Recommend a music recommendation tool

February 15, 2023 4:24 PM

I'm always on the hunt for new bands to listen to but find existing music recommendation engines (eg. Apple music similar artists) deficient for the following reason. The issue is that I am almost always recommended older well-known artists who were productive around the same time as the artist(s) I start with. But I want to find new music from new artists.

My listening preferences are heavily weighted towards bands I listened to a lot 20 years ago (if you need some examples: Radiohead, Dinosaur Jr., Pavement, the Pixies, the Smiths, the Cure etc...).

posted by piyushnz to Media & Arts (14 answers total)

I've had pretty decent luck with YouTube Music. If I start a radio station based on a song or just have it play a supermix for me it will inevitably give me some new music that I wouldn't have heard about otherwise. Last year the two notable examples it got me into were Idles and Kevin Morby but it somehow recommended a song from some small Mexican band that was pretty damn good even if I can't understand what they're singing. This year it's introduced me to Jonathan Bree. The majority of stuff it plays will be more tied into whatever else I'm listening to or the initial song the radio station is based on but it will include other, newer stuff in there too. Of course I do listen to a lot of music on it so maybe it isn't recommending all that much but just a small amount over a long time becomes sizable in itself (everything counts in large amounts).
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:33 PM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I listen to Indie Pop Rocks on Soma FM and find new artists. The channel has a mix of the newest of the new indie, along with some of the artists you list as already liking.
posted by ralan at 4:33 PM on February 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

How about a simple tool? WXPN and its playlists.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:44 PM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I suggest the podcast Sound Opinions. The two critics regularly review and interview new bands and musicians but also deep dive into older albums and interview well-established acts. I’ve discovered many new artists and learnt a lot about acts I thought I knew well.
posted by smyles at 5:09 PM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Based on your taste, I'd suggest listening to The Morning Show with John Richardson on KEXP. He's long been a source of new (and new to me) music for me.
posted by synecdoche at 5:39 PM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: hey all, I appreciate the responses so far. Perhaps I didn't make the question sufficiently clear - I am specifically looking for some sort of tool or website where I can plug in some bands I like listening to and I get an automatically generated list of new music that I might like? I know there are plenty of tools like this (eg. Gnoosic) but I was hoping there would be some fancy deep learning tool by now that does a better job, based perhaps on features of the music itself.

Having said that, keep the recommendations for shows or websites coming. Note that the list of bands I provided was really just an example and my listening tastes are much more varied across genres and does include artists from the last five years
posted by piyushnz at 5:47 PM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Every Noise at Once

Not exactly a recommendation engine exactly, but you put in an artist, and it will show you the genres, and then a list of artists common to that genre. It's a seriously deep dive. You still have to find the bands yourself, but they are listed, and you can click on a band name to get a short sample.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:03 PM on February 15, 2023 [6 favorites]

Tiktok-wise, depending on what you like, the account @timourousme does a feature called "New bands for old heads" and she does it by style - and usually focuses on people who stopped discovering new music in the 90s - so she often has lots of great new recommendations.

It's so frustrating to me that Spotify can't just do this. I absolutely hate when it does the little playlist radio thing after you listen to an album and only recommends bands of roughly the same era. I wish you could set it for, like, fuzziness of relationship to feed you music from a wider time period.

Also, check on the Post Punk playlist on Spotify. I suspect you'd like it, based on what you say you enjoyed in the 90s. Once you find songs you like, you can build from there to find bands you like; it just takes a gateway.
posted by urbanlenny at 7:32 PM on February 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

Also part of Gnod, Music Map works similarly but gives you a cloud of recs which I find more helpful than Gnoosic's one band at a time recommendation.
posted by Athanassiel at 7:53 PM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

At the moment I am finding a ton of music through Radio Paradise.
posted by d_hill at 9:54 PM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bandcamp, at the eponymous site, provides links and recommendations by genre, tracks and albums for sale, digitally and otherwise, and the chance to listen to lengthy sample tracks or entire tracks (I've seen both).
posted by yclipse at 3:51 AM on February 16, 2023

It requires some work on the user's part, but PlexAmp with Tidal is by far the best experience I've had with a music recommendation tool.
posted by jmfitch at 4:06 AM on February 16, 2023

If you use Spotify, I'm a huge fan of Discover Quickly! From the Spotify for Developers Showcase blurb:

Quickly scan through songs and save them for later listening. Fall down a musical rabbit hole powered by Spotify metadata.

...

You can often tell if we’re intrigued by a song within a second or two of listening. The core of Discover Quickly is built around that idea. Start anywhere, depending on your mood: music you already love, today’s top hits, or something random. Then hover over images to sample tracks immediately. If you maybe like what you hear, then click to follow your ears down the rabbit hole of your musical taste. Save, follow, or playlist anything you like. If you’re a Spotify subscriber, you can listen to full tracks from this page, but it’s mainly a curation tool. It’s your supercharged record shop for browsing: collect stuff you might like, and then listen deeply later.

posted by brieche at 8:34 PM on February 16, 2023

Is September, 2021 new enough to count? That's ChatGPT's cut-off date, for now. If that is recent enough, I still don't know enough about music to know whether ChatGPT is a good answer to your question. But I asked it, "If I like the bands Radiohead, Dinosaur Jr., Pavement, the Pixies, the Smiths, and the Cure, then what are some new musical artists I would like, too?" Here's its answer -- maybe you or others can report whether it's on target, laughably wrong, or somewhere in between?

Based on your music preferences, here are some new artists you might enjoy:

Tame Impala - a psychedelic rock band with elements of electronic and pop music.

Beach House - a dream pop duo with ethereal vocals and hazy, atmospheric soundscapes.

Car Seat Headrest - an indie rock band with confessional lyrics and a lo-fi, DIY sound.

Angel Olsen - a singer-songwriter with a versatile voice and a mix of folk, rock, and country influences.

Snail Mail - an indie rock project led by singer-songwriter Lindsey Jordan, with introspective lyrics and guitar-driven melodies.

King Krule - a British singer-songwriter with a distinctive baritone voice, blending elements of jazz, punk, and hip-hop.

Porches - a project of singer-songwriter Aaron Maine, with introspective lyrics and a mix of indie rock and electronic music.

Mitski - a singer-songwriter with emotionally raw lyrics and a mix of indie rock, punk, and pop influences.

Hozier - an Irish singer-songwriter with soulful vocals and a mix of folk, rock, and blues influences.

Big Thief - an indie folk band with intimate and evocative lyrics, led by the captivating voice of Adrienne Lenker.
posted by daisyace at 1:08 PM on February 20, 2023