I’m told that Spotify now has an AI dj who has personalized commentary in between the algorithm’s music recommendations. First it was the writers, and now, AI is coming for the disc jockey. As described by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton in their book, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, “DJing is not about choosing a few tunes. It is about generating shared moods… In the hands of a master, records create rituals of spiritual communion that can be the most powerful events in people’s lives.” It is quite scary to think big tech could be coming for humanity’s craft of spiritual communion, and though we’re not necessarily there yet, we also… kind of are?
I know what you’re all thinking, another post of mine, coming for Spotify’s throat as I continue to give them $10.99 of my cold hard earned cash every month. But I’m really just out here trying to hold The Man accountable because so many of Spotify’s functions pose a real threat to beloved elements of the music experience. The ease and accessibility of tools like Discovery Weekly, Daily Mix, and the song radio function are tough to resist; they do all the heavy lifting for us, and may even be able to predict the direction our taste is evolving toward.
But they take from us, too. Along with our personal data, Spotify robs us of our autonomous hunt for new music and the sweet sweet memory of discovering a new musician by chance. I’ll never forget the first time I heard Ravyn Lenae on a sultry September afternoon; “Blossom Dearie” was playing over the speakers of some overpriced Williamsburg boutique. I listened closely to make out the lyrics, and typed whatever I could make out into Google. Very grassroots of me.
As a tween I would listen to my favorite songs on YouTube and find new ones with the “suggested” bar on the right side (the original Spotify song radio). I read Alternative Press at the newsstand in the mall, browsed through CDs at Newbury Comics, and read concert reviews in The Dig, the free newspaper stacked at the T station in my hometown.
Today, the context of music discovery is commodified, as Josh Terry explores in No Expectations 024: Private Life: “I do think something’s been lost in the fact that discovering music is no longer work… Even when I like a band, I usually forget song titles way easier than I used to buying CDs and actually searching stores as a kid. When music comes out of your phone and laptop, it’s tough to keep it from being an ephemeral experience.”
And then it’s also like, are we even supposed to have access to a limitless amount of music at the touch of our fingertips? Are our brains fit to handle that? Definitely not.
Autonomous music discovery is still alive and well, and I’m here to put you on to the ways I’ve found some of my favorite musicians outside of artificial intelligence, algorithms, and the next unsettling tool The Man musters up.
I simply cannot gas up deep cuts enough. This YouTube channel, created by Oliver Kemp, is the very inspiration behind this luscious music blog. This channel has got some extremely thorough videos on niche genres like krautrock, grime, and no wave. Kemp takes a deep dive into profiling specific artists (Death Grips, Fugazi, Leonard Cohen, etc.), and he’s even got his own tips on how to find new music. And he’s not Anthony Fantano.
Duh. The anti-Spotify music discovery platform and community that actually pays their artists and gives autonomy back to the consumer. Explore new music through their many genre and subgenre categories, and try to make your music purchases on their designated Bandcamp Fridays, where 100% of the proceeds go directly to the music maker.
Record labels
I found L’Rain, whose Fatigue was my 2021 AOTY, by looking up Jessica Pratt’s label, Mexican Summer. Labels will almost always list their artists on their website. Ghostly, Topshelf, and PAN are some of my faves.
Blogs / pubs / etc.
Though they haven’t been the same since Conde Naste bought them out in 2015, Pitchfork has always been a tried and true music discovery method for my tastes. But better yet, the original Pitchfork founder still tweets out new music recs, “What’s good this week,” on a weekly basis.
The Quietus is another publication I read regularly, and Audiotree is another great resource if you’re into loads of indie sleaze. They’re technically a label, but also double as an indie NPR tiny desk.
And of my fellow small town bloggers, endaural is fucking incredible.
Has anyone else heard of this? This one is at the end because it is unfortunately a product of Spotify’s algorithm, but holy shit. It’s genre vomit sprawled across a single webpage. This site has samples from every genre ever made scattered across an endless scrolling abyss.
The Peeling 
Love you sweetie
LikeLike