It’s actually never been easier to find new and fantastic music, you just need to know where to look, here’s where I go digging when I feel the need to:
1 Music Labels on Bandcamp
There’s been an explosion of fantastic music labels over the last few decades, often specializing in reissues of forgotten classics and music from the global south, here are a few that I like, with a lot of them selling their stuff on bandcamp:
This is just a small selection of stuff I am into and my interests are admittedly fairly narrow, but you can do this for every genre you like. Just pick a band/an album you love, look up what label it was released under and look up that label (you can also use discogs or rateyourmusic for this if the label isn’t active anymore/their website sucks).
2 Internet Radio
Now I don’t listen to as much of this as I probably should, but there are great radios out there, but if you wanna be really hip you should listen to NTS who have in the past done tons of collabs with famous musicians and have tons of DJs who play weekly programs.
Now this website is definitely full of stupid nerds, but if you are looking for popular and famous releases in specific decades, genres or countries I don’t know of a better place to look for them. As soon as you go to actually lesser known music it sucks, but if you want a good overview of a specific genre or decade of music you will get it there (if obviously with a heavy internet-music-nerd bias).
Now this is already more good music than you could ever hope to listen in a lifetime, so you could also just do what I do, which really is the only sensible thing left to do, which is to solely listen to the Beach Boys and Beach Boys bootlegs.
I love soundway records. I’ve been onto them for years.
Compilations do have their issues though. For one, there’s a bottleneck, I’ve found it difficult to click through to get individual projects from featured artists. Secondly, sometimes when you do get through it sounds different which raises another issue: did the medium become the message? Are these labels simply marketing existing music to a new market or is the content changed in its commodification. The rift between how absent the accordion is on these projects compared to it’s historical prominence is just one example of how that might play out.
I guess one of the paradoxes is I want music to listen to offline but all methods require being yet more online.
It’s actually never been easier to find new and fantastic music, you just need to know where to look, here’s where I go digging when I feel the need to:
1 Music Labels on Bandcamp There’s been an explosion of fantastic music labels over the last few decades, often specializing in reissues of forgotten classics and music from the global south, here are a few that I like, with a lot of them selling their stuff on bandcamp:
Soundway Records, whose newest release is a comp of 70s and 80s Boogie and Funk from Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Phillipines
Light in the Attic Records, who do stuff from classic japanese ambient releases to forgotten soul classics from the early 70s (both of these albums are absolutely fantastic and come highly recommended by me)
Habibi Funk, who de reissues and new releases from everywhere in the arab world Analog Africa, who deliver the hottest dance tunes from all over africa from fifty years ago
Music from Memory who do absolutely fantastically curated reissues of anything between pop (<this one is another absolute fav of mine) and ambient and experimental
Numero Group who are very hip and in right now and who do tons of different stuff, too much for me to choose just one release but they also have loads of playlists of their music online
This is just a small selection of stuff I am into and my interests are admittedly fairly narrow, but you can do this for every genre you like. Just pick a band/an album you love, look up what label it was released under and look up that label (you can also use discogs or rateyourmusic for this if the label isn’t active anymore/their website sucks).
2 Internet Radio
Now I don’t listen to as much of this as I probably should, but there are great radios out there, but if you wanna be really hip you should listen to NTS who have in the past done tons of collabs with famous musicians and have tons of DJs who play weekly programs.
3 Rateyourmusic
Now this website is definitely full of stupid nerds, but if you are looking for popular and famous releases in specific decades, genres or countries I don’t know of a better place to look for them. As soon as you go to actually lesser known music it sucks, but if you want a good overview of a specific genre or decade of music you will get it there (if obviously with a heavy internet-music-nerd bias).
Now this is already more good music than you could ever hope to listen in a lifetime, so you could also just do what I do, which really is the only sensible thing left to do, which is to solely listen to the Beach Boys and Beach Boys bootlegs.
I love soundway records. I’ve been onto them for years. Compilations do have their issues though. For one, there’s a bottleneck, I’ve found it difficult to click through to get individual projects from featured artists. Secondly, sometimes when you do get through it sounds different which raises another issue: did the medium become the message? Are these labels simply marketing existing music to a new market or is the content changed in its commodification. The rift between how absent the accordion is on these projects compared to it’s historical prominence is just one example of how that might play out.
I guess one of the paradoxes is I want music to listen to offline but all methods require being yet more online.