- My bandcamp feed - we have a great community of like minded music lovers over there. And while I keep track of new releases anyway, Bandcamp will notify me of new release by my favorite labels.
- Small, human curated, online record stores. Piccadilly Records, Soul Jazz Records, Norman Records, clone.nl, Pacific Beach Vinyl, Red Eye Records, Phonica. You don't have to buy there if you prefer digital releases - I do and still value the selection and recommendations.
- magazine / review sites. Testpressing.org, Pitchfork, Resident Advisor, Fact, Music Is My Sanctuary, Stomp The Wax, Inverted Audio, A closer listen and many more. Of course that's my taste, but there are sites catering to every niche music interest. Find yours.
And when it comes to buying I require lossless audio, which thankfully isn't a problem these days:
- Bandcamp
- Boomkat
- Bleep
- Qobuz
- Label stores
- Physical copies from online or local record shops if there isn't a digital release available.
I have exactly the same set of sites for getting music. For electronic music, if you're fast and follow what's happening it's pretty easy to buy all the music you want. If you miss a release from a name like Ricardo Villalobos or one of the Romanians, good luck buying them from discogs with hundreds of euros. What.cd of course had them available.
For other music, I usually check http://dr.loudness-war.info/ for the best version and try to buy that from somewhere. Discogs used cds are a cheap and easy way to get the non-remastered versions delivered, stores like Qobuz usually only have the most recent remastering and nothing else.
Some artists like Björk have their best versions released only as rare double vinyl prints. For these what.cd was the only option if you didn't want to spend hundreds of euros to a couple of albums.
> If you miss a release from a name like Ricardo Villalobos or one of the Romanians, good luck buying them from discogs with hundreds of euros. What.cd of course had them available.
Yes, I'm not a fan of vinyl-only releases either. Whenever I have to buy vinyl, I do it rather reluctantly - while I actually like the idea of physical releases, I know I'll rip it, add it to my digital library and consume it from there. It's a necessity rather than a pleasure, but I'm not willing to pass on those Mood Hut or Music From Memory releases, let alone old rarities.
I have my turntables, a mixer and hundreds of vinyls. I've been recording them to flac format throughout the year and decided I prefer buying flac instead of physical if possible. Such a waste of resources to press plastic copies. The only plus I have to give for vinyl is that it forces the mix to be not that loud what the digital copy can be...
Is anyone ignoring the existence of last.fm (with regards to music discovery only)?
To me it's has always been the best recommendation engine ever, hands down, compared to all others (Spotify, Deezer, ecc).
It works by tracking what users with similar tastes are actually listening to (they call this feature scrobbling) which allows them to provide further recommendations and let you adventure on unexplored territory.
Then on your profile you will have a YouTube player playing all those recommendations, or a custom tag, genre, and so on.
It also has a great community where you can see how much you are musically compatible with other users.
Spotify (by a large margin), then YouTube (for discovery) and /mu/ (for community).
I still used What.cd for music I wanted offline access to (for running, flights, etc.) as well as the occasional leak or obscurity. But before I got Spotify I was downloading multiple albums a day.
Spotify really sucks for discovery! After 4 songs you will be listening to vague (not tailored) musical hits that seems to be recommended by someone discovering music for the first time. Pathetic!
The radios I find to be pretty shit for me (I read somewhere that Google Play Music has a better version of that). However the "Discover Weekly" feature on Spotify I've been very happy with and every week I have new music to listen to and it's mostly things I like.
Maybe it's worse for recommending certain genres? I know my friend complains about its hardstyle recommendations.
You really ought to give Spotify Discover a chance - my Discover tab is amazing - it feeds me a constant stream of new wave, dream pop, outsider music, early electronic music, ambient, underground rap - stuff that I like, but haven't heard. The more you use Spotify, the better Discover gets. Don't write it off before giving it enough data to help you.
