What are your biggest challenges when it comes to finding new music?

Personally, I find my streaming service's algorithm to be pretty bad at picking up on the mood I'm listening to at any particular time.

Spotify's Discover Weekly algorithm is the tops when it comes to finding music you will like personally. Only thing is you have to spend a fair amount of time training it before it becomes really effective. I used to listen to it 2x-3x a week so I could try and really make an informed decision on each song, and at the beginning weeks would go by without me finding anything. Also if you cast too wide of a net (like from all genres and eras) you risk the algorithm becoming too decentralized. I am pretty consistent with my most listened to bucket of music being contemporary progressive indie pop so I think that helped narrow it down sufficiently.

These days, I get about 80% of my music from DW, and about 95% of my favorite music and it is rare for me to dislike more than a handful of song's from each weeks. Just an example to how powerful it can be, here are two playlists made up of the songs from last week's DW:

A Fiery Furnace - baroque psychedelic

Best (for)Ever - new wave punk

Two completely distinct sounds suggested by one week's DW algorithm, featuring a ton of great genre tracks, mostly from the last 10-15 years, with a couple of throwback tracks that have been mostly forgotten with time.

/r/LetsTalkMusic Thread