Your method for discovering great music.

+@jbhiller,

Great thread OP!!! Do you listen to vinyl or CD? Well, even if you don’t, I do like Discogs for research. I like to look at granular facts about an album, like where it was recorded, record label, release data, who mastered it and so on. Discogs lets you link right to other albums, for example, that might be mastered by the same people. I highly recommend playing with the features in Discogs.

Since I’m not a streamer yet, I used to do a lot of crate digging, before covid that is. No Roon, Qobuz,Tidal, or Spotify.

But I’m also fortunate enough to live in area where 91.9 WCLK The Jazz of The City at Clark Atlanta University and a few ’underground’ college stations such as Georgia State's Album 88 keeps me tuned in.

Does anybody listen to FM radio in the car anymore? And you here something you like and you check the radio stations playlist?

You know you’re getting older when you see ’St. Paul and the Broken Bones’ and you think this is the guy St. Paul, who is a member of the group ’The Family’ one of Prince’s spin off bands...

Stereophile, The Absolute Sound, a HiFi+ all have a review section at the end of every issue. I just search Qobuz for the ones I find interesting… I only think one was not there when I tried.

@tyray I live in the Charlotte, NC radio market. And much like Charlotte itself, the radio offerings are pretty cookie cutter. In fact, its a wasteland. At least in terms of rock/indie etc. I don't know about jazz. I still scan the channels in the car but you are not going to hear anything new or interesting on Charlotte radio stations unless I'm missing something after being in the area for 25 years.

One exception is WDAV out of Davidson College. It is a fantastic classical music station. I'm only marginally into classical though.

There is an oldies station south of here that is pretty good. They occasionally play stuff I've never heard from the 60s and 70s..........but there is a catch.......the reason I haven't heard most of those is because they are AWFUL. ;-)

Several people have mentioned the various "what are you listening to" threads here on Audiogon. I used to frequent those threads and over the last few years I have been turned onto some artists that I remain really fond of.

However, what you mostly get in those threads is just a name of a song or an artist or an album. Nothing wrong with that. But from the perspective of looking for recommendations these threads don't offer much more than that. It would be awesome if people would include why they are listening to that song or artist, or what they like or dislike about it, what it means to them. I know that takes more work but it would certainly have more meaning than simply what another person is listening to. For whatever reason it seems very popular simply to state "I am listening to 'x' " and leave it at that.

Radio supplies me with lots of random artists I would otherwise not know about( I’m lucky that I live in a market with two public radio stations, a great jazz station and a great classical station).

Radio Paradise is another good source. 

I also have a close friend who’s mother was a concert pianist/composer/broadway musical writer and he has been a great source of artists.

And then there is YouTube. In between my searches for DIY audio how too’s, gear reviews and news stories, there will be some random artist that shows up in my feed. Beth Hart was a recent “discovery” for me. 

Sometimes, it’s just about letting the randomness of the universe express itself.