Do you listen to any new bands? Or just same as 10 years ago?
I have some friends my age still listening to the same bands they used to 20 years ago, complaining about how music today sounds all the same. However I discover something new almost every day and I'm not kidding.
It's true that some of my discoveries are bands from decades before I was born, so they can't be considered new, although they are new to me if that makes sense.
What about you? Still listening to the same tunes you used to listen to when you were a teenager?
Not new bands but new to me. I managed to be a mild metalhead my whole life yet never listened to Iron Maiden. I started on their music a few months ago. I can't believe I waited until I was in my forties to pick them up. Amazing guitar work and great vocals.
I rented their Live After Death from Lovefilm about 15 years ago, and that's what got me into them. Couldn't believe I'd written them off as an 80s band I wouldn't like.
I still listen to everything I did 10 years ago, but I’ve added a lot of new music too since then. The rate I’ve been finding new music at has skyrocketed since I discovered bandcamp a few years ago.
I actively seek new music (and discover older music that I previously didn't listen to, just like you described) but also have bands that I've been a fan of since I was a kid that I still listen to. I exclusively listened to 60s and 70s rock when I was growing up, Zeppelin and The Beatles are still two of my favorite bands, but I have definitely expanded my palette since then. I agree that the "music these days" take is a tired one; if your only source of new music is the hits radio, of course, it will all sound the same.
I have this beef with people who say new country music sucks (or any genre for that matter) - sure there are bro-country singers that only sing about trucks and beer, but there are also insanely talented country musicians and songwriters out there right now.
Yeah! So many music available that it's impossible to get bored. I am not the biggest Beatles fan, but I really cringe when somebody says they are not that good, they are still copied!
I have this beef with people who say new country music sucks
Aren't the decent guys calling themselves "Americana" nowadays? Coulter Wall, Tyler Childers, etc? The pop-with-fiddles they play on Country radio is mostly terrible.
Honestly, I think most musicians don't care about the categorization or genre labels. Country and Americana could be interchangeable for the most part, but Americana seems a little broader to me. Per your example, Childers has more of a bluegrass influence, while Wall has more of a cowboy/western country influence. Both of those genres are certainly under the country and americana umbrellas.
Don't be too hard on your friends. This is actually scientifically proven. https://neurosciencenews.com/music-youth-17765/ You love the music that you "grew up with as you were forming an identity" You can always change but it is more work to create new memories and nostalgia based on different or "new" songs.
Of course not 😅 I'm not judging them at all, I finished years ago that phase where I thought my music taste what better than theirs now I just know it is /s
I am super into consuming new and contemporary music (mainly pop and R&B). I traditionally used a subreddit to follow all of the new releases, so I'll have to see how to stay as current all things considered.
My listening habits usually revolve around rotating the new stuff ad nauseam until all meaning and emotion is gone, then accepting more new music as it releases.
I love looking at my yearly top 100 song playlists and shuffling them for some spice.
Both honestly. There are plenty of bands that I used to listen to as a teenager that I still listen to now, both their old stuff and new stuff. I also have found new bands making new music and old bands making new music with a great back catalogue.
I mostly still listen to the same stuff I used to. Most of my favorite bands are still coming out with albums, so every time something new drops I get to add that into the mix. Occasionally I'll add in a new song, whether I hear it in a videogame (my husband loves videogame music, so I've added some great tracks as a result) or the radio or with a friend, but I haven't had a new artist grab me the way my favorites did once upon a time. In that way, I might just be resistant to change.
I definitely don't necessarily have the time to look for new stuff, so I usually stumble upon it. I don't agree that all music today sounds the same - at least, not anymore "the same" than what was coming out ten years ago. Sure, some things within a genre might be similar, but I don't think it's any more "same-y" now than it used to be. If you're finding new stuff you enjoy, past or present, I think that's awesome.
I used to go out and purposefully look for new music from time to time. Lately I've just been playing Spotify radios of artists I like and finding new artists through that. They have a new feature on the mobile app that's kinda like TikTok. You click on tropicalia or norm core or whatever and it plays you similarly tagged songs. After 10-20 songs, it recommends new related hashtags to try out.
A good way to find new music if you're into less popular stuff is to go by the label. If you like an artist, check out the labels they've released their albums on! chances are that you'll find a few other artists you'll like too.
Okay, the old saying "horses for courses" comes to mind...
Yes, I actively search out new and wonderful music, and listen to it, and like it. Problem is that a lot of current music just sounds bad, either over- or under-produced, and i'm going deaf.
Last new music I really loved was Christine and the Queens, and that's almost ten years ago!!!
But, and here's the rub, when I want to sit here on a lovely summers evening drinking some cider with my spouse, I'll mostly put on music from 30+ years ago. Frank and Walters, New Order, Biggie, The Cure, MC Solaar...
Mostly? its because I know it, and as sounds become ever more remote to me and my brain, I can rely on my memories to fill in the bits I can't hear any more.
@[email protected]@[email protected] Why can't it be both? Classic albums are classic for a reason, and there is a ton of new music to get into. I hope I don't get into the rut of a fixed playlist, though most of my new music comes from online discovery, whereas it used to mates / social.
Also nothing wrong with exploring the long tail of music history.
Yeah both options are the best, I am not even able to pick one or the other. Actually, why would you do that? So many great music that's it's impossible to pick just one.
I was opening the question due to some people saying music "it's not the same anymore", when they actually mean "I still listen to the same music I used to". Nothing wrong with that either, but my point is there is still good music to be discovered.
I try to always listen to new stuff. 1001albumsgenerator.com is a great project for getting out of your comfort zone and discovering some missed gems. It can be a slog at times though.
I've been meeting up with some friends for five years going through the 1001 albums book. You'd be surprised How much to can identify items in modern music that trace back decades. I love finding albums I overlooked or some that I thought I knew better but never really sat down with the entire album. I also set up and /c/[email protected] if anyone what's to discuss albums.
Cool, I've got the generator running as a small group with a group chat alongside. Most weeks someone will also suggest an album outside of the generator for everyone to listen to and rate.
I linked it somewhere else in the thread. I'm finding there a lot of "new" stuff really interesting, even some of my favourites album are included here!
I'm a mix. I really enjoy finding new bands, even if they're not new bands. Recently I've gotten EXTREMELY into Lorna Shore (Deathcore/extreme metal band). I'd never heard them, they've been around about a decade, but they're new to me! Last year was the year of Bad Omens (Heavy Rock with some metal core tendencies). I've also been liking this synthy band The Midnight lately (like 80s electro pop complete with saxophone solos).
The way I find most of new bands is usually by either listening to bands I already like or have been into forever and using like "radio" feature on Spotify (Lorna) OR by searching out the openers for bands I like and checking out their music Bad Omens/The Midnight). It's so fun to come across an artist you've never heard and dog into their catalogue and realize they've got multiple albums filled with bangers.
Even if their music isn't for everyone (it's ABSOLUTELY not, 99+% of people probably would hate it), what they're doing from an approachability standpoint is maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen. If you go to their YouTube right now, you can find one-take vocal performances of 3-4 of their songs. You'll also find high quality drum, guitar and bass playthroughs. Like, as a drummer and singer, being able to watch Will Ramos and Austin Archey play their songs in 4K and observe their techniques up close is AMAZING. I wish more artists did things like that.
Ive struggled a lot with getting into new music. Its just too easy to be in a comfortable loop of what you know and are used to, I guess.
This year I've started a personal project where i listen to at least one unique album a day, normally 2 or 3. I've discovered so much music, both old stuff thats 'new to me', and recent releases. Its got me into a few genres that i never listened too, as well.
Plus, theres so many bands that I 'liked' but had actually really only known the hits, like AC/DC for example, and its fun to actually listen through an album for once and get to know them better!
So yeah thats for sure something I'd recommend if you have the time for it
I'm doing something similar following this project https://1001albumsgenerator.com you don't need to register with an email, although it helps. A new album is suggested everyday, and even if they are not they kind of music you usually like, I am sure you will be able to appreciate why it was included in the list.
It's very hard for me to find new music these days. I can't pin it down to any one thing, lots of things have changed over the last 10 years that make it harder.
Actively searching for new music is fun to me. I ask for recommendations from close friends, family members, people I know online, and just the internet in general. Typing 'artist that sounds like _______' into a search engine has been surprisingly successful, almost on par with the other methods, lol.
I also just recently discovered Bandsintown, which suggests artists playing live in my area that are similar to the ones I am already following (i.e., willing to pay money to see). I listen to a few of their songs and if I like them enough, now I have a new performance to go to!
For every song I listen to from my teens/20s, I listen to at least 2-3 songs from artists I discovered much more recently. The amount of good music is never the problem - there's just not enough time in the day!
I try to find new music, and have found some cool new groups. And some old favourites have fallen out of favour. I feel like my tastes evolve and change, so I'll try to find new music that speaks to me at this current point in my life.
A year from now I could be into a totaöly new style of music.
Generally, I listen to the same stuff I have been listening to for 20 years. I don't have a favorite band/artist. I'm more into soundtracks (movies, shows, games). But I listen to anything. My playlists are a spattering of random songs from any decade. Even from 100 years ago.
I’ve always listened to new music. I still keep up with bands I’ve always liked and occasionally listen to my old favorites, but there’s SO MUCH GREAT MUSIC coming out all the time I suffer from major FOMO. So I’m always trying to check out new stuff.
I've always been the type to look for music. In highschool I was torrenting music constantly, then in the last couple years I subscribed to Spotify. I get so much dopamine from finding new music that I listen to new things probably every week/month. I do still listen to what I listened to 10-20 years ago, it's just all a mix of my favourites at the time.
I found out power metal was a thing right as the pandemic was starting and it's just been a constant stream of new music to listen too I've found since then. I do have a couple go to bands though.
Youtube has put me onto a lot of Australian stuff lately, such as Smoko (The Chats) and Hertz (Amyl and the Sniffers) as well as some more indie stuff like Wet Leg. I might just be old but these bands are all new to me and I love it.
I still listen to new music, but most of it is related to stuff I listened to as a kid. I was big into 90's alt rock, and there's so much of it that I keep finding stuff I hadn't listened to from that era. Right now Butthole Surfers have been getting a lot of play; they were always kinda on my radar, but the name really put me off. Can't believe I missed out for this long.
I've always liked folk punk and alternative country, but there wasn't a ton of it when I was younger. Now there's so much more so I've been discovering lots of new bands. Blackbird Raum is pretty great, and Amigo the Devil might be one of my new favorites.
Nah my tastes are all over the place, but finding new new bands is kinda hard, and I never make time to actually do it. My s.o. has impeccable taste luckily so she's always showing me new stuff, most of it is older, deep cuts etx, but like you said it's new to me. I'm just starting to cycle back into stuff I listened to 10 years ago though. It's nostalgic and still amazing.
If you stream I find curated playlists and sometimes even radio stations based off of songs to get me to new acts. I've found some of my favorite acts this way.
It doesn't help with finding new genres, though. I've actually found the occasional odd ball in my YouTube recommendations are decent for this, but not great.
I still browse Rateyourmusic for new releases that seem interesting, but less and less seems interesting to me nowadays. Maybe that's the first sign of me getting old...
Yeah I regularly check the top albums of 2023 to see what's popular now, maybe while filtering out some genres that I'm not super interested in, and on the forums people talk about some lesser known new releases too.
Of course, the website is filled with slightly pretentious music nerds, but that's exactly how I like it.
Its a mix. Finding new music is difficult and time consuming. But sometimes I actively try to find "new" stuff. But being in my late 40s that means basically anything less then 10 years old.
Back in "the olden days" the sieve of radio made me listen to a lot of stuff and I could pick what I liked. Post listening to the radio (because these days they are all either just playing the same stuff or gone).
But with a little effort I've found stuff.
I've recently found Bury Tomorrow and I'm liking a lot of their stuff.
On another genre side I've found Hugo Kant and really dig his stuff a lot as well.
I also found a throw back sort of trip hop band called Mirrors for Princes that I like though they don't have many songs.
I also started making an effort to discover new music to me, no necessarily new music, simply because my tastes shifted quite a bit and I realised it by noticing I almost stopped listening to music. I just started following some very nice YouTube music album channels that introduced me to some great music that I'd never learn about otherwise.
Another thing I didn't realise I was doing was that I wasn't keeping up with the artists I enjoyed, I kept listening to the old stuff, but I didn't listen to the new material to see if liked where they were going.
Is it just me or is the process of finding new music also succumbing to the forces of enshitification? Like for me the sources went like this:
Old forum-style/niche internet sources (userbase died out)
Internet radio (ate by Pandora)
Pandora (ate by other music streaming sites, enshitification of algorithm)
Spotify (enshitification of algorithm, bad treatment of music industry creators)
Google music (rip... But tbh wasn't ever really good at finding new music)
Music publications?? (Pitchfork is the best I guess??? Npr maaaybe? That's sad, and also all of these are prone to enshitification)
Local underground music scenes (lots died with covid, hope they come back, but now I live in a more rural place)
Like... How do we find new music now? If it's up to an algorithm, it's enshitified. If it's up to people's suggestions, idk where a userbase would even exist.
I literally used to run charting for a radio station and I STILL don't know where to find new tunes. I'm still a baby, too, so some of you that think it's harder just because you're older... I have bad news lol
I've been finding most of my new music on rateyourmusic.com. Basically I rate/review stuff I like, then I spot some other users that like stuff I like, and I go through their other ratings looking for things I don't know. It's an algorithm free, 100% human process!
I still use last.fm, scrobbling pretty much everything I listen to from different platforms. The suggestions are usually spot on. Otherwise, the spotify radios related to specific groups or record labels help a lot too.
We probably need soemthing like r/listentothis here too.
I hade some success by using youtube in private browsing (avoid your bubble), and click on obscure music recommendations. 90% will be crap, but i found a few nice artists through that. To share a bit:
Props for the nod to enshitification though personally I've found a lot of bands from Spotify recommendations. I also like to just go find random bands on Bandcamp by genre and have found a few gems that way.
Well until yesterday my answer would have been "use reddit".
But there's still plenty of online forums (we're in one right now) where I've found amazing suggestions. I also share a lot of music with my friends in real life which helps me expand my taste.
Also I'd argue that Spotify's enshitification hasn't really affected the ability to find new music on there. I still ocassionaly throw on the "radio" for an artist I like and I usually find some great new stuff
I think bandcamp is a pretty good way to find new music. I've gone down some lengthy rabbitholes finding a band I like then clicking various tags or links to other bands supported by their fans. You can stream a lot of the music, and if you buy something more of the money goes to the artists.
I used to be that way, but recently I've been only listening to bands I'd never heard of before. I've had Spotify for about 10 years and only recently started using the Discovery Weekly playlist. It was only ok at first, but now I heart about 50% of the songs each week.
I have discovered so many great bands using Discovery Weekly! Not all the suggestions are the best, but I usually can understand why they were suggested.
I’d say my music listening hasn’t changed in the past ~5 years, but that’s mostly due to changes in my life. In college, I’d listen to music walking between classes and while working in the library; college friends also exposed me to new stuff (largely prog / metal). In my early twenties, I worked in a small retail store where I often chose what music played, so I’d put on a local indie radio station and learn about new music that way. Since music played all day in the store, I’d seek out new stuff to play fairly often too.
Now that I’m in an office job where I’m doing stuff that requires more focus, I basically just listen to lo-fi and soundtracks. I also only listen to music I’ve loaded to my phone, which I haven’t bothered to add new stuff to in… over a year. I think adding more diversity to my listening will improve when I get around to tackling self-hosting my whole music library, haha.
More varied taste for me, plus I make more of an effort to seek new music outside of algorithms. Hello Mary, Spiral Drive, and Chat Pile are three new-ish bands I love
I was guilty of this until very recently (my phone is still loaded with all my 90s/00s favourites). But I got back into playing music and then started to want to listen to more folk music as inspiration. Now I hardly want to listen to anything else, and I was largely into metal before. Sometimes you just need to try something new.
Mostly the same stuff. I'll occasionally find a new band/album that I like, but it's always by chance. I've been missing a good place to find new music ever since what.cd got shutdown.
I sometimes go and search for lists of new artists of the music genres I like to listen to, but most of the time I just end up listening to the same band, composer, etc I've been listening since my teens.
I'm not closed to "new" music, but I rarely get attached to anything new, so I end up listening to the same things almost every day.
I still discover new music, there is plenty of good music nowadays, i like fontaines dc, wet leg, squid, mac Demarco, Altin gün, the chats, la femme, parquet courts, lcd soundsystem.
I'm more focused on new releases by bands I've listened to for a long time. Mostly rock, folk, and pop from the 80s/90s.
But I also got into EDM a little while ago and added a lot of new and old stuff to my frequent plays.
I don't want to be the old grumpy guy, but the current pop music is very rarely pleasant for me... Queue the struggle for control when I'm in the car with the kids: We found that Yacht Rock is safe territory for all :p
I don't know what it is, but I rejected pop music so hard when I was young (I was a big tomboy and lived for punk, still do, but I've embraced my femininity a bit more) and now I've kind of come to love some of it. That being said, I only listen to pop music if I agree with the message. You won't find me listening to blurred lines or my humps because I just don't vibe with it. Pop songs about loving yourself? hell yeah!
Every so often I'll put on some of the old jams. But man, I'm just not angry enough anymore to listen to the old hardcore punk stuff I used to be into. Every so often I'll put on a few albums though and think about those old times.
Lately though I've gone down some crazy rabbit holes from jazz, ambient new age stuff, lots of lo-fi and lo-fi adjacent stuff. I recently discovered Macroblank and Monodrone, those two artists have taken up a lot of my time lately. I went through a pretty heavy vaporwave and futurefunk phase a few years back when I was trying to find more eletronic/funk style music like Breakbot. So all the stuff I listen to now is a far cry from the punk and metal I used to listen to back in the day!
I see you are a man of culture. I'm not really into the thrash metal scene beyond some albums from Testament or Machine Head, but that album is amazing. What Rick Rubin achieved there was wonderful.