How To Expand The Variety Of Music You Listen To
I often find myself stuck in the same loop of songs, over and over, day after day, and wish that I simply had a way to find new songs to love immediately, without having to listen through hundreds that I do not care for. This is hard to achieve, but I have found some ways that come close to this ideal.
Below I will show you some methods that will help you to find new songs to fall in love with relatively quickly. These are the methods that work for me, and have resulted in the finding of some of the songs that are now the closest to my heart.
The Radio
This first method is so obvious that I often find myself looking past it. Even though some radio stations are tiresome, when you find the right one that suits you, they can be fun. Another benefit of listening to music on the radio is that you can put your mind to something else while it is playing, because the radio requires no input from you to play its songs.
As you work, if a song catches your attention, you can write it down, save it to your phone, or add it to your Spotify.
The BBC radio stations play a variety of music, played by different DJs throughout the day. I like to listen to BBC Radio 6 Music occasionally, however often the music played is not to my taste, or interruptions of the news or commentary interrupt my listening.
Absolute Radio is another of my favourites, because it gives the listener the freedom to choose the type of music they wish to listen to: classic rock, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, noughties, and their main radio station. I would strongly advise making an account and listening online, however, because otherwise the amount of adverts you have to listen to is extensive.
If you have any spare time, take a moment to look through the hundreds of internet radio stations available. Recently we got a radio that can access these stations, and has made the range of music available to my family much wider.
Spotify Discover Weekly
This resource on Spotify works incredibly well for some people. If you don’t have Spotify, I fully recommend it; it’s broadened my horizons and allowed me to access music that I didn’t even know existed. And it’s free!
Although the idea for Discover Weekly is brilliant, I found that it did not work so well for me, because I have saved many songs onto my Spotify that I do not particularly like, because I needed them at some point or another. However, if your Spotify songs are all songs you love, this playlist that gives you new music based on what you already listen to will work very well in helping you to find new songs to love.
Spotify Radio
Another Spotify feature, Spotify Radio does not work like a normal radio station. Instead it works very similarly to the Discover Weekly feature, but what I prefer about Radio is that it gives you the option to select what the music that plays is based off of. You can choose to have a stream of music based off a playlist, an artist, an album, a particular song… Whatever you wish!
In fact, while writing this article I was listening a Spotify Radio based off the song Search And Destroy, by Iggy and The Stooges.
Mappable
This is a new website, that was released quite recently, so I haven’t had much of a chance to play around with it. What I did find out is that you can access many ‘maps,’ make your own by adding bands to it, and use what they call the ‘subway’ to create a stream of music that follows a path between bands that are all connected by their sharing of a genre of music.
A fun way of exploring both the bands you already know, and other bands that you might be interested in.
Pick a word, any word
This is most definitely my favourite way of discovering new music. All you have to do is think of a word, and type it into Spotify, or whichever music application you like to use, and listen through the songs that are suggested.
In my case I entered the word ‘Apple’ and after not listening for too long, found two songs I liked: Apple Blossom, a laid-back, rustic tune by The White Stripes, soon to feature in The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino's next film, and Apple Pie Bed by Lawrence Arabia, an artist that I had not yet come across.
Once a song has begun to play, quite quickly you will know whether you might like it or if it is not for you, so this method finds you new music quite quickly and successfully!
Phone a friend
Know anyone with a passion for music, or a similar music taste to you? If you do, contact them right away and ask for suggestions. If you are lost for finding someone to talk to, I strongly advise joining a social media such as Tumblr. Here you can follow people that have similar interests to you, and can send a message to someone that you believe to have the same taste in music as you.
Recently I played a game with a Tumblr user, where we took turns choosing a song to listen to, and listened together. This resulted in a good playlist of songs that we both enjoyed. The playlist can be viewed here.
What music did your favourite musician listen to?
Read about your favourite artists and discover what they were listening to when they created your favourite song. You might come to love the bands that they did.
Movie Soundtracks
Another of my favourites. All you have to do is sit down and watch movies. If a song catches your attention, remember it for later and look for it on the movie’s soundtrack once the film is over.
I had great success in finding songs to fall in love with when watching Velvet Goldmine.
In conclusion…
I hope that some of these ideas have helped you to start on your way to finding the music you will love for years to come. Don’t get stuck in the same loop of songs; there’s so much more to explore!