(Credits: Far Out / Hưng Phạm)
Hundreds of thousands of hours of new music are introduced to the world week after week.
In this constant, dizzying stream of oversaturated artistry, it can be all too easy to barricade yourself in, listening exclusively to the same four or five artists you’ve been following since your teenage years. After all, how is one human supposed to keep on top of this constant cacophony being thrust into our earholes on a daily basis; how do you sort the select few worthy releases from the mounting landfill of instantly forgotten dross?
That all invariably depends on how you tend to consume your music and media in the first place. I am of course biased but, since the dawn of the music industry, the music press has been the prevailing method of discovering new sounds, and even if the realm of print media has taken a rather depressing downturn as of late, there is a multitude of fantastic publications out there – both print and online – who tend to cherry-pick the most interesting or notable releases week after week.
Why, you only need to visit our album reviews section to hear the wealth of diverse sounds on offer, all organised for your convenience.
Self-promotion aside, however, we are all currently living through an age in which the music world is dominated by streaming services. The likes of Spotify, Apple Music or, for the more considered consumer, Qobuz, have become essential to our everyday listening experiences, so it only stands to reason that they serve a role in our musical discovery, too.
If you break from the shackles of your own self-curated playlists, you will tend to find that each major streaming service has its own specially curated playlists of new releases, either targeted towards your specific tastes or, particularly in the case of the brave few services not yet corrupted by AI, collated by designated music experts.
On the topic of experts, Bandcamp is another essential platform for music discovery, allowing you to follow specific genres, in addition to artists and labels, so that you are delivered a slightly more cultivated selection of new releases every week.
You can also filter by format and region on Bandcamp, allowing you to pose questions as pretentious as, “Have you heard this new Indonesian jazz band?”
If, for some bizarre reason, you prefer not to spend your entire waking life staring at a screen, however, the analogue world also has a lot of musical discovery to offer. Namely, the humble record store, which remains largely unmatched when it comes to finding incredible releases, both new and old, all available to peruse at your leisure, and hold in your hands.
Typically, those record stores will also be manned by musical obsessives who, if you ask, tend to be quite happy to give out recommendations or play a particular new release over the shop speakers. When you can hold new music, tangibly, suddenly the deluge of weekly new releases doesn’t feel quite so overwhelming and, depending on the quality of the shop, you might walk away with something you would have never encountered otherwise.
There is also the radio; once the prevailing pop distribution point, now largely losing its younger audiences to those aforementioned streaming services. Radio’s power might be depleted, but the quality of its output certainly is not.
Whether it’s local, community radios – a personal favourite being Bradford’s mighty BCB Radio – or national powerhouses like BBC Radio 6 Music, the airwaves still have a lot to offer, particularly in terms of their specially selected new releases.
Inarguably, though, the greatest method of discovering new music is, and always has been, attending live music events wherever possible. Up and down virtually every nation on this pale blue dot is awash with independent venues, bars, and pub back rooms, all of which have the potential to be your gateway into an entirely new realm of musical discovery, whether it’s a tiny local outfit or a travelling band from the other side of the world.
In the end, unless you are a specially programmed robot, there will always be a few new releases that slip through your fingers. It is impossible to keep on top of them all. If you are looking to break from the algorithm, though, your best bet lies in the independent music venues, local record stores, and even radio stations of the world. You never know, you might end up hearing something that will change your life.
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source faroutmagazine.co.uk ’
