How I find "new" music
And how you can as well.
One theme that seemed to crop up frequently in the responses to my two posts about leaving Spotify - for Qobuz - was the thirst among my readers for musical “discovery.” Perhaps it’s not a surprise that the people who would be reading lengthy articles like mine, buried away in newsletter platforms like Substack, are also the kind of people who would prefer to search out interesting music, but it was reassuring all the same
It also got me thinking, How do we discover *new* music these days? And I put an asterisk around the word “new” because I think those of us who love music are just as interested in discovering interesting old music which, at that moment of discovery, is new to us. (Recent cases in point for myself: Cambodian Space Project, and The Avengers…) In a world of niche platforms, playlists, radio shows, magazines, social media and more, how do we find what we didn’t know we were looking for? When we are drowned in opportunity and options, how do we sift through the silt for the silver (and gold)?
So, for this last Midweek post of my first year on Substack, I figure on laying out my go-to’s as best I can. I welcome you to comment and share yours.
And my recommended methods inevitably overlap with each other: Shindig!, for example, is a music magazine with a radio show and an online playlist. None of us, after all, should feel confined here, either to format or form. That said, a cautionary note:
You can’t hear it all.
With apparently 80,000 tracks uploaded to streaming services every single day, and even allowing that may include all kinds of videos, demos, mixes and other peripheral uploads, trying to keep up is a pointless, thankless and entirely impossible task. Are we better off with narrow interests – perhaps finding a new (old) artist, honing in on their catalogue, listening to the latest release in full? Or should we be constantly dipping in and out of new songs, so we get a more diverse array of artists if a less diverse sense of their music? That answer is up to each of us in every moment. I have certainly stood accused of being a jack of all trades and master of none, in a major British weekly no less (cheers, Paolo), and I do have a propensity to want to explore everything life has to offer. But the need to sit back and learn about an individual act, discuss an individual album, is partly why I co-host a podcast, Crossed Channels, that does exactly that. Above all:
Be curious.
Ask questions. Start conversations (online or off). Go down that side street. Take that tangent. Look under the covers, behind the label. Confuse your personal preferences, push your envelope. If you don’t like what you find, that’s fine... Though just remember, as Tommy Ramone told me, and obviously he was talking about initial reaction to Da Brudders, “If you hear something you’ve never heard before, the first instinct is to go, ‘It’s bad’.” That’s what I thought of The Jam’s “All Around The World” single when I brought it home and played it in 1977, and look at what that first impression eventually begat. And so, to the methodology:
Wordsmith is reader supported. You can help keep this page going strong - and get bonus articles, all of the archives, and exclusive access to the Crossed Channels podcast - by becoming a paid subscriber. If you want to stay on the free plan for now, that’s cool too, Enjoy!
1) Explore radio.
In the 21st Century, the word “radio” no longer means what it did when invented in the early 20th Century. Nor does terrestrial radio – a station located and broadcasting within in a certain area – carry the influence, impact and emotional weight that it once did. Radio nowadays is more likely to be online only as it is to be only available on the dial, and it’s in these online niche stations that discovery is best to be had.
Case in point: The Face Radio, officially broadcast out of Brooklyn but featuring DJ’s from the UK, Germany, Australia, France and more. My connection is somewhat personal: I met its founder Kurtis Powers in 2017, while being interviewed for the Modcast on Soho Radio by Eddie Piller (more of which and whom, in a moment) and we hit it off. Subsequently I’ve watched his station grow from his Facebook Live Sunday afternoon Rendezvous, into a 24-hour platform in which every show is quickly archived and also shared as a podcast (legally) where possible. (I listen back on Pocket Casts but Mixcloud is also an option.)
Along the way I have recommended some DJs to Kurtis, and discovered plenty of others along the way. Just about all of them have merit, especially given that the station’s musical remit has grown enormously from its initial modernist musical stylism. Certain shows nonetheless nail their target to their names: Funky 16 Corners, Superfly Funk & Soul, Punks in Parkas, and, from Australia, Blow-Up!. Others are consciously eclectic, like Jaf Jervis’s wonderful Blues & Grooves, which will jump from Little Richard to the latest dancefloor track quicker than you can shout “A wop-bop-aloo-your-hands-in the-air-like-you-just-don’t-care.” Matt Pape’s Worldy is a surprise every week, as my man McCutcheon digs into his vast catalogue of vinyl to bring (largely new) music from countries you didn’t even know existed – and sometimes just to stay in the States and play bluegrass. Matt also hosts a weekly one-hour Mixtape, free of conversation and yet similarly diverse in its themes, and with his new show Golazo! (defined by Oxford as “a spectacular or impressive goal in soccer”), he seems to combine the two: his July 4 edition was an exploration of American-themed songs that felt perfectly comfortable dipping below the border for Mexican Institute of Sound’s “My America Is Not Your America,” this one a collaboration with Brit Graham Coxon.
Monday is definitely indie rock day, and though not every show is weekly, you can hear Kurtis with his Britpoppy Side Effects, St. Louis’s Rob Levy with a more noisy shoegazy Free Design, and expat Frankie Maloney finding a more baggy shuffle somewhere inbetween with the Bugle. There’s also Sharee Nash chilling you out out on Sunday evenings, and DJ Yukimo recently delivering a full show of East European funk. I’ve lost count of the artists and songs I’ve discovered through the station. You can visit the archives here and see (or listen to) what I mean.
The aforementioned Ed Piller, another of life’s inveterate “doers,” split from Soho Radio to co-launch Totally Wired Radio from his East London Acid Jazz headquarters, on which you can hear such diverse sounds as DJ Nico with her Girl About Town and Yashiv Cohen with his Tel Aviv Soul Club. For those who like their musical independence louder and more in-your-face, yet another inexhaustible doer, John Robb, has a station, Louder Than War Radio, that serves as a natural outgrowth from the Louder Than War web site: it hosts DJs like Iain Key who plays fiercely independent new music on his Indie Brunch, and that same St. Louis native Rob Levy’s show Antics, which fits in just perfectly alongside other rock & roll radio shows.
A number of online stations name themselves for their home area, but that doesn’t mean they don’t travel. Probably the best example I know of is Soho Radio, which has one of those “windows onto the world” broadcast studios, on Broadwick Street in the heart of Soho itself, but which serves best to exemplify that central London area’s historic tradition of internationalism and multi-culturalism, and music music music. Among its many DJs are many notable musicians (and here I quote the station itself from a list that I sense may be slightly outdated): Primal Scream’s Simone Marie, dub legend Dennis Bovell, Groove Armada’s Tom Findlay, UNKLE’s James Lavelle, Jim Sclavunos of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Metronomy’s Anna Prior, DJ Norman Jay MBE and Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
But that is mere name-dropping-in-the-bucket, given that it doesn’t include former Loop member/Rough Trade A&R man/CPFC fanatic and all-round-legend James Endeacott and his weekday Morning Glory show; DJ legends Mike Pickering and Andy Lewis; DJ FiiFii with Afrology; Jamaican-born/NYC resident Belinda Becker with her monthly global intersection of music and art, and Brazilian-born Pedo Montenegro with his fortnightly Barkino, hosting sessions by the likes of Portuguese singer Vaipraia, London duo Pazeamor and his native country’s Neiva.
London music radio stations are much like London breweries: I grew up with just two, and now there’s one on almost every street corner. For example just west of Soho, Radio Free Pimlico is a great name for those who remember the film Passport to Pimlico, but it’s also a proper community radio station, one that starts Tuesdays with an Indie Dance Breakfast followed by two hours of Bluebeat Reggae & Ska.
And just a short hop further along the London Underground you’ll find Portobello Radio where the Resistance Street people (see the movie I wrote about in April) host Resistance Street Radio, Y Records’ founder Dick O’Dell has a Sunday brunch Adventures in Music and New York-based expat A&R man Jezz Harkin has his excellently edited The Brilliant Show on Saturday nights.
In New York City we may no longer have East Village Radio, but why would you need it you can also head down to the much maligned Staten Island, and dig (into) Maker Park Radio, which literally has a park next to its station where it hosts incredible summer shows (and Punk Rock Mini-Golf), and from which offices it broadcasts video as well as audio, bringing a sense of intimacy to DJs like Lorenzo Mameli whose Saturday morning show The Rocker recently introduced me to the excellent young bands Our Own Yokos and Castle Black on the same show.
With all these opportunities, it’s easy to ignore our terrestrial stations – and it is true that too many of them are too dependent on playlists and advertisers to claim any kind of cutting edge. But most still have their truly independent DJs and shows off in he corners, and some quality stations slip onto the airwaves between the cracks. In my area of the Hudson Valley, Radio Kingston benefited enormously from a benefactor’s major investment, and now has a spanking new building and old-fashioned signage on Broadway in the middle of the city, from where DJ Ida mixes soft indie with conversations on her daily afternoon Heavy Light Show. But it’s the specialist shows that truly deliver, almost as a microcosm of Soho Radio’s worldview but all from one diverse small city. Local rock critic and musician Peter Aaron goes heavy every week with Go Go Kitty; Andrew Nelson plays vinyl only on his crate-digging Dollar Bin Radio show (one on which I can guarantee you’ll hear some superb soul/funk-hip-hop you’ve never heard before); Canadian expat musician/producer Malcolm Burn hosts Night Lights (a recent episode focused on “Ambient Journeys and English Folk”); and by “highlighting music by Black, Brown and Indigenous People,” The Intergalactic Boogie-Down “envisions a normalization of Indigeneity, resistance, and culture.”
Finally for now, up in Catskill itself we find one of two headquarters for WGXC, which won the rights to broadcast when the FCC opened up a new spot for a non-commercial station, by promising and delivering talk, news and community engagement. But that has left plenty of room for diverse music, and while this includes Peter Aaron’s Go Go Kitty, and local record shop owner Spike Priggen’s Bedazzled Radio Hour, it also hosts Nuestra Música (“the rhythms and folklore of Latin America, Spain, Portugal and Cape Verde,” the latest episode being on Cuban Masters); Disco 3000 (A weekly two-hour free-form music program beamed in from Toronto) and still finds time for Reading Is Funktamental, a monthly one-hour show hosted by critic Sal Cataldi about great music books, which just today, July 10th, featured Robyn Hitchcock discussing his highly acclaimed new book 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left.
2) Read Music Papers
To focus on the positive, and to get beyond the limited if well-intentioned new music recommendations of those monthly UK stalwarts Mojo and Select, I would like to re up a couple of magazines I’ve mentioned recently, Shindig! and The Wire, and introduce Songlines in the process. Between these three monthlies, you can read about new, old, cult and futuristic rock, garage, electronic, experimental, folk, ambient, indie, and global sounds of all forms and stripes. And modern magazines make it easy to listen along: as noted, the Shindig! web site hosts a monthly playlist which you can archive and carry with you through Qobuz as well as hosting a radio show on Soho Radio; The Wire and Songlines both come with free CDs.
It’s easy to be passive with so many options, to read/listen and move swiftly along: it requires more work to press pause, check the name of an artist, follow up on it online, or perhaps even, old-school style, by visiting a record shop. Maybe it’s enough to set yourself a goal of doing so once per CD, once per magazine, once per playlist. Try it: I am certain it will help you avoid freezing next time someone asks “so what are you listening to these days?” and your inner brain screams “What am I not listening to these days and why can’t I remember the details of any of it?”
Stateside, the printed music press has long been in a much more sorry state. Rolling Stone doesn’t count for discovering interesting new music, and rarely ever did; Creem is back in print but I’ve yet to see a copy because newsstands have gone the way of the dodo. Maggot Brain, which comes to us from Jack White’s Third Man Records, is admirable, but no more focused on new music than Mojo (the latest cover is a picture of My Bloody Valentine from the 1990s); Record Time, suggested by my latest Fanzine Podcast co-guest Jay Hinman after I temporarily stumped him and Tim Anstaett by asking them to name a current reputable music fanzine, looks perfectly cool but is all about obscure, unusual, forgotten and neglected records. And while, as stated up top, there’s value to this, it’s not the music press as we knew it.
The Big Takeover works overtime to bring you the best in the Anglo-American underground, but it comes out, like, not very often. I know of Second Scene magazine, I know of others that are print publications somewhere between zine and magazine, but I can’t point you to a thriving market. That said, the online world is alive and well, from former print giants like Spin through, longstanding Internet V1.0 pioneers Popmatters, StereoGum, and Brooklyn Vegan, through to a new generation of music bloggers whose passion for new sounds finds them beavering away in the internet’s darkest corners. Which brings me to…
3) Substack
I did not come to Substack to write exclusively about music, and certainly not expecting to find so many excellent people doing just that, and admirably so. But here we are: Substack columnists are now supplying me with a considerable amount of my musical discoveries, aided by the fact that we can easily insert Spotify and Apple playlists, Bandcamp releases and YouTube videos, though sadly the frames format makes it impossible to do same with MixCloud, Qobuz and more, at least for now.
Some of my fellow Substackers are, if not openly genre-specific, relatively honest about their relatively honed tastes. I have long used Flow State to recommend ambient/electronic/chill/classical/jazz music to work by. Remember The Lightning rounds up and writes about proper powerful power pop.
Mick Mercer’s Panache has a pretty good lock on goth and its intersections with EDM and the peripheries of punkabilly (and comic books too!).
Stephan Kunze writes about ambient/experimental music at Zen Sounds, in great detail and with excellent insight and went so far as to list his own “100 Albums That ROcked My World” recently:
Kevin Alexander’s On Repeat Records works overtime: he hosts a Monday morning “what are you listening to?” that is over-abundant in reader’s choices, plus a weekly deep dive into music news, and an occasional playlist of what he is listening to. Ian Sharp puts together a hypothetical LP once a week, which promises “classic” and “current” and this past week delivered in the form of Radiohead, Seasick Steve and Snow Patrol in the first three tracks.
Some musicians use Substack to write about their songwriting process, share demos and occasionally, with the example of Nolan Green, a new release that was not only impressive (his five-song ambient EP Safe) but led me to his influences, including Shida Shahabi, another artist I’d never previously known.
Meantime, out there back in more mainstream land, the Best Music of All Time Substack is none so retro as its name suggests; somehow Matt Fish has found time to write about his 20 Best Albums of 2024 So Far, making me feel woefully inept for having only ever heard some of the artists’ names, let alone their latest opuses.
Matt is not the only one. Ted Gioia, not content with writing about everything else in the universe, finds time to recommend Ten New Albums I'm Enjoying Right Now Which includes an album by Gunter Hurbig of what Gioia calls “Gurdjieff’s Music Transcribed for Electric Guitar”; and Tom Penaguin’s eponymous album of “Analog Prog Rock from France Inspired by Zappa and Stravinsky. Nick Hornby, new to Substack and writing prolifically as always, shared his own 24-song 2024-so-far playlist, via Spotify, on his A Fan’s Notes. I found it a little mainstream for my own tastes, but that reminds me to share my own playlists of 2024 so far, which I would like to believe are mainly not mainstream, and of which I have one that I gathered up on Spotify here:
and then migrated over to Qobuz here (click on image below for link to playlist):
but have then started a fresh playlist from Qobuz recommendations here (click on image below for link to playlist) .
This is a nice segue to:
4) Streaming playlists.
Not all algorithms are bad. I enjoyed Spotify’s Release Radar and as noted before, found my way to many a new act as a result. But I do much prefer Qobuz’s all-encompassing for all-subscribers New Releases weekly playlist which is not about algorithms but editorial recommendations, even if its frustratingly listed under Jazz; now that I know where to look for it, the Playlist has already introduced me to such diverse acts as The Joy, Arooj Aftab, and Sailor Honeymoon.
And then there are those who maintain their own individual playlists, like myself up above. Follow my friend John Matthews, who I’ve known since I was 11 and whose incredibly diverse and largely impeccable taste is evidenced by his Latest Shit mix, “forever changing” and which he insists you “not shuffle” given that it builds through genre and mood. If you either know every artist on here or don’t fall in love with at least one of the songs, you’ll have to prove it to me.
Bandcamp is also constantly recommending music, doing Best of Lists, and putting together playlists (here is it’s Best of Punk 2024 so far if you have the ears for it). There are so many options at hand. And if that’s not enough, did it occur to you to:
5) Go to a Gig!
At a club! S. W. Lauden writes about this important part of music discovery on a recent Remember the Lightning column - Are You Seeing Club Shows This Summer? - and rightly suggests (as I do) that you use the power of streaming to listen to an act you’ve never heard of in case they intrigue you; especially if, like me, you’re not drawn to spending your evening in a loud noisy backroom but want to know more about who’s playing down the road anyways.
Lord knows how many incredible artists I “discovered” as support acts over the years by just going to see them (or occasionally trusted as headliners on reputation alone), and that tradition continues: as noted recently, my son came across both Geese and Native when each of them opened, on separate shows, for local heroes, the possibly defunct now Bobby Lees.
And if none of these aforementioned ideas work, though I promise you they will, then:
6) Visit your local record shop.
Explore the racks. Ask questions. Be curious. Because no, the employees don’t bite. They can’t afford to. But the best of them are a fountain of knowledge and minutia. And hey, you never know who else might join the conversation and where it might lead. Interaction: It’s time for a revival.
What methods do you use to discover “new” music? Feel free to comment below.
This is a wonderful article, thank you! I do try to spend as much time as possible on musical discovery but found it hard when I was working (just retired a few weeks ago) to stay on top of it all. I did manage to giveaway good listen to at least 300 new albums a year and have been compiling a top 50 album list for over a decade (mainly for my own enjoyment although I did publish my 2023 AOTY list on Substack).
I’m traveling for a few months before relocating to the UK in January. At that point I’ll have a little more time to discover new music. I’ve saved this post to help point me in the right direction, particularly the online radio suggestions as that’s not a source I’ve really tapped before. But I’m also hoping to get back into vinyl and expect that to open up some new musical discovery sources as well.
I’m still finding good recommendations on Spotify playlists, whether the Release Radar or some individual music press playlists like NPR or Line of Best Fit. Even the Discovery Weekly playlists have generated some good new music over the years.
Way back in the day I used to buy CMJ New Music religiously and the magazine and the included CD used to yield so many gems for me. There doesn’t seem to be anything quite like that anymore and I miss it.
The best musical discovery source I’m into right now is Substack for sure. The comments section on Kevin’s Monday article is always a must visit and I’m subscribed to at least a couple dozen great writers here who continue to feed me new (or new-to-me) music. It’s been an absolute joy to be here for the last year and my musical universe has expanded significantly.
This goes in the Save folder!
As a dad, I'm the one always seeking new indie music while one son loves the 90s and metal (and plays / sings it) and the other loves the 80s. I've just always have had an insatiable appetite for discovering new music. If photography weren't the creative outlet I've taken up in the last 1.5 years to counteract 15+ years of corporate experience, I'd probably be exploring what I could do in the world of music instead.
In the car I listen to XMU. Online I subscribe to Bandcamp updates. I was a Paste magazine subscriber back when it was print and came with a disc of new-to-me music. Also was an early subscriber to Third Man Records and had s many new artists vinyl shipped to me.
Spotify was great when I was on it but quit it about 2 year ago. Now on Apple Music but it does not seem to feed me as much new music...but I'm also not putting as much effort into curating lately.
Great to hear about the Hudson Valley suggestions as I am in northern NJ.
Have you seen or heard Kingston Kane yet? Immediate fan.
I saw them at last year's Rosendale Street Festival.
This fest seems to be a great place to discover new local music. The next one is coming up on July 20/21.