For anyone in here enjoying radio, but not commercials or radio hosts, try out

soma.fm

It has a ton of channels and genres and is entirely free (donation funded).

I started dating a DJ

All of those and some others.

Ive also collected friends over the years with similar and dissimilar tastes that are excited to send me new music they find. This is the way I find most NEW music, as in stuff i hadn’t heard or known of before. The problem I have the most is getting stuck in these algorithm loops where even when i discover something new through say spotify or youtube the algorithm wants to tune a Playlist to what it thinks is what i enjoy instead of whats closest to that song or band or whatever. For this I have 2 friends I can simply text “algorithm breaker” and theyll send me something totally out of left feild that I will love. That usually does the trick for a day or two at least.

I’ll answer as well:

I mainly listen to what’s in my current library, using shuffle. When I want to discover new music, I typically look at artists of songs I currently like, and see If I like any of their other works.

Ignoring artists and songs in my current library: I mainly discover music from media I consume, such as games, movies, TV and web videos. If I like a song, I’ll look it up, and add it to a playlist based on a category (mainly genre). If a song has a album, I may look into the album as well.

Music venues. There’s 3 small places near me, so when I want to hear something new I’ll look up the bands on youtube, if I like it I’ll get a ticket to see 'em, plus the support acts.

Also I find indie labels are a good source of similar artists to ones I already like, e.g. Underdog Records

For my normal background playback I apply a random track shuffle across my entire library, with a delay on repeating each track by a month for each iteration of its play count.

If a track has not been played before, can be included in the list immediately.

If a track has been played 6 times, it can be included once 6 months have passed since its last play.

What do you do to find music?

I grew up in the 90s/00s, and my music taste developed by learning what that fun radio station my dad listened to in the car was, then starting tuning in myself.

After that, I started learning the song titles and artists, at that point I started pirating music.

Then I found pandora, it was available for free here at the time, so I put in some artists I liked, it suggested more music to listen to, one artist of which became my favorite artist, at the time you could just grab the MP3 playing in pandora from the web cache, so I got some more music for my collection.

Then over time stuff like this kept going and my music collection grew, then I got into C64 and Amiga remixes, and started listening to Slayradio (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), a free internet radio station of brilliant music that most of the time can be downloaded for free legally.

Then came the accidental purge…

I was trying to reinstall one of my computers, and forgot about the USB drive with the only copy of my entire music library (6000 songs) being plugged into the computer, and wiped everything ):

For a while I survived on Slayradio and what little music I had on my phone, but when I later got my first iPhone in 2016, I started buying tracks on iTunes, I still do that, DRM free, and decently simple to use.

Then I really started noticing going hard into switching between different genres and artists periodically.

There was a time I was obsessed by 90s eurodance, then 80s rock, then early 2000 trance, them suddenly classical and opera music, then back to trance, then folk music, after that, power metal, and so on.

I was completely obsessed by Sabaton in 2021 or so when I had double heel spurs, double flat feet and a bad knee at the same time, I dragged myself home crying from the pain in each step from the bus, while blasting Sabaton way too loud in my headphones just to get the energy to get home.

Then more trance, then 80s hair metal, and now I often blast the Command & Conquer sound tracks by Frank Klepacki, right now, Grinder from Red Alert 2 is the song I keep thinking of…

90% of the time I know what I want to listen to.

The other 10% of the time I will listen to new things I’ve squirreled away in my personal listening queue, because the art was interesting, I’ve heard good things, or I randomly heard a song I like. Sometimes recommendations from friends will make it into that queue.

Random mixes, not usually. I’m far too picky. But there are niche subgenre mixes that can be good.

There’s frankly far too much good music for me to even process.

I have a signal group called ‘music’ where friends post music, that alone would cover most of my needs.

I tend to either listen to albums or shuffle my whole library but like a bit of internet radio too.

I spent maybe 2yrs trying to deal with the cluterfuck of Spotify and it’s algorithms…kill it with fire. I have to deal with it at parties n stuff but helps me appreciate it’s not just my algorithm, those that love it and have been honing it for many years are being fed the same shite that came out of mine.

The idea that someone is struggling to find music that has an internet just seems insane to me, like saying how do you find porn, news or cat pics with computer.

There’s a lot of great indie music on the fedi, and places to listen to it:

https://nham.co.uk/ Radio

https://theindiebeat.fm/ (several radio channels)

https://tv.theindiebeat.fm/ (24/7 Fedi MTV)

And more : https://nham.co.uk/2025/06/how-do-i-connect-with-artists-on-the-fediverse-cheat-sheet/

Currently? Two main sources: my kids and other media

So lots of songs found from soundtracks and background music on other videos. Which leads to artists I may or may not become a fan of.

Kids still go to shows and keep up with new releases, not sure how they find new stuff. They are grown and out of the house.

I usually listen to what i’m currently listening to, then just let the algorithm take the wheel. If there’s one song that i like, i will check out the artist and usually the artist will have multiple genre, which then the algorithm will recommend collections of song from that genre.

I’m using YT music, and if you let the queue run long enough, occasionally a different genre will pops up due to the artist you listened to, then i’ll just again branch out here.

Game and movie soundtrack also helps branch out a lot.

When I was younger it was Pandora. I’d listen to Pandora channels and if I heard something new I’d grab the artists discography off limewire. Go through and see what I liked. Sometimes I’d see who opened live for the artists I really liked then listen to them too. Now that I can afford to support artists I try to by buying physical media. I swap it with friends. I have 3 buddies I do this with. Every month or so we trade an album or two.

Most of the time a song just starts playing in my head and I listen to it when I have time. Other times I rifle through my memories of the music I love and find one that I like to listen too, sort of like a radio. So, no to all of that.

When I started writing this Radiohead started playing. heh.

I listen from my own library on Plex. Currently I go alphabetically and add albums with 0 plays on my queue. Once I’ve listened to them all, I will use a smart list that populates from songs that are not played in last 90 days to keep it fresh.