With a number of responses to my curated playlists that I’ve shared from time to time, I’ve had a number of people ask me how or where I find the music I’m sharing. There is no right or wrong way, and today really is easier than ever to discover so many realms and niches of amazing music from around the globe.
Although I remember them fondly, gone are the days of needing to spend considerable time looking for a needle in the haystack. Heading into the city as a teenager, with A&B Sound on Seymour or Virgin Megastore at Burrard and Robson as the destination, you could count on eating away an entire afternoon moving between listening stations setup with showcased albums.
Fast-forward. Next track. Fast-forward. Next track. Next listening station. Maybe you find something you like the sound of. Is it worth investing the minimum $9.99 to acquire the album, on somewhat of a hope and a whim that you may one day grow to like album? Luckily, Vancouver was for many years noted as being the cheapest place in the world to buy CDs, as in most cases, maybe it was only the album artwork or an artist name you were curious about but weren’t able to even listen to before buying - such a start contrast to where we are today.
Having spent part of my adult life very focused on DJ activity, luckily I created some useful organizational habits to assist in my music collecting along the way. Especially with the advent of the iPhone and the Shazam app, finding music you hear along the way has become more and more accessible. You hear something you like, you Shazam it, and can come back to it later to see if you want to buy it off iTunes and add it to a playlist, based on certain themes or purposes you may have categorized in your library, for use somewhere at some point or some event in the future.
Fast-forward a few years later yet, introduce music streaming to replace online music sales (in most instances), and an entire new toolbox of music discovery techniques unfold. Since music streaming essentially doesn’t limit consumption with additional cost (or no cost at all in some cases, if you’re willing to listen to advertisements along the way), potentially more music gets listened to by more people. As a result, the way that many of us now listen to music continues to change and evolve.
Not dissimilarly to these curated playlists of my own, the current big music streaming services (eg. Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) have their own playlists already created, by mood, event, theme, you name it. Some of the origins of this now commonplace implement first showed in apps of the day such as Songza (RIP Songza - acquired and shut down by Google), which had all kinds of theme-based listening. Anyone up for "Sunday morning hangovers with a large coffee in hand"? I made that up, but it’s not far off the emotive and descriptive titles given to some of these playlists to help find the suitable soundtrack for the listener’s present reality.
Many other apps and platforms still survive today that help artists find listeners, and listeners discover new music. Many of them are based on aggregation of music blog posts from across the internet, such as Hype Machine or IndieShuffle. While others are music sharing services such as SoundCloud. They all have slightly varied nuanced purposes and functionality, but all play a role in sharing and discovering music.
Although you can sometimes feel like you’re in an echo chamber with the algorithms that the big players use in their methodology, you can also come across some great finds. Beyond listening to the relatively heavily-trafficked playlists provided by in-house staff at Apple Music or Spotify, one of my favourite techniques of present-day music listening is to create a radio station based on a song, or an artist. And from there often the chain can continue - hear someone or something you like and pivot down some varied music rabbit holes.
Speaking of algorithms, I have almost exclusively used Spotify for a certain genre and range of music, of which you can hear in much of my music curation. Based on what I listen to, like, add to playlists, Spotify dishes up more of what it thinks I’ll want to hear. If someone sends me a song and I’m not sure what it is, I’ll usually find it in Apple Music to be safe, just to be sure I don’t mess with what Spotify dishes up for me, especially in my Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists that I look forward to each Monday and Friday respectively. They automatically curate these playlists to give you more of what they think you like. So if you end up playing more music in genres that aren't where you naturally find yourself, or open a song that someone sent you, they might just send you more of something you're not expecting nor wanting.
But regardless, wherever and however I find music I like and want to come back to and possibly share, being disciplined and diligent in maintaining my organizational habits has been one of the keys to keeping this all alive. There's no wrong way to do it, but it's sure nice to sometimes know what other people do to give you other ideas on what you might like to try.