When I was a teenager in the 80's, new music discovery was easy. You'd listen to radio, you had a few key influencer friends that were always on top of new music releases, you'd look at Billboard's hot 100 and you'd be able to find a lot of interesting stuff.

Fast forward to today, I'm not connected with early music adopters anymore and radio doesn't play anything original. Many music services have popped-up over the last 10 years but most are not accessible outside the US which means I still haven't found anything completely satisfying for new music discovery. Maybe it's because my music tastes are eclectic and a bit underground? In your opinion, what are the best ways today to discover new music and new artists?

The music of the 80s (and the fanzines and record stores of the 90s) have fully made their way online. I'm primarily using a handful of services and communities to find new (and old) music recommendations from friends, their friends and others whose opinions I highly respect.

My arsenal consists of Last.fm (old-school, I know), The Hype Machine (hypem.com) and Ex.fm (ex.fm) for recommendations/social radio and for serendipitous discovery, I'm following a plethora of track-posters and bands and labels on Tumblr, who are posting new tracks almost daily (including, but not limited to, the music tag on my tumblr - quasa.rs).

Currently, I discover new music from two sources - both of them weekly podcasts:

The R3-30 from CBC Radio3: music.cbc.ca

All Songs Considered from NPR Music: npr.org

I use the Band of the Day app on my iPad. It also has a website. bandofthedayapp.com Also I use KCRW radio station's app. Very eclectic. GotRadio's network has an Alternative Rock station on the internet. I listen to it through an app called TuneIn. It's free and you can easily check the artist's info and buy the song being played. In the pro version you can even record it.

If you have spotify I highly recommend the we are hunted app. Set to random on the emerging artist chart and use any song you like as a doorway to other affinity artists. They have a website as well. wearehunted.com

The only downside is spotify has completely changed my music consumption patterns. The more frequently you are exposed to new music the less time you spend with last week's favorites.

I'll second Colin Carmichael's recommendation of NPR's All Songs Considered podcast (npr.org) as a great source.

This isn't available in Canada just yet, but Spotify is supposed to be launching here soon, and Pitchfork (pitchfork.com) has a Spotify app that makes it easy to access their latest album reviews, so I tend to use that a lot.

Finally, end of year Best Of lists are a big one for me. It lacks the immediacy of some of the other approaches, but is nonetheless a great way to catch up on stuff you've missed. All Songs Considered and Pitchfork both do good year end lists.

+1 for The Hype Machine and Pitchfork. Also, WeAreHunted.com has some great stuff as well as a great Spotify App.

Does anyone else struggle with keeping track of stuff? I find that I find something great, add it to a playlist which I promptly forget about...

For the past year or so I have driven most of my music discovery through What.CD's top 10 charts, as well as from a variety of forums on reddit including this one reddit.com
which is really great if you combine it with the RPlaylister Android app play.google.com
I'm also a fan of NPR Tiny Desk Concerts npr.org
and La Bogotheque Take Away Shows youtube.com
and 8tracks 8tracks.com

My favorite source of late has been a weekly playlist put together by Al Kooper. themortonreport.com is great because he's met many of the artists on his playlist making him a source of "deep trivia". He's got a great sense of humour as well.

For Canadian artists, the rd.io is a good starting point. As Matt mentioned Canadians can't access Spotify, but Rdio works pretty well.

Grooveshark also has playlists grooveshark.com

I also find music from "curated events" ie festivals. These are always good for a delightful surprise or two and the websites for these events are getting much better at linking directly artist websites and music.

I believe in a systematic discovery of music. So my suggestion is to start off with a last.fm account, as their scrobbling technology stores everything you listen to from multiple sources. I connected my Spotify and Rdio accounts both to last.fm, so last.fm can keep track of my music taste and their recommendations are spot on.

This is the golden link I made my browser home page: last.fm (will only work if you're logged in).

I start every day with brand new recommendations including explanations of why it's recommended to me. Then I go to Spotify or Rdio to listen to them because ironically most of that music is not available on last.fm itself for you to listen to.

Also it's good to follow people who are die-hard music fans (like myself) since they put in the time to discover music and most people won't allocate that time. I'm xxbora on Spotify and boramusic on Rdio (mostly indie, electronic genres). When I like something I add it to my Spotify playlists which is viewable to the public and Rdio collection as well.

I think people should take the time to send their likeminded friends music and keep the love alive. I favorited a number of my Facebook friends in Spotify whom I know share my music taste and I make it a habit of sending them music on a regular basis with a single drag and drop.

Friends don't let friends listen to stale top 40 music.

When I started out in music discovery, it was all about the "top 100 of all time" magazines and a Limewire connection. That gave me my baseline knowledge.

The next step was, as others have recommended, CBC Radio 3 and now CBC Music cbcmusic.ca. That and the campus station that I to hear new stuff. A few things on Mixcloud, but not much.

Hype Machine was a revelation, and I've added Tumblr/ex.fm/Soundcloud to the regular roundup of fast-streaming.

The two online services that I'm really interested in right now are This Is My Jam and Plug.DJ. Their approaches are different-- This Is My Jam has some very interesting ideas about a "slow web" movement that they equate to MySpace nostalgia. You get one song and one song only, and once it's gone, so are all the likes and comments you've accrued.

Plug, on the other hand, is a real-time Turntable-esque environment, but at the same time, people I think are putting more thoughts into their choices because it affects their ability to choose different songs. These two are the places where I'm really "discovering" music right now, rather than just hearing stuff from artists and genres I already now I'll like.

The last one I'll mention is the music in Breaking Bad. I don't watch a lot of TV, so maybe it would be soundtracks in general, but the stuff Thomas Golubic picks is almost always new to me, and always great. vice.com

+1 for Hype Machine and NPR's All Songs Considered. Who knew that NPR would be a good place to find new music?

I think we rely so much on the internet for finding new music, but as the original post alluded to, there was a time that "analog" discovery was the norm.

I still find great music by visiting my local record stores, and checking out the staff picks or spending 15-20 minutes at the listening kiosks. My local store (vintagevinyl.com) also has a quasi-DJ spinning new stuff.

@ErikBates I'm curious about what (if anything) you find is better about the analog discovery system? Are staff picks better than trusted bloggers? Are listening kiosks better than Rdio? Is the quasi-DJ better than last.fm or turntable? I ask because this was never a big part of my experience as a music discoverer.

Earlier in this thread, Andrew Kurjata pointed out the "slow web" approach of This Is My Jam. I love this too. The one song at a time "slow web" mode seems to invite each song to express something more in terms of taste and significance at a particular point in time. This paired with the excellent social filters makes This Is My Jam compelling both as a discovery and curation experience. On the other hand, I like the realtime experience of Turntable FM too, when I have time to participate! There is nothing like being on the spot as a DJ in Turntable FM to give you an incentive to expand your own playlist and to explore new music. And the real time chat and themed rooms allow you to connect deeply with different music worlds.

I think what works for me about This Is My Jam and Plug.Dj is they are based on very deliberate decisions about what people want other people to listen to. It's not an algorithm and it's not the result of simply clicking "like" or "love" and amassing a massive stream without context or deliberation. One is real-time and the other is slow-moving, but they both aim to encourage the same thing.

Something that's struck me during the Branch is a question of whether better music discovery is even a problem that needs to be "solved"? I have over a month's worth of music stored in my iPod, plus a pretty decent vinyl/CD collection, not to mention the unlimited goods of the internet. I literally have more music to listen to in my pocket than most other generations even HEARD in their entire lives. So why do I keep hunting out more, rather than just going back to old favourites? And am I losing something by not doing that? I'm branching that conversation off, you're all invited.

I don't know that the DJ at Vintage Vinyl, or the "staff picks" section is inherently better than their digital counterparts. I think it comes down to preference, really.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of people on the internet trying to convince me of what music I should listen to on a daily basis. One can get incredibly overwhelmed by it. When I walk into a record store once a month or so (yay for payday!), I can expect to be able to browse my old favorites, and have a sampling of 15-20 new artists to experience.

I find the monthly playlists by birp.fm are invaluable. They always keep me one step ahead of most releases, so I'm up to date.

Even more so lately though, I have been using Rdio for music discovery. Using what is on the top charts, newly added, or on heavy rotation from your friends. Within the last few months I have managed to find a lot of music independently and at my own pace. Radio, however, is an outdated medium.

If you have an iOS device you should try with "Band of the day" bandofthedayapp.com
Other option is BandCamp.com where you can find a lot of indie music.

Hype Machine (hypem.com) is awesome, that's one of the two places I go to almost every day. This one is to find absolutely new names, as a lot of music blogs get really good fresh stuff. The second one is Soundcloud (soundcloud.com), for pre-selected feed of artists and labels I follow. This one is mostly for familiar names with their new material.

iOS is separate: I've been enjoying Songza (songza.com) more and more. They have really good (to my taste) playlists for any occasion and any mood, and occasionally you find something new. Though I wouldn't go there for the very latest pieces, Songza is more for the fit-the-mood music.

I've been using Last.fm a lot. It tracks your listening habits and recommends new artists based on what you already listen to.

8tracks is pretty helpful as well because you can pick the type/style of music you want to listen to, i.e. rap, rock, soul and it will find mixes based on those criteria. Users also put in tags like "quiet", "study", "relax" so you can specify the mood type as well.

Spotify I also use when I want to preview a new album before buying it. You have the option for a free account and aside from a 30 second ad every few songs, it's pretty great.