YouTube still works like that. I get maybe one or two AI recommendations a month and just click the “don’t show me this crap” button

Used to be from friends.

Then it was Spotify since it had a good recommendation system (it doesn’t anymore) based on what I already liked.

Now it’s mostly the “what am I listening to” app on my phone while watching meme videos and what people share on Lemmy. All the music sharing communities here have pretty good taste.

I ditched YouTube Music and spent two weeks downloading all the albums I only had on there to my old iTunes folder which I stopped updating in 2018.
Now I can expand all the individual artist folders in Mac OS’ file browser to give me list of every album in my library, copy and paste that into an LLM (Deepseek in my case) and ask it for analysis and recommendation based on my taste.

It works incredibly well and lets me ask for specific recommendations for whatever I’m in the mood for. Same with movies. 10/10.

A mix of BBC radio 6 and recommendations from my cousin who works in the music industry. I can’t give you my cousin’s details, but radio 6 has a great range of music from some of the DJs.

I take the brute approach: get music packs bundling all releases for a day, load the albums into a lightweight player, filtered by genre. Anything sounding nice results in a beet import.

YouTube music is still pretty good for me, the canned playlists sometimes turn up good bands I’ve not heard of, and recommendations about as good as they ever were, not great but good.

But there is a community radio station here with a variety of shows, a couple are ‘alternative’ and those DJs have good taste and stay on top of new stuff.

Also opening bands at shows, and sometimes at yoga class, oddly.

Bandcamp new and notable

Bands I like touring with other bands

Record labels I like put out new stuff

From shows I watch and games I play. I don’t really go out of my way to search for music. If I find something interesting, it’s usually on YouTube.

Bamdcamp daily, people i follow on bandcamp, warez websites and features and collaborations

Decided to start paying for Qobuz amd its been a great time so far! Audio quality is top notch, and their focus on exploring individuals/bands albums are very good. Id recommend giving the service a go, they also pay artists a much better share compared to Spotify…

I do it by playing the long game.

Back in 2007 I embarked on a three year radio production degree, and the costs associated with that, all so I could start my own radio show 18 years later where I get people to suggest songs and I play them. And many of them I’ve never heard of.

spotify discover weekly. its been so finely tuned over the years that 90% of them are at least put in my liked playlist, and maybe 50% into my favorites playlist

i used to follow this “greatest _____ album” tournement thing on facebook, but stopped doing that because i dont use facebook anymore

you can also do the 1001albumsgenerator, which will give you a random album a day from the book “1001 albums you must hear before you die”

internet radio.

I can recomend moderated Internet-/DAB-Radio like “egoFM”, “ParadiseRadio”, or “byteFM”.
https://feddit.org/post/16991458

Or Bands of Newcomerfestivals like “Ab geht die Lutzi”, “Tollwood”, or whatever is near to you.

Instead of YT you can use NewPipe, or freeTube, or a good add-blocker.

I go through my kids’ playlists.

I ask friends and family to make me mix CDs instead of giving gifts.

I listen to local independent radio (Chirp in my case).

I carpool with coworkers sometimes and have them run the aux.

I ask people to tell me what their favorite song is.

I go to concerts early enough to see the opening acts, even if I’ve never heard of them.

And I participate in threads like this.