A lot of these posts end up being responses to questions I get asked often, so I think I’m writing them to memorialize the answers somewhere, so that after I’m gone, the “wisdom” (???) will live forever somewhere, on the internet, where nothing ever dies.

Adam and I have been recording a music podcast for 11 years — we’re currently at 230-something episodes — in which we find one recently-released album to discuss in depth. I do most of the work of finding potential candidates, because I already spend a lot of time and energy on discovering new music. People sometimes ask how I discover new music, because they find themselves listening to the same old albums over and over again. I always say, first off, that it kind of has to be a hobby that you’re willing to devote time to, and if your main hobbies are raising children and/or working too much, it might just have to be something you leave behind for the time being (or just listen to your friend Gaelen’s recommendations!). ;) Anyway, here are my methods:

REVIEWS AND BLOGS

I follow a lot of websites (via RSS or social media, like Bluesky) that review and recommend music. I’ve gotten pretty good at being able to read a review and determine if it’s something I’m probably going to like. Sites I read religiously are Pitchfork’s new album reviews, Stereogum’s “Heavy Rotation” section, Paste Magazine’s Music section, and the See/Saw “Punk This Week” newsletter. Sites I read less religiously are NPR Music, the “indieheads” subreddit, Rolling Stone, and Brooklyn Vegan.

PODCASTS

I listen to a few music review podcasts, including All Songs Considered, See/Saw, Rolling Stone Music Now, and KEXP’s In Our Headphones. Of course, I think Adam’s and my own podcast, For the Record, is a pretty good listen!

RADIO STATION PLAYLISTS

I don’t actually listen to the radio much, but I look at certain radio station’s charts to see what’s popping up. In particular: KEXP, BFF.fm, and KCRW.

LIVE MUSIC

For more than a decade, my biggest avenue of musical discovery has been going to the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas every year. SXSW is not a “festival” the way most people think of it, it’s about 1,000 mostly-unknown bands coming from around the world to play at roughly 100 small venues across Austin, to industry people and tastemakers. I spend months in advance listening to the artists who have been invited, and deciding, on the basis of a handful of songs, whether to add them to our schedule. We can usually only see 90-100 artists over the course of the week, but I always leave with new discoveries I’m really excited about. Unfortunately, they are significantly scaling down the music portion of SXSW next year, and making the whole thing overlap with SXSW “Interactive,” which is all the worst tech bros with whom I hate having to share space for the one night it had previously overlapped. So the future is uncertain.

Here at home, I look through the music calendars of every local venue once a month, and put the ones that I think I or my friends might be interested in into a shared Google doc. When someone I’m interested in comes to town, I try and see them live.

PLAYLISTS

Certain radio stations and programs, like NPR’s All Songs Considered, curate “New Music” playlists on Spotify that you can follow. Personally, I have my own “Current Rotation” playlist, which is pretty much all I listen to. As I gather music from the above sources, it goes onto the playlist, and what doesn’t resonate with me gets removed in regular prunings. You can “follow” it on Spotify if you want to see what I’m listening to.