Spotify killed music discovery..
Just a quick look at Spotify’s “Browse” page will show you how much control Spotify has on the way we consume and discover music. All the playlists displayed on this page are based on:
- either your listening habits and are the result of an algorithm (Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists)
- or Spotify’s own curation, with its staff determining what new music is worth listening to or to what genres/moods/activities tracks belong to (New Music Friday and Spotify-owned playlists).
..but what if there was a more organic way to discover new music?
I’ve always had this really geeky habit when it comes to discovering new artists on Spotify: I can’t help myself but click on the album to check on what label the music was released. Then follows a Google search of that label to find more artists and more music from this label, often ending on a Bandcamp page or a Soundcloud page.
Record labels are the original tastemakers when it comes to finding new artists and releasing good music — then what if discovery was based on these labels’ tastes and curation?
Introducing lbld — a new way to discover music:
From this habit was born lbld (pronounced “labeled”) a weekly newsletter to help people (and myself) to find new music and artists from different indie record labels.
lbld is a newsletter delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning with a 20 track playlist from a different record label every week. The playlist is currently available only on Spotify but will be made available across more platforms in the near future.
Last year we launched the first season of lbld which featured music from labels such as Friends of Friends, Secret Songs, City Slang, Ghostly International; and from artists including Caribou, Gold Panda, Ta-ku, Nick Murphy and many more!
On Wednesday 14th February we’ll be launching the second season of lbld, with a brand new playlist delivered in your inbox every Wednesday morning at 8am (UK time).
To keep you waiting you can listen to a compilation of our favourite tracks from all the record labels we’ve featured in the first season. And if you want to dig a bit deeper, then check out all the previous playlists here.
