How do you find contemporary music you like?

In other news, Apple Music is now including full credits on most of the music in their library. I think this is a godsend; I've always read the liner notes to find out who played, engineered, produced, etc.

⬇️ At the top of this menu: View Credits. 😀

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Spacerockfan said:
My immediate response is Bandcamp. There is so much music on Bandcamp in about every genre. The music ranges from awesome to awful. Over the years I have purchased over 500 albums on Bandcamp.

SiriusXM has also introduced me to a lot of new music. In particular, the BB King's Bluesville channel has cost me a lot of money buying CD's by artists I had never heard before.
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This is the one thanks. I had browsed them before, but it looks like it's grown quite a bit. Sort of album oriented, but I can live with that. Nothing wrong with albums, but I only get enough time to listen when I drive on trips.
 
"yea how do you find music"
what happened
 
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RVC said:
All my new to me contemporary music comes from either my 25 year old daughter or my 40 year old duo partner/best buddy (I’m 52 but act 72). They are both WAYYYY more open-minded about music than me, yet they both know my musical comfort zone. They frequently make recommendations that I end up loving.
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I get exposed to lots of new popular music via my high school students....and I expose them to al ot of old good music (they are pretty good at finding that too)

if we are talking "contemporary" like chamber music/classical, I get exposed to that via the drum corps/orchestral/band world.

if I used the "everything sounds the same" filter, I would have stopped looking for music after 1987. i have still found many bands that have elements that pull me into their thing, even of the core is "the same".

I have managed to also find a lot of great stuff on Youtube honestly.
 
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Xstr8edgtnrdrmrX said:
if we are talking "contemporary" like chamber music/classical, I get exposed to that via the drum corps/orchestral/band world.
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Redefining what modern is again. That is annoying idiom of the arts. Trying to talk about "new" music and redefining it as some period or genre "Modernism", "Post-modernism" yada yada. Some other words that define the concept: recent, trending or as DJ's say "fresh". Seems like artists should know better when that is appropriate. There I'm sorry, I had to make that clear. It is funny, some one calls a chamber music labeled as contemporary and they associate it with the genre, rather than understanding it as a word that means, "belonging to or occurring in the present."
 
I make a list and check out everything that gets recommended to me and sounds interesting.
That may be through articles, interviews, bands that get mentioned in the context of another
band a few times, musician friends, drum students, or of course by checking out everything
musicians I love are doing or have done.

My favourite bands for some years have been Leprous, Haken, Vola and lately Tesseract.
But I also like and listen to fairly different styles.
 
SmoothOperator said:
It's kind of strange, but it seems really difficult to find music that I like these days. Strange because there is more music and more ways to access it than ever, yet difficult because the charts and commercial outlets just aren't carrying it. So, you have to hunt around. I'm partial to dance oriented music that is more or less clean. Nursery rhyme bangers as they are. There are a couple meme songs, Baby Shark, What Does the Fox Say etc. That Pharrell song Happy is good...

I mean my gosh it's a big world, but mostly devoid of content to speak of.

You used to be able to look up meme songs, but anymore the big names post their songs on YouTube then claim they memes(no Drake songs aren't meme worthy.).
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I hear you but I'd still say fm radio is a fairly good way to go. But you should try and find some less top 40ish stations and go off the beaten path type dormats. Some of those will often have a new music segment somewhere. Also, college radio may help. WERS (Emerson College) has a good station. They're all over the map musically...and that's a good thing!
 
SmoothOperator said:
Redefining what modern is again. That is annoying idiom of the arts. Trying to talk about "new" music and redefining it as some period or genre "Modernism", "Post-modernism" yada yada. Some other words that define the concept: recent, trending or as DJ's say "fresh". Seems like artists should know better when that is appropriate. There I'm sorry, I had to make that clear. It is funny, some one calls a chamber music labeled as contemporary and they associate it with the genre, rather than understanding it as a word that means, "belonging to or occurring in the present."
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yeah...labels are sort of insignificant without context....

a lot of the aleatoric music played in chamber settings get labeled as "contemporary" b/c it doesn't fit other genre descriptions.

Many Cage, VAresé, Chavez coimpositions that were written 80+ years ago get lumped into "contemporary" b/c they have distinct soundscapes going on that don't fit "pop" music
 
Xstr8edgtnrdrmrX said:
yeah...labels are sort of insignificant without context....

a lot of the aleatoric music played in chamber settings get labeled as "contemporary" b/c it doesn't fit other genre descriptions.

Many Cage, VAresé, Chavez coimpositions that were written 80+ years ago get lumped into "contemporary" b/c they have distinct soundscapes going on that don't fit "pop" music
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Yeah, there is a sort of contemporary sound that comes to mind in classical music, like yesterdays warmed leftovers with modern production techniques. A contemporary remaster of Jimi Hendrix... Or contemporary imitations, a contemporary of Jimi Hendrix, but not as good.

Alas, I haven't a better term to refer to new music. No, I don't mean New Age. Though, I do like New Age sometimes.
 
Just to be extra pedantic, “contemporary” means “sharing the same time period”. IOW Billie Eilish is a contemporary of Bad Bunny; the Beatles were contemporary with the Stones. Those two were also contemporaries of Steve Reich and John Cage, who wrote “contemporary music” in the narrow sense of classical-style art music (not pop or folk) in the post-WWII years, where the word contemporary was supposed to divide them from the previous eras of classical composition. Now that they are dying of old age, is the art music of today “contemporary” or not? Depends on how stuck we are on labels we learned in school. But context would keep me from ever suggesting “contemporary classical” when someone asks how to find new contemporary music.
 
PorkPieGuy said:
I have two teens in my house, and we share each other's music.
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A common bond my son and I have is music. I've definitely influenced his musical tastes (he's the biggest Dylan fan I know) and growing up he knew more of the 60s 70s and 80s stuff than most of the other kids at school but he's definitely paid me back by exposing me to some of his generations music that I may not have heard otherwise.

As an aside a teacher once bumped his grade up a notch because he knew the film It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World...my favorite comedy movie!😅
 
joedrum said:
A common bond my son and I have is music. I've definitely influenced his musical tastes (he's the biggest Dylan fan I know) and growing up he knew more of the 60s 70s and 80s stuff than most of the other kids at school but he's definitely paid me back by exposing me to some of his generations music that I may not have heard otherwise.

As an aside a teacher once bumped his grade up a notch because he knew the film It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World...my favorite comedy movie!😅
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I don't understand the agism in music, I like to keep my caboose hooked up to the present. I don't listen to my parents' music, because I have different tastes, but even they kept with the times. They always had the newest Dylan, Neil Young or alt-Rock band( they liked REM ), and only kept a couple of the records from their youth around. Maybe a classic Crosby Stills Nash and Young.
 
Me personally my tastes are very far and wide. I can listen to stuff from before my time or listen to stuff coming out today. If it appeals to me then it appeals to me. Same with genres. I can be listening to country this week, classical next, and rock the following. I work with a lot of younger 25 to 35ers and it's surprising at how many of them like the music from my youth - 70s and 80s. A lot of em seem to hate the 90s for some reason though.
 
SmoothOperator said:
It's kind of strange, but it seems really difficult to find music that I like these days. Strange because there is more music and more ways to access it than ever, yet difficult because the charts and commercial outlets just aren't carrying it. So, you have to hunt around. I'm partial to dance oriented music that is more or less clean. Nursery rhyme bangers as they are. There are a couple meme songs, Baby Shark, What Does the Fox Say etc. That Pharrell song Happy is good...

I mean my gosh it's a big world, but mostly devoid of content to speak of.

You used to be able to look up meme songs, but anymore the big names post their songs on YouTube then claim they memes(no Drake songs aren't meme worthy.).
Click to expand...
Apple Music or Spotify for me. they have discover lists and radio stations that play all new stuff. I love Rock and Hard Rock, but a lot of the new stuff is not great. I like Rival sons and Black stone cherry, but they are 70's style rock , lol
 
SmoothOperator said:
I don't understand the agism in music, I like to keep my caboose hooked up to the present. I don't listen to my parents' music, because I have different tastes, but even they kept with the times. They always had the newest Dylan, Neil Young or alt-Rock band( they liked REM ), and only kept a couple of the records from their youth around. Maybe a classic Crosby Stills Nash and Young.
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Not to quote myself, but I was even into the Beatles for a while, and they were like, "Meh kid bubble gum rock." They listened to it because I liked at that age, but they never really listened to it.
 
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