcamp and follow a bunch of bands there
• Ditto for Soundcloud, where the reposts of independent artists are especially useful for discovering other bands and musicians.
• Recommendations from Qobuz or Spotify
• I have a couple of radio stations that I spend a few hours with each week, like fip.fr, local student radio, local insert political leanings radio

Spotify discover weekly has introduced me to some bangers, and their app has some really great features with a pretty deep library.

I know they suck in some ways, but overall I am pretty happy with their service.