Listening habits & finding music

#21

what @Reifferschizzle saida bout active listening i think is important. and especially trying to dissect the activity of listening to music in tandem with mindlessly surfing things whilst downloading/listening to music

i dont worry about finding new stuff too much. the older i get i gain more from going back on old things i havent heard in forever, apply perspective to the significance now, go from there. altho when im finding new stuff i typically only dig thru the small bandcamp/low youtube rating stuff. altho i have a whole diatribe w/r/t the ethics of what u choose to listen to with music

#22

Actually made it a project last summer to assemble as many blogs and sites and resources by which to find music that aren’t P4K or Spotify. Tho I gotta say, as long as the list may be, the quality was more than wanting…

One trend in listening habits that is fairly common but I didn’t really clock till hearing Jim DeRogatis comment upon it in a Kill Rock Stars podcast on criticism last year was how there’s a general leveling off in people’s interest in discovering music and pushing beyond their established tastes that occurs in one’s late twenties and thirties. Or as @Reifferschizzle puts it:

One thing I do miss is the energy to engage with music I don’t “get” and to delve into it sufficiently until I start to enjoy it. I’m too fickle for that now.

I realize this isn’t exactly mind-blowing but still, it’s been interesting to see this hardening of tastes amongst friends who I once spent hours digging through records with and a general disinterest in finding new music that differs from what they already like…usually find myself recommending stuff that’s just an extension of what they already like (as does their Spotify algorithm). And I’m in no way speaking ill of this, it’s just a really intriguing trend.

#23

I’d say its a combo of things, online stores, online russian paid/free sites, if you are into commerical rap probably some online ‘record pools’ . Youtube is cruical just for falling down those rabbit holes and seeing where they lead from a song that you like. Just following people /grounp that post music on fb or twitter can help. Sometimes just finding an artist you already like and finding their discogs and looking at the labels they posted on and then finding other artists on those labels

i’m really at a saturation point of good music, it seems like i get 10 eps, 4 albums and a 50
singles a week, but i professional dj (with no kids) and have a lot of time on my hands.

#24

Thanks, I want to do a web thing with it but I’ve been slow. Hopefully soon though.

I’m 32 now and it’s funny, I’ve actually found that changes in life circumstances as I’ve gotten older have continued to lead to things changing for me. Part of my music listening involved times where I would need music to drown out some kind of awful noise, and so I struggled with music that had a bit of silence to it. So as I got older and began to see less satisfaction from areas that used to be very satisfying for me, I also ended up moving somewhere quieter and have been able to get a lot out of music that I previously thought just wasn’t for me. I haven’t completely abandoned the taste I’ve been building up over time, but I do think part of this taste freeze is in part because people don’t take that next step to find if new life circumstances have opened anything up. Though of course around this time real life can get too real with kids etc. so it’s totally understandable why someone wouldn’t have the time to do it.

#25

where to heck do u get these illustrations these are awesome

#26

I definitley agree that getting older needn’t mean a narrowing of taste, or stagnation. There’s plenty of music I listen to now - Brazilian stuff, Spiritual and Fusion Jazz, Yacht Rock/AOR - that I would have been indifferent to hostile to some decades ago. What has changed concerning my level of engagement is that back in the day, if an artist or style came along that people I trusted liked, I would spend as much time with it as it would take for me to develop an appreciation for it. These days I’m more likely to just go “hmm, not for me”, and wait for the next thing that does click. Which I suppose is emotional maturity of a sort, but it closes off doors. And I don’t know if it’s entirely an aging thing - there’s also the insane amount of choice we’re exposed to now, the decline of tastemakers, “like what you like” as a kind of de facto orthodoxy of our time. But I dunno, I think the act of learning to like something you originally didn’t is of value in and of itself, and I do regret not really having the time for that anymore.

#27

oh man, through hours spent on google image hunts.

those ones in particular are from the encyclopedia serafinia (sp?) which was published in two volumes around 1979 I believe…that’s a particularly curious book!

#28

@zurkonic this is a fantastic resource. bookmarking now :slight_smile:

*6/6 edit: in your explanation on how to find liner notes on Discogs, may I suggest hyperlinking this page instead of the example you chose?

#29

I’ve been following this thread without posting for days, 'cause it feels like such a big subject for me. At this point my net is spread so wide, but I find I throw out so much of my catch because the time I have to actually listen and enjoy is more limited. There’s the whole FOMO thing that people have already talked about, which has abated in my thirties; my near-pathological need to hear new things is now satisfied by what I “keep”, and I don’t worry about the rest. I’ve grown as a person!

My net, so to speak, is cobbled from mostly old habits. BBC6 Music is on in the house often, or I catch up on Mary Ann Hobbs Recommends on iPlayer. MAH still knows what’s up, and she’s always broadcasting new and interesting things. Apart from her, Gilles Peterson is great, and Stuart Maconie and Don Letts on a Sunday night often lead me to things old and new.

My Twitter timeline features a lot of music freelancers and boutique labels, many of which are on Bandcamp, which is a whole other source of wonder - does anyone else just sit on the front page and watch the “selling right now” ticker, clicking on things that look interesting into new tabs? Popjustic on Twitter is a good beat on the mainstream, and I’m at the age now where I don’t give a shit about “guilty” pleasures, pop is good.

I used to stream NTS during the work day, but I’m not able to do that any more. I’ll occasionally catch up on Mixcloud. I always love Nabihah Iqbal’s (Throwing Shade) shows, her Muslim Jazz specials from a few years back are iconic.

Shouts to @adnhnrt, Bandcloud is my favourite weekly mailer.

Add in various other websites, YouTube, occasional recommendations from friends and it’s a lot. So I latch on to things and try not to worry about the rest. When I was younger I’d feel like I had to dive deep into every artist or genre I felt even a passing interest in - otherwise people might think I’m a poser! But actually, no-one cares, certainly not anyone I know in real life, and I’ve found I’m able to be questing and adventurous without being an obsessive goomba.

#30

Mary Ann Hobbs best thing since John Peel!

#31

haha actually I just remembered one shaaady morning on the S41 in Berlin coming home on a tuesday when everyone else was going to work, somehow with beer in hand I convinced the people seated around me to plug their headphones into each others devices, then switch devices every stop with the hope of ‘understanding each other better’

I vaguely remember ending up with some strange eastern bloc folk music, then this young sri lankan developer was blasting rage against the machine. i think I was bumping stereolab.

#32

Yes you certainly may! Thanks so much for the suggestion…adding it now:)

#33

:ok_hand: great recommendation

#34

I tend to export my digging to a handful of DJ’s and record labels I have come to trust for it, then just hoover up their show tracklists and maybe explore an artist or label further from there. Spotify occasionally reveals some gold but you have to sift it out from the ‘similar but mediocre’ pile first. Still a sucker for random esoteric artwork also. Surprisingly effective.

#35

When I lived in a city with a decent record store it was all about album covers, labels i became familiar with through some sort of online contact, and whatever was in the dollar bins that day.

On the internet it used to be hours and hours and hours of what.cd (RIP) still havent gotten on REDacted (has anyone here?) but will eventually…

I have 2 friends that I’ve known since back in the day. One has tended to lean to funk/soul/gangsterrap/gospel/reggae and the other goes for funk/reggae/psychedelicrock/blues/latin. i complete the Triforce with my house/techno/dnb/jungle/breaks/hiphop/bits and pieces of everything else. Together we have fun and debate tunes endlessly.

I used to listen to way too many mixes. So many that I didn’t soak up anything, it was in one ear out the other. This changed when I bought a pickup truck with a CD player. Now I burn CDs and listen to mixes/albums over the course of weeks and months. If its legit it stays in the truck. If not it goes to someone who might like it better than I do.

I usually have tunes going most evenings from 7-11 pm IF i’m not spinning records during that time. Often it’s an RA, FACT, FADER, Truants, Crack, Bunker, Honey Soundsystem, Dekmantel, Boiler Room, Comeme, Phonica, Groove, or Essential Mix. All of which usually come from one of my 3 Soundcloud feeds. Created multiple algorthyms to showcase 3 main sounds - harder dancefloor, softer dancefloor, ambient but everything pretty much bleeds these days.

I Spotify when I feel lazy and want to put together music I know well quickly into playlists for friends and fam, or when i want to impress a girl (mixtapes, the best valentine ever). I have a Discogs account but won’t go deep into it for fear of losing my ear in exchange for defining music by its price. I enjoy the mystery of digging too much, but maybe one day I’ll get money and this will change.

Also Bandcamp and of course going out to see good djs, word of mouth at shows, and good old radio with shazaam grabs. I could rant about the power of limiting your listening to a set number of things and listening actively and deeply in many places (earbuds, headphones, vehicle, monitors, living room speakers, laptop speakers, etc) buuuut ill save that for another thread one day…

and finally, this forum.

#36

my problem isn’t keeping up with new music thats easy in the age of internet lists my problem is that i can’t regress to that teenage state where i had no/few expectations. Becoming discerning is a curse within its own right. especially if you’re always about sonic fiction in your music. a lot of stuff i hear these days is really well produced but it doesn’t suck you into its own world.

#37

for me it often helps to know ABSOLUTELY nothing about the artist / album prior to listening. this isnt possible usually cus the internet but it happened recently for me with Skee Mask. Still know nothing about him/her and glad because i’m lost in the sonic landscape. Makes the gems that much more awesome when they come around :smiley:

#38

Completely agree, when I first discovered Drexciya I went out of my way to avoid any gossip about who they were and where they lived etc. I 100% wanted to live in a reality where this music was being made by aquatic aliens.

#39

@nickecks @proximitybay yep, since about 2013 it’s been my personal policy to not read interviews. purifies my appreciation for the art itself, not the individual.

#40

I stopped following musicians I like on social media for this reason.