Listening to New Music

There was a conversation going on today about people not listening to new music beyond their 20's. That everyone was stuck listening to the music of their youth for the rest of their lives according to some study done in England. Of course most of the people in this particular Facebook group were music nerds of some sort and all had large collections. While most disagreed with the study everyone knew someone that was musically stuck in a genre or time period. I commented with a short statement to the group but I could have gone on and on like I'm doing here.

A few years ago I was at a party in Philly with a group of people from our old neighborhood and on the stereo was a mix I made of music we listened and partied together back in the day. It was classic rock and soul music from the 60's and early 70's. They loved the music exclaimed it was the best music ever and there has been nothing as good since then. A couple of people went on to mock everything post 1976 and then asked me what's my favorite music. I replied that it would be something new that I hadn't ever heard before.

I've always liked exploring new music. I was doing it as a young teenager and I'm still doing it now. I've always had a Friday ritual of checking out my regular several sources of new music releases. I've been doing it for decades. 

It's getting close to the end of the year and almost time for my annual ritual of looking at every end of the year best of new music releases I can find. I would take those list to put together a list of music to explore during the new year.

Back in my teenage years and well into early adulthood one of my great sources of new music was the local record store. I loved browsing the album bins and especially liked the section under the heading of New Releases. I also got to know the people in the record stores and encouraged them to tell me about great new music. Also from a very early age I was obsessed with reading record reviews not just in music magazines but also regular magazines and newspapers too. I used to write down in notebooks the names of new groups and albums I was interested in checking out. 

Of course there was also the radio stations that were playing new music. Many of the stations I had been listening to throughout my life up until that point suddenly switched formats to classic rock in the mid to late 70's and the only new music they played would be something that sounded like the music they were already playing. There was also a racists backlash at these stations against black music when disco became popular. That was a turning point for me. I couldn't listen to any classic rock format stations anymore.

Around that time I was seriously exploring back catalogs and new releases of blues, reggae, jazz and even classical music. I was all over the place. I was also listening to a lot of punk and new wave at the end of the 70's. By the early 80's I was very much into anything new and also playing records in bars. I played a mix of old and new during my late night sessions in the sound booth.

During the past couple of decades I've been using a variety of websites to discover new releases in addition to my older sources which by now have all moved to the web. For the past few years I've also been using Spotify which has regular playlist of new releases. In addition I have been adding new releases I find in other sources such as the weekly list in the AllMusic site to add to my albums list in Spotify. The algorithms used to create personal playlist have been a good source of new releases for me because of these albums I've entered into the system as something I want to listen to.

Also every week I listen to the Spotify generated playlist new classical releases and enjoy in very much. 

The picture in this post is of the Rolling Stone 500 albums which I very much disagree with but I do use it and other lists like it to scan for any new music I might have missed along the way. I like looking at those types of list from more obscure publications.