I started dating a DJ

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.

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’ll answer as well:

I mainly listen to what’s in my current library, using shuffle. When I want to discover new music, I typically look at artists of songs I currently like, and see If I like any of their other works.

Ignoring artists and songs in my current library: I mainly discover music from media I consume, such as games, movies, TV and web videos. If I like a song, I’ll look it up, and add it to a playlist based on a category (mainly genre). If a song has a album, I may look into the album as well.

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.

Loaded question! When i was younger I had a list of stuff i wanted to try like classic rock which moved to other more obscure genres from the past while also keeping up with what was newer and semi popular through websites, articles, and local radio.

I have always gotten most music off my private pirate sites and use local apps to stream my entire library on my phone, pc, or anything else everywhere. It has gotten so good lately that it can build out radio style mixes based off popular track information and even using AI (first time i have ever thought it was useful) to build playlists of similar tracks in the library based off individual wave lengths to get the best accuracy. I tried using spotify once when i got 6 months free and found that i only used it like 3 times and found it more dificult to find what i wanted or new stuff to check out weirdly enough. These days i mostly just download whats new for artists i already know and see them in the top 10 of my pirate sites or just new stuff in the top 10 that fits the genres i like. At the end of the year ill check out top 50 lists to see if i missed anything and ill get them as well. Its worked out pretty good for the past 20 years now although as i get older it gets harder to find the time or interest in it like I used to…

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.

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.

There’s frankly far too much good music for me to even process.

I have a signal group called ‘music’ where friends post music, that alone would cover most of my needs.

I tend to either listen to albums or shuffle my whole library but like a bit of internet radio too.

I spent maybe 2yrs trying to deal with the cluterfuck of Spotify and it’s algorithms…kill it with fire. I have to deal with it at parties n stuff but helps me appreciate it’s not just my algorithm, those that love it and have been honing it for many years are being fed the same shite that came out of mine.

The idea that someone is struggling to find music that has an internet just seems insane to me, like saying how do you find porn, news or cat pics with computer.

Usually I’ve got a specific itch I’m trying to scratch, and often that itch is “novelty”. So I’ll pick a song I like and listen to other things by the same artist. Or listen to community radio. Or ask friends what new music they found recently.

One thing I started doing that I really like is asking peeps to give me mix CDs or handmade playlists instead of buying gifts for my birthday and Christmas.

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.

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/

Pull a random record out of the 1,000 or so I have and let it rip.

Unless I have something specific in mind of course.

1. A lot of music I find anymore comes from me either finding a CD at a thrift store or a second hand local record shop that has tons of CDs. Has to look good to me at the moment.
2. The algorithm that I tend to hate on yt has also brought me some random songs that I ended up listening to that I like. There ain’t no way I would have naturally found a certain furry song I really like, considering it’s all in Vietnamese, without the evil algorithm. Last I checked, I never talk about Vietnam unless they’re in the news that very rare time where I live, don’t know the language, etc. So the algorithm just pulled that my furry account must want it because furry.
3. If I like a song from someone, mainly referring to things like vocaloid and utau type songs, there’s a good chance I will eventually check out other songs from that person. VocaDB is pretty good for that if they don’t have a yt page considering even if they don’t have one, somebody else has probably already uploaded it to yt at some point. I can just look at a certain producers page and hope their song list is up to date or complete in the case of people who ain’t making vocaloid/utau/whatever music anymore.
4. Back on the topic of vocaloid/utau, I tend to be more likely to check out a song in the suggestion section of yt when listening to a song of this genre. Has found me some good songs.
5. Okay, final thing about vocaloid. I have found a few different songs I’ve never heard of that I end up really liking thanks to the Project Diva series and back when I played the Project Sekai mobile game. So checking licensed rhythm games is always a good option, I guess.

I listen from my own library on Plex. Currently I go alphabetically and add albums with 0 plays on my queue. Once I’ve listened to them all, I will use a smart list that populates from songs that are not played in last 90 days to keep it fresh.