Related Recs

🎶

Making monthly playlists

These aren't curated playlists, they're just a collection of any new songs I discover and really like, or old songs I re-fall in love with. I then give each playlist a name that references how I feel or an event that happened that month. I was in a similar place to you a couple of years ago, but I've found doing this really helps me track my tastes and experiences every month, which I find is quite helpful in our streaming-dominated musicscape. When I used to actually download songs, it was easy to scroll through my library and be reminded of artists I'd forgotten about or had only listened to a couple of times. I've found that with streaming its really easy to lose track of who you listen to and enjoy, so it really flattens everything and causes you to either rely on the algorithm or your go-to past artists. As far as discovering new artists goes, there are still a few reliable sites and publications that review new albums (paste, gorilla vs. bear, pitchfork (sort of), etc.). I also like following or signing up for email newsletters (gasp!) from specific indie record labels that I enjoy. If you like several artists on the label, then chances are you'll like more, and they always notify you when something new is being released. Same goes for local venues. Check out the small stage acts coming through or various openers, even if you don't actually make it to the show. This is also a great way to get plugged into the local scene and it keeps you young, sort of.

@ruffianbandwidth

Feb 29, 2024

1

📴

DETACH from the algo, become an active participant in your own curation, form relationships to music, track your patterns

I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that aren’t an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to — which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since you’re listening to something really just because it’s the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take what’s served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order. so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, it’s meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework that’s still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether it’s available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data. Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so i’m forced to consider its value (usually i’ll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as i’ll buy a few releases i’ve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they don’t get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until i’m done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isn’t coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music. so how do you know what to order? for me, I’m getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether it’s bandcamp daily, y’all lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because it’s kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences it’s like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because there’s no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now i’m listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites. LAST thing i’ll say — because in yappin about this i’m realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of “vibes” and “aesthetics” and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship i’m forming with what i’ve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didn’t have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. that’s ok! maybe I rank it lower but now i’ve actually taken time to consider it, it’s in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often i’ll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason. aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume

@royallmonarch

Feb 29, 2024

25

🎧

Independent radio, searching youtube by playlist, Bandcamp. Discogs + soulseek

NTS and Do You Radio are two of my daily listens — NTS has a tracklist function too + a huge archive of mixes. Searching a favourite track on YouTube and then filtering by playlist is also really fun. Takes a little scrolling. Discogs and bandcamp are both marketplaces I often dip into for some discovery. Both have user-made lists. Discogs you can go down great rabbit holes by digging into a particular artist/musician/producer’s entire body of work. Bandcamp good for new grassroots music. Soulseek if you don’t mind a little piracy is also great. You can browse people’s entire music libraries. Some are really thoughtfully organised. There’s something oddly endearing about getting an impression for who someone is simply going off how they’ve organised their music and what they have.

@bread

Apr 29, 2024

Top Recs from @sam-valenti

😃

Jam City's LP

Prob fave this year

@sam-valenti

Dec 10, 2023

🎵

Brian Eno - Ambient 1/Music For Airports (1978)

Stripping back the cult of ENO and just looking at the music, Music For Airports has got it all. Forget the Isaac Newton-y backstory (TLDR: Eno is bedridden while recuperating after being hit by a car, friend visits and puts on record, volume too low to “hear” properly, turntable too far to reach, the idea of music as room “tint” ensues), and the brilliance of the technical execution, the tunes are what matter here. I actually met ENO once, yes, in an airport. I associate this music along with a lot of the ENO cannon as the search for a romantic life. That there is more going on than meets the eye, but only if you look for it. Also the idea of Eno as the consummate “non-musician” is very appealing/comforting to me. Eno apparently said he sought to create music “as ignorable as it is interesting” which is great, and is coincidentally the basis of my personality.

@sam-valenti

Apr 6, 2021

📚

Jeff Hirsch Books

I love record stores and the discovery that happens when old stock mixes with new. More recently I've been getting deeper into art books and love buying books for people as gifts. NYC has a great community of shops like Karma and Mast, and there’s a gaggle of independent vendors that work the fairs like the Printed Matter MoMA PS1 Art Book Fair. I started going to the fairs a few years ago. They are like record fairs but even crustier in some ways, full of curmudgeons and characters. Check The Booksellers documentary for a nice slice of this world. I have met a few dealers and developed some rapport, one of which is Jeff Hirsch Books in Illinois, which has an incredible inventory and their sales emails are one of my favorites of all types. Even if you don’t buy, you learn something.

@sam-valenti

Apr 6, 2021