>We really need music search which follows more interesting routes through content rather than just 'people who like this also like' or 'here's another album by someone you already listen to'.
I wish we had something like /mu/ flowcharts[1] but in a more general way. So after playing a song you can get a question or a prompt of what you liked and get some suggestion based on the input.
But IMO, music recommendation peaked 10 years ago with Last.fm and it's only been downhill since then, which is a shame because we had a lot of cool music in the last years, but the exploration is getting harder. But who knows, maybe I'm just getting old and I don't hang around the hip places anymore.
I really enjoyed 8tracks back in its prime: it was a social network for user-created playlists, and it made finding cool new music really easy. The playlists were often very well thought out; nothing like the playlists you'll find on Spotify.
There is rateyourmusic.com, which is positioned as sort of a Letterboxd for music, but I haven't used it much.
Music discoverability is a big problem I'd like to solve, especially now that I'm in my 30s and don't really have the sort of social circle these days that would expose me to cool new music.
I've toyed with the idea of making an 8tracks-like service, where tastemakers can create playlists to share, and the streaming happens via the API of whatever streaming services you're subscribed to (Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, whatever).
If anyone is interested in a project like this, feel free to reach out.
last.fm is still around, although I don't use it for recommendations.
I've recently enjoyed using RYM to find music. Start with an artist/album I like, click on the genre, and try out the top-rated artists/albums.
It's a manual version of the flowchart, you're right that it'd be neat to automate that. I haven't even tried using RYM tags, but they'd probably be useful input, too.
Yeah, when I mentioned last.fm I meant last.fm radio, a short lived service that if I remember right, it was only supposed to be available on the UK, although with the easily bypassed checks of that time.
The description you make about rym sounds similar, so maybe i’ll take a look.
I wish we had something like /mu/ flowcharts[1] but in a more general way. So after playing a song you can get a question or a prompt of what you liked and get some suggestion based on the input.
But IMO, music recommendation peaked 10 years ago with Last.fm and it's only been downhill since then, which is a shame because we had a lot of cool music in the last years, but the exploration is getting harder. But who knows, maybe I'm just getting old and I don't hang around the hip places anymore.
1: https://4chanmusic.fandom.com/wiki/Flowcharts