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Comment by slouch | Hacker News Reader

This is a terrible guide that ignores the best algorithmic recommendations that spotify provides, the "Related Artist" feature from the artist page. If you are a life long music explorer, why didn't you mention the last.fm Similar Artist feature? Concert reminder services like songkick are great for learning which bands are touring with your favorite artists, too, in addition to suggesting artists based on your current likes. This is low effort.

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I agree. The post is _very_ low effort, but at least the discussion here has been somewhat interesting. I've picked up a few new sources.

Spotify's algorithmic recommendations aren't very good. I use Spotify, but always build my playlists by hand, after finding music elsewhere. Typically that's Youtube, but I also follow the artists I like on twitter and get new songs from them.

What feature of Spotify was "not very good" for finding new artists?

edit: possible answers might be "Artist Radio", "my Discover Weekly playlist", "Related Artists page", "my Daily Mix playlists"

I don't think Spotify has any good features for finding new artists. I've used all of the ones you mentioned and generally don't like the playlists. Usually they play songs I already know, and the new ones they introduce I just skip. I get a very small hit rate of new music to listen to from Spotify versus other channels.

`and the new ones they introduce I just skip`

I think I found your problem. My Discover Weekly is always filled with great new artists I've never heard of, and there's generally at least 3-6 songs that I think are great (and want to explore the artist further). Note that I listened to roughly ~80,000 minutes of music last year (according to Spotify wrapped) with 7,600 songs played, so it wasn't a small amount.

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