For decades, you didn’t have to look far to find the tastemakers in music. They were radio DJs and music writers for the most part, concentrated into a handful of stations an publications. They set the standards and people followed them.
But, now that those days are long behind us and we can all carry around the entire history of popular music in our back pocket, how in the world to we sift through the tangle of songs and discover stuff we really want to listen to.
Certainly streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and others can help, but they aren’t exactly incentivized to help you find everything you want. Their goal is quantity, not quality.
Fortunately, a number of music discovery tools have tried to fill the void, many of them developed independently, free from the constraints of capitalism (mostly) and focused almost entirely on helping us find new, cool music. There are apps that can do this, but for the purposes of this, we will stick with websites, some of which might be tough to navigate on a phone anyway.
As overwhelming as it is incredible, ENAO is a massive map of musical sub-genres linked to Spotify to help you discover everything from discofox to nu gabber, whatever those are. Oh, also jazz, modern alternative and even Houston hip hop. Sub-genres are the new language of music searchers. Artists want to find the niche-ist of niches to place themselves in so they are easier to find via hashtags and other search functions. ENAO takes this to a whole other level by not only breaking apart all the categories it can find, but giving options of discovery of artists, playlists and a wealth of other information, putting it all in a giant visual tag cloud of sorts. Its developer stopped working on the site in 2024, but it’s still going strong and, God willing, will for a long time because it’s incredible.
Part of Gnod, a network providing tools for discovery of all kinds, Gnoosic is a simple tool that helps you find music through comparison. Put in three of your favorite bands and it spits out other artists you might like based on those choices. The limitation of three is pretty brilliant because it really hones in on very specific kinds of music and you get to see what Gnoosic renders for you. Once you make your choices, start clicking through a list of artists you can choose to like, not like or say you don’t know. It keeps refining from there.
Once you’ve played around with Gnoosic, check its sister site Music-Map. It is one of a number of tools that help to visualize music connections by putting other artists of a similar style or genre floating in a tag cloud similar to ENAO. Each artist you click on spawns a new set of artists. It isn’t as convenient as some other tools that link directly to the songs on Spotify or YouTube, but when you see a name you’ve never heard of, it’s easy to do a quick search and see if it is worth your time.
One of the more creative and unique websites for music discovery is, ironically, one that involves radio stations, in this case, spread across the entire globe. Visit the site and swoop down across a visual of the planet. Every dot represents the stream for a radio station. If you are fascinated with maps and geography, you will find yourself mesmerized by the options. Tune into a pop station in Indonesia or listen to some traditional Cambodian tunes or the fantastic world music of West Africa. You might not be able to understand everything you hear, but then you’ll come across Katy Perry on some island in the South Pacific and realize we aren’t that different after all.
What the F*** Should I Listen to Right Now
Simple and to the point. Put in a band and the tool tells you who you might like. You can tell it you “don’t like that f***ing artist,” click the name of the band to listen to them on Last.fm, or start over. It’s not terribly sophisticated, but it’s funny and a quick way to run through a few possible options when you are in a hurry.
Another in the series of visually based websites, Musicroamer lets users create endless visual maps of artists with their connections to other artists. Those can be added to playlists or saved as maps to refer back to later. All of the artists have previews spun by Spotify so its easy to give it a listen and see if you like it. The more connected artists mapped out, the wider the grid and the more obscure the music. Requires registration for full use.
Speaking of maps, why not use the ones at Radiooooo to not just circle the globe but listen to the music of any era from any place. Feeling like some 1950s Cuban music or maybe some tunes from Russia in the 1940s? They have it and it can be as weird as you imagine. There are numerous ways to refine searches from choosing “slow, fast or weird” (trust us, weird is worth it), to randomized shuffles and setting a “taxi” trip that runs through a number of different styles of the user’s choosing. One of the cooler features is the ability to add a song found while browsing around. And the catalog seems endless. Some tools are reserved for paying customers, but there is plenty available for free to keep you here for hours.
Set up more traditionally as a user based listening/rating service, RYM nevertheless offers a range of ways to discover music. One of our favorites is through their extensive catalog of charts. Having been around for over 20 years means the number of charts ranking artists, songs and records going back decades is remarkably extensive. Each selection is broken down into genre and descriptors with comprehensive information about the song, album and band. You can even create your own charts and explore the huge number of custom lists that range from the very normal to the positively bizarre.
DQ (no relation) is more Spotify tool than music discovery website, but because it has so many features and is so easy to use, it absolutely helps with listening to new bands. Not only will it, once connected to your account, show you everything you listen to and stats related to your Spotify usage, but you can quickly browse genres and new releases, everything Spotify offers. The best part is just hover over the photo of any artist and it plays the most popular song by that artist instantly. Very convenient.
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