Personally, I think I’m pretty adventurous. I love music and my library has thousands of artists across dozens of genres like classic rock, new wave, Motown, smooth jazz, shoegaze, drum & bass, prog rock, hip hop, and more. Hitting ‘shuffle all’ is a recipe for absolute chaos.
I love finding new artists and connections between them (solo projects, supergroups, samples, etc), and every 5-10 years I discover a whole new genre and enjoy going down the rabbit hole. I have all-time favourites, but listening to the same thing for too long drives me crazy.
By contrast, my wife only ever really listens to 2 or 3 different artists and somehow never gets bored of listening to the same few albums on repeat for literal years.
Where do others fall on that spectrum? Do you feel the need to constantly seek out new music, or are you the kind of person who prefers settling into a groove long-term?
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My taste is pretty diverse and I love finding new music. Much closer to you on that axis.
I honestly don’t know anymore. I though I had a really diverse music taste and I especially love abnormal noises in music, but then I used musicbrainz to categorize all my music and found out the basically everything I listen to has the Avantgarde genre. I don’t know if that’s supposed to mean I’m on the far edge of adventure and listening to only the most experiential of music or if I’m so narrow in my niche that I only listen to music considered too weird to categorize.
I think, if anything, it shows an inability to limit an array of sounds into discrete “genres”
I listen to everything from bluegrass to EDM to polka to doom metal to outlaw country.
Question for you OP: where do you consume your music? Spotify? Other?
Mostly a mix of CDs, vinyl, and streaming on Apple Music.
Gotcha, thanks.
I constantly seek out new music and pick it up from everywhere. Currently on a folk punk kick, before that it was Billboard Top 100 stuff from the 60’s and 70’s, before that it was hyperpop. I ask that anyone who wants to get me a gift instead make me a mix CD, I’ve got enough physical stuff.
But I listen to the new music mixed into the old music. Recently using shuffle, but before iTunes went to shit I used to have Party Shuffle pull from a dense web of smart playlists that ensured I was always listening to new favorites, old favorites, and tracks I hadn’t listened to recently in a roiling cycle. Man I miss having smart playlists.
My “favorites” alone, songs I can sing along to, are in the thousands after more than two decades of this. The floodplains of attending tracks, other songs from good albums, local music I don’t get get rid of because I wouldn’t be able to find it again, CDs that I ripped for my kids’ or from my wife’s collection, mix CDs made for me that I’m still getting around to digesting, these make up several thousand more tracks.
So if you, OP, or anyone else want a list of recent highlights, I’m down to trade a tracklist of most played from the last year.
I try to find new things to listen to, but I find that I always go back to music from 1970s-2000s. Classic rock and alternative mostly. I like rap, blues, and a tiny bit of country. I listen to a bit of electronic stuff (I don’t even know what the genres are technically called). That’s about it.
Somehow both. I have albums from when I was eleven that still hit, but I’ll also listen to stuff like post-punk, dark ambient, and witch house. Lot of game soundtracks, vaguely satanic sounding darkwave, but then suddenly I’ll retreat into Green Day’s Insomniac for a 479th time.
I’m pretty sure I learned about this from one of you guys, but for those of you looking for new artists, try Music Map.
Also check out Every Noise, though it stopped updating in 2023.
I’m not sure I would call myself “adventurous” - I know what I like and generally stick to it - but I’ve also realized that new, interesting music isn’t just going to fall into my lap, so I’ll occasionally go seeking for new stuff, and I’ll usually check out anything that gets recommended to me. At worst, I wasted a minute or two, but it’s usually worth at least a listen, even of it’s not something I’ll look for more of.
I listen to a ton of different genres but can only ever find a couple of artists I like per genre. Like I listen to Destroy Boys, Vial, and Cheap Perfume, but I can’t find any other punk artists I like
I love a lot of stuff, almost everything. I like niche stuff, foreign music is super interesting and just as varied as all our stuff. From classical to dubstep, I’m down.
I’m not a fan of super poppy songs unless they’re humorous. I don’t care for post 9/11 country music with its ethnocentric propaganda.
I have a playlist that is comprised of the most unhinged shit that still slaps.
Streaming services are the best thing to ever happen to music from a consumer standpoint. You get access to a library of more music than you could listen to in a lifetime, and you’re not dependent on industry gatekeepers like in the days of radio and MTV. You don’t have to shell out money and hope you like more than two songs on the album. Because of that, I’m more adventurous with music than I’ve ever been.
i want to find new music, but idk how so i settle onto a few albums and playlists for my locally saved music. these days i tend to listen to the radio more, but even then it’s not that diverse and i don’t/can’t find them again even if i hear something i enjoy from the radio.
I hate Spotify for many reasons and don’t use it any more, but one thing I found it did very well was recommending new music based on existing tastes. Their daily mix and discovery playlists could be a little hit and miss, but there were always at least a handful of great tracks that were new to me.
That’s the benefit of having so many subscribers I suppose - the data pool that drives their recommendation engine is unfathomably massive.
How long have you not used Spotify any longer? Because I would have agreed with your assessment in the past, but I gave up two years ago because new suggestions sounded more like promoted music than anything related to my taste.
Yeah that’s fair - it’s been a few years now and I’ve seen others say similar things, not to mention the rise of AI generated music which Spotify is apparently all too happy to push.
Why yes of course they would push it - they generate it themselves and pay themselves generously!
Check out somafm: https://somafm.com/home.html
The various channels are human-curated and occasionally live dj-ed. I’ve found several new artists I like just by listening for awhile and picking out things that strike me.
I’m probably just old, but I find it harder to find new music. Not like I’m not trying. Just mostly everything sounds similar or a callback to another band from the past. Too much pop shine on almost most songs.
Although, I am loving Angine de Poitrine. Great music.
I just learned about these guys a couple weeks ago when they appeared on my YouTube feed out of nowhere. And yeah, there’s a lot of fun to be had in those tracks. A couple things I noticed:
Their approach to microtonality is probably one of the most pragmatic approaches I’ve seen: Emphasize the root, use it for little melodic tasties, use sparingly in the ostinato bass lines.
I’ve never seen a group so casually play with rhythmic modulations the way these guys do. Every groove is like a playground and they try to max out the possibilities in every one. And when they do lock into a groove, got damn!
Like the Smaug or any dragon from myths. Constantly hoarding new music regardless of how much there already is.
While there is the baseline collection(taste) which has remained the same since teenage years, though with less shame nowadays. The collection is constantly expanding. Maybe the only commonality is leaning towards fast paced, but there are exceptions of some odd ambient music or just chanting.
I cant pin down the taste exactly. I just keep clicking next/new recommendations until the feeling of avoidance(maybe) dissipates and brain decides it will activate flow state with this random song this time. Sometimes it happens with old songs, sometimes it happens with new songs, sometimes it happens with covers of old songs, sometimes it doesn’t happen at all and i listen to audiobooks instead.
