social.noyu.me

humans are association-creatures, if you're hit with random stuff all the time we call that being scatter-brained, we need to be able to remember the journey for there to be meaning

the journey is sometimes just “my friend recommended this to me”. but that recommendation tells me something about my friend, and gives an insight into their taste, which may blossom into a dialogue. i can't have a dialogue with the machine (see also: my blogpost about twitter)

@hikari what is the old fashioned way, how does it work

some random person says "YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO THIS"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFBfA9nkEHw

maidcore :D

You should listen to this
La Dance Du Paradisier - Inqiteka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CzMt7PlVYk

@alina the starting point can be basically anything, including even an algorithmic recommendation, but the branching paths are things like: i liked this song, so i'm going to buy the album; i liked this album, i'll listen to the artist's other songs; i like this artist, did any of the band members ever join other bands, i'll check those out; i like this artist, who were they inspired by, i'll listen to them; (to give a few examples!)

The order of importance that I use to look for music is the following:

• Recommendations from people you trust who talk about music (I watch Fantano more for that than for the reviews).
• Recommendations from friends and mutuals.
• Search for songs in the same genre as other songs you already like / Search for songs by the same artists who made songs you already like.
• Music discussion forums (Reddit and such).
• Listen to the radio or any other media that doesn't work with algorithms.

It takes time and effort, but is highly rewarding. Also it creates an emotional connection with the music you hear, it feels more like your music.

@none @alina yeah the emotional connection is really really important!

I find music by going through the discography of an artist I like/heard of, and listening to their albums.

@irelephant yeah i've been trying to do this! can be very rewarding

@hikari I know what you mean and absolutely vibe with this, that it's about the journey of associations but think labelling it the "old-fashioned" way might make the point miss some folks, that there's still "new" ways to do it the "old" way

Like there's a some music I discovered as the result of SiIvagunner's High Quality Video Game RIPs (or other mashup artists), that rabbit hole of other music hiding in the guise of a different song, them pairing well, the "joke" being reused enough I start to recognise it, like it, seek out the original and now have these really strong associations between it and other tracks

And that's still a journey of associations, but feels very much a new-school approach to discovery - sure remixes and mashups have existed for ages, but you were much less likely to find them on your friends' mixtape or at the club or on some bootleg album and the like than the current accessibility

Like, for all the current state of music and copyright and such sucks, if you're willing to ignore algorithimic recommendations, discovery is easier than ever when you can so easily look up songs for free, find album lists and inspirations online, check out bandcamps, soundclounds, trivia, what other groups did X musician perform in, is their footage of this live-only song on no album that someone recorded and made a low quality mp3 of, etc

And because I'm very firmly in the "the music I listen to is my library of actual files, mp3, midi, ogg, flac or otherwise" it means every single song I choose to keep has a story, had a deliberate decision to be included - there are songs I like and may occasionally listen to online, that are NOT in my music library, but if they are, that Means Something

idk, preaching to the choir here, and I certaintly can't actually remember most of the stories behind each track (and often the story isn't much more than a recommendation or liking another track the artist did or it being used as background music in a video or game) but...yeah, I don't understand how folks can just listen to an endless randomised "for you" stream of stuff tbh

@hikari Yes!! Yes, exactly