Tips for keeping up with new releases

Seen a lot of posts like this in last few days and curious how others keep up

Obviously the weekly thread on here is fantastic and I always discover something new each week.

I also still love review aggregators like any decent music and AOTY and sometimes Metacritic too.

I don’t tend to clock much on Twitter or Facebook nowadays (other than ads) but a few friends and musicians I follow are pretty good at sharing stuff on Instagram stories.

Still dip into the radio - not as much in last few months as I have been glued to the news and radio and podcasts whilst developing some political podcast projects. I kinda go all in and hyperfixate, so a bit behind on listening (just downloaded new Dangermouse, Nova Twins and Florist records)

Anyway I know we’ve done these kindsa threads before but I always find them fascinating and often discover one or two new things to add to my habits.

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i subscribe to a mailing list that collates most of the weeks rap and r&b albums, that’s about it

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Sign up to the Norman Records mailing list and read their newsletter once a week

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I find that my tidal recommendations are actually good

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trawl albumoftheyear.org new releases

follow good labels on bandcamp so they email me new stuff

also get lots of recs from Pan African Music’s 5 albums to listen to this week articles

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Same but found a lot of the other recommendations lacking in terms of keeping across but releases for some reason. Like, sometimes I just wanna head check out a new Doja Cat or Glass Animals record people seem to be raving about.

I think the main problem generally is like, how to filter out “good and a genre I’m interested in” from “I’m sure it’s great but it’s not my thing”.

Main one is the weekly threads on here (especially when people include a description)

Twitter is useful when artists I like tweet about artists they like.

I read all the end of year lists but it’s so time consuming for the amount of things I actually find and quite frustrating when you have to guess what the music they’re writing about actually sounds like

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sign me up GIF by MOST EXPENSIVEST

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I use RSS feeds and a news aggregator (I use Feedly) to keep track of a bunch of useful websites all in one place, including the Boomkat new releases feed and stuff like Loud & Quiet, Northern Transmissions, Louder Than War, The Quietus, etc.

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I have a number of playlists on Spotify I like which update every week so every Tuesday at work I listen to new songs off that, then I’ll go to a couple of review sites and have a listen to stuff on there I haven’t come across before.

Rolling threads on here really help too

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My front page has “recommendations for you” and “popular albums”, the latter seems to have loads of older stuff in there though. A “popular new releases” seems like a good idea yeah.

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Yep artists social media mentioning other artists new releases helps me prioritise new things to listen. Only issue I found is you have to be ready to listen right then or add to a list as can be a nightmare to find again, especially those who use Insta stories

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Also mentioned before but if I find a new band on Spotify I like, when I’m on desktop I’ll always go to their profile page - a lot of bands now have artist playlists where they put in songs they like/friends of theirs, which is a good tool for finding stuff as well

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Yeah keeping a list helps, I have a spreadsheet ( :warning: nerd alert :warning: ) so I can also keep track of what I’ve already listened to

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Following small labels I like. Often find they’ll shout out new releases of similar stuff on other labels (double double whammy often shout out polyvinyl and keeled scales)

Online places like GFP, for the rabbits, secret meeting and small albums (if anyone likes my recommendations, follow these guys!)

Various record shop mailouts (resident, Norman)

The weekly threads on here

Also have a monthly list I add to weekly, that then gets archived. And I massive annual playlist to dump things into

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The new releases playlist from Spotify has gone to absolute shit over the past 6mths or so mind.

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I get a good cluster around Christmas when the album of the year lists come out, it can take me months to even get through these. I have a little list of stuff I hear about through reviews, forums, plays on the radio, live bands, bands I am aware of doing new stuff but it is harder than it used to be somehow. In an odd way because there is just so much, with instant access through streaming. I used to have more of a steady trickle which I would buy or download which would naturally filter into daily listening. Now I just have this mass, I can listen to stuff once then never put it on again.

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I find rateyourmusic is great for new releases because it is very comprehensive.

After Tuesday I’ll usually run a dated check on the charting of the weekly releases - they rank them by an algorithm which factors in number of voters as well as average score. They update the total chart weekly on Tuesday nights, so I’ll add a date filter to the URL (just change the dates in the URL linked below) and check for anything scoring really well that I hadn’t already covered.

I tend to pay attention to anything hitting over 3.7(other than metal, which seems to score exceptionally well all the time, and maybe a little lower threshold for genres I’m particularly keen on). Sometimes it’s just amateur stuff that’s been voted for by mates, but often find some gems in niche genres that aren’t yet reviewed widely.

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I let @Octobadger and @paulo13 do it for me

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Forums and discord, maybe a bit of twitter. Basically use p4k as a running list of what has been released at this stage.

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