For anyone in here enjoying radio, but not commercials or radio hosts, try out

soma.fm

It has a ton of channels and genres and is entirely free (donation funded).

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I go by mood. This personality makes it so that it takes forever to discover music that I haven’t heard before.

If I hear a song I like while out doing whatever, I’ll add it to my playlist and usually check out more from the artist.

Though I also just have a list of artists I like and stick to for the most part :p

I started dating a DJ

Music venues. There’s 3 small places near me, so when I want to hear something new I’ll look up the bands on youtube, if I like it I’ll get a ticket to see 'em, plus the support acts.

Also I find indie labels are a good source of similar artists to ones I already like, e.g. Underdog Records

What do you do to find music?

I grew up in the 90s/00s, and my music taste developed by learning what that fun radio station my dad listened to in the car was, then starting tuning in myself.

After that, I started learning the song titles and artists, at that point I started pirating music.

Then I found pandora, it was available for free here at the time, so I put in some artists I liked, it suggested more music to listen to, one artist of which became my favorite artist, at the time you could just grab the MP3 playing in pandora from the web cache, so I got some more music for my collection.

Then over time stuff like this kept going and my music collection grew, then I got into C64 and Amiga remixes, and started listening to Slayradio (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), a free internet radio station of brilliant music that most of the time can be downloaded for free legally.

Then came the accidental purge…

I was trying to reinstall one of my computers, and forgot about the USB drive with the only copy of my entire music library (6000 songs) being plugged into the computer, and wiped everything ):

For a while I survived on Slayradio and what little music I had on my phone, but when I later got my first iPhone in 2016, I started buying tracks on iTunes, I still do that, DRM free, and decently simple to use.

Then I really started noticing going hard into switching between different genres and artists periodically.

There was a time I was obsessed by 90s eurodance, then 80s rock, then early 2000 trance, them suddenly classical and opera music, then back to trance, then folk music, after that, power metal, and so on.

I was completely obsessed by Sabaton in 2021 or so when I had double heel spurs, double flat feet and a bad knee at the same time, I dragged myself home crying from the pain in each step from the bus, while blasting Sabaton way too loud in my headphones just to get the energy to get home.

Then more trance, then 80s hair metal, and now I often blast the Command & Conquer sound tracks by Frank Klepacki, right now, Grinder from Red Alert 2 is the song I keep thinking of…

90% of the time I know what I want to listen to.

The other 10% of the time I will listen to new things I’ve squirreled away in my personal listening queue, because the art was interesting, I’ve heard good things, or I randomly heard a song I like. Sometimes recommendations from friends will make it into that queue.

Random mixes, not usually. I’m far too picky. But there are niche subgenre mixes that can be good.

I do everything you say.

I also listen to podcasts and follow blogs which recommend me music.

Sometimes i listen to the radio too, or shazam music i hear in public.

I usually listen to what i’m currently listening to, then just let the algorithm take the wheel. If there’s one song that i like, i will check out the artist and usually the artist will have multiple genre, which then the algorithm will recommend collections of song from that genre.

I’m using YT music, and if you let the queue run long enough, occasionally a different genre will pops up due to the artist you listened to, then i’ll just again branch out here.

Game and movie soundtrack also helps branch out a lot.

There’s a lot of great indie music on the fedi, and places to listen to it:

https://nham.co.uk/ Radio

https://theindiebeat.fm/ (several radio channels)

https://tv.theindiebeat.fm/ (24/7 Fedi MTV)

And more : https://nham.co.uk/2025/06/how-do-i-connect-with-artists-on-the-fediverse-cheat-sheet/

I don’t select anything. I go where my current mood takes me. If I like something, I like it. If I want to hear it again, I save the music or add it to a playlist.

I’m from the MTV generation, we heard music on MTV and that got us to buy CDs. There was also rock radio. Rock radio doesn’t really exist anymore, at least not in the west. Radio isn’t free to run, so to run music, they have to run ads to pay the bills. When their bills go up, they either increase ad time (take away from the music), or they play cheaper music. So, slop like pop and country that costs them less. Streaming has similar bullshit. You add a song to your playlist. You go through the artist’s discography to choose the song from the original album release — or maybe you go with the remaster. We’re not debating that here. Either way, the song comes up on shuffle and all of a sudden it’s from a soundtrack or Greatest Hits compilation. See, it’s the same audio, but being from a compilation means it costs the streamer less, and they hope you don’t notice/care about the album art. Generally if you set it back, they’ll leave it be, but sometimes they’ll change it again.

Anyway, rock music is kinda dead in the west (it’s really not) because the venues promoting it (MTV and rock radio) no longer do so. So western (USA, UK/EU, Australia) rock is mostly indie these days. Or old timers hanging on. In the east though, business is booming. Anime is getting a lot of western eyes and ears tuning in, so they use the opening and ending themes to highlight music from their country. Streaming music from these bands and artists lead to more, similar Japanese songs. So for example ONE OK ROCK never did anime before, but I discovered them because I discovered Survive Said the Prophet via either Vinland Saga or Banana Fish and, hey, these other guys sound similar. (ONE OK ROCK has since licensed their song Prove to the children’s anime Beyblade X, over a decade after becoming popular.)

Back in the day, yeah, I listened to my friends and what they listened to. These days I’ll listen to a song I like, see what other playlists it’s on (this is on Apple Music), and sometimes I’ll play that playlist to see what they have.

I also run a music community (on the instance I’m on). I’m not 100% clear how to link them, and the guy running my instance has had beef with the people running .world (the instance this was posted on, the instance OP is a member of). So, out of respect for .world and for them allowing me to be here, probably best I don’t? Even though I have no real part in that issue, whatever it was. Music can be, but isn’t political for me. It’s more spiritual, as in, I listen to music to soothe my spirit. Anyway, I run a music comm and I post a song every day. It’s mostly western (American, European, or Australian) rock, or Japanese rock. There’s like one country song. The first song I posted was Celtic (it’s Enya), but, mostly it’s rock. So you could say I don’t have much variety. I dunno, I’m going through my favourites. And I’m telling stories with a lot of them. Anyway, the comm’s open, I haven’t messed with any of the settings (I don’t even have a header image yet), so anybody is free to post whatever. Though, .world has a music comm as well. .world doesn’t need your help, it’s the biggest one, but I’d still always advise anyone on any instance to support your own instance. That’s why I made a music comm, we didn’t have one. Figured I could post on any other music comm (and maybe even be welcome to post daily), but… I wanted to support my own instance. And I wouldn’t advise anyone else otherwise. But hey, if you wanna see what I’ve posted… it’s just called “music” on the instance I’m on. Shouldn’t be hard to find.

When I was younger it was Pandora. I’d listen to Pandora channels and if I heard something new I’d grab the artists discography off limewire. Go through and see what I liked. Sometimes I’d see who opened live for the artists I really liked then listen to them too. Now that I can afford to support artists I try to by buying physical media. I swap it with friends. I have 3 buddies I do this with. Every month or so we trade an album or two.

For my normal background playback I apply a random track shuffle across my entire library, with a delay on repeating each track by a month for each iteration of its play count.

If a track has not been played before, can be included in the list immediately.

If a track has been played 6 times, it can be included once 6 months have passed since its last play.

Most of the time a song just starts playing in my head and I listen to it when I have time. Other times I rifle through my memories of the music I love and find one that I like to listen too, sort of like a radio. So, no to all of that.

When I started writing this Radiohead started playing. heh.

All of those and some others.

Ive also collected friends over the years with similar and dissimilar tastes that are excited to send me new music they find. This is the way I find most NEW music, as in stuff i hadn’t heard or known of before. The problem I have the most is getting stuck in these algorithm loops where even when i discover something new through say spotify or youtube the algorithm wants to tune a Playlist to what it thinks is what i enjoy instead of whats closest to that song or band or whatever. For this I have 2 friends I can simply text “algorithm breaker” and theyll send me something totally out of left feild that I will love. That usually does the trick for a day or two at least.