Find a stoner buddy whose autistic special interest is music and music history. You'll have endless recommendations for cool shit.

Source: One of my best mates' autistic special interest is music and music history.

As for me personally, I like looking up music and genres specific to local areas, particularly those from other cultures. Afrobeat's been big on my mind ever since I discovered it, and I've been having good luck searching through old Zamrock albums.

I'm 57 and I mostly don't. I have built up a large collection of favourite bands and songs and tend to just stick to them.

I really don't care how Kanye does anything.

Awful.

Anymore it's either through yt recommendations or sometimes I'll see other people recommending songs and decide to look them up.

Formerly through TikTok and YouTube, but now only SoundCloud (especially through Daily drops) and Bandcamp.

I have a large list on bandcamp that I follow to try and stay up with as many releases as I can, also following relevant genre "tags" on there to get recommendations from artists I may not know about. The genre tags can be hit and miss though due to artists often being unable to tag their work properly.

I'll also listen to shows on SoundCloud and will search out tracks and new artists I hear on there. I'll also occasionally check the Juno charts if I have run out of new music to listen to and in the last year started building up a follow list on Spotify to check new releases there that I may have missed from all the other avenues.

Listenbrainz has decent recommendations

Talk to other music nerd friends, sift through the algorithmic recommendations of spotify/ whatever, browse music forums that match my tastes, use a song identifier to catch random ones in public...

There are lots of ways to find new tunes in 2024. I mostly listen to albums rather than individual tracks so hearing one good song usually leads to several from the same album/ep/lp

I've been paying for a Pandora subscription for about a decade. Worth it. (Piracy is a service problem.)

Their recommendations for similar bands, auto play, and making stations from a band or song has let me discover so much music over the years.

I follow a bunch of hash tags on Mastodon.

I subscribe to the digital stream of radio stations through my podcast app. WFUV out of New York City, WXRV out of I don't know where, some random station out of Sydney, Australia I stumbled on that has an EDM DJ on at the same time I'm waking up on the weekends.

I also have Spotify, but I tend to get better recommendations from real human DJs at radio stations.

A simple combination of Spotify, searching for recommendations, as in "artists similar to _____," checking out AllMusic for a brief overview and maybe which album to start with.

Sorry, but Spotify Discover Weekly of course.

And I also always have Shazam ready to go for when out and about.

Theuppermostinlife curates a bunch of music they like, and I share some of their taste so that's where I get a bunch of new stuff from.

Mostly through movies/tv shows or sometimes NPR Tiny Desk

Bandcamp Features

At the moment? Watching Anime. A few years ago? Watch music videos of songs I already know on youtube and see what the algorithm spits out.

I suppose it depends on your tastes, but I read Pitchfork reviews and check out the artits on Spotify. I do not limit my tastes to one genre, so that makes it more interesting when exploring. I'll also leverage the Related Artists section of an artist's page if I find a new artist that I like.

Youtube nprs tiny desk concert. Got so many banger musicians and GREAT music.

Through my Apple Music “New Music” weekly playlist before I canceled my subscription. It does a good job so long as you actively love and dislike tracks.

Now I have a local library that syncs with last.fm for every play and you can discover new music and artists through there.

I’m no longer on it but instagram was actually a great way to discover new artists. Seems that meta will be a significant player in the music industry (major UMG deal) soon as well so who knows what’s coming there.

Community radio, my kids (and they find music through me too), YouTube music recommendations, opening bands at concerts, and sometimes NPR.

A friend recommended pitchfork yesterday to me. Haven't gotten around to it though

youtube shuffle works great, its truly random, give it a try.