Last month kicked the year off in a panic: political conflict ripped into our screens, threatening to upheave TikTok, Gen Z’s most cherished marketplace of brainrot. Disregarding the staged melodrama of Donald Trump and CEO Shou Chew’s back–and–forth, TikTok went into meltdown mode; creators delivered teary–eyed goodbyes, reminisced on the app’s quarantine days, and made desperate last–ditch efforts to learn Chinese. But one worry stood out to me in particular: “Where will I find new music?”
It isn’t an easy question to answer. There’s a whole generation out there who’ve never had to search for good tunes in their life. Over the last few years, TikTok’s algorithms reliably dished out a disorganized mess of bangers, from the stickiest chart–toppers to stray Chinese smash ballads. Soundbite subcultures have continually bubbled up, from multiple surges of digicore to an almost fetishistic interest in Japanese pop. Some of the shit that got big on TikTok was downright miraculous—no one could’ve predicted Rx Papi blowing up in the way he did with "12 Stout Street," but I thank God every day for it.
Despite the sporadic community–building (often guarded by trendsetters in empty mansions), TikTok remains a remarkably myopic lane to get music from—a medium constantly fragmented in a trillion micro–scenes you couldn’t ever keep up with. In the last few years, you might’ve missed out on revolutions in electronic music, new classics in an evolving underground rap world, and significantly more scenes globally. Plus, there’s the infinite wealth of records to plunge into from the past, whose virality on TikTok will likely never arrive.
So where do we go from here? How do we stay tapped in? The real answer is: It’s complicated. There are a hundred different avenues to go down, all of which vary in degree of nerdiness and obscurity. As such, I’ve suggested a few “layers” of music discovery, increasing slightly in esotericism as you read. Regardless, the bottom line is this: Follow your curiosities as far as they’ll take you. It can be difficult to find new music if you aren’t willing to do at least a little digging.
The first layer of discovery is easy enough: algorithms on other platforms. Beyond TikTok, the most popular way to find new music is through Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube recommendations. Their song radios, daily mixes, and discovery stations can haul up good finds on their own, unveiling whole genres you might’ve never known even about (and, on occasion, inventing a few—what the hell is "escape room," Spotify?). For a lot of people, these algorithms are enough—but music is way too wide a universe to not do some searching on our own.
The second, broadest, and most obvious layer of discovery is just word–of–mouth. This can involve talking to people you know, hearing about stuff on social media, or just ID’ing tracks at the club. This doesn’t need much explanation. If you want to stay tapped in, you tap into the places everyone’s at. It can mean anything from listening to your friend’s 25–hour R&B playlist, to watching streamers like Plaqueboymax cook up with Babytron, to getting caught up in threads on r/popheads (not actually recommending this—please don’t spend much time on Reddit). It’s also worth following your favorite artists on their respective platforms (X, Instagram, etc.) for new releases and shows, of course, but also the off chance of finding a sweet recommendation. Diversity is key here: from all this alone, you can end up with a diet of gems you’d be hard–pressed to find anywhere else.
Then, there’s the third layer, and here’s where we might breach normalcy: publications. That of course includes Street, but also every other major and minor outlet doing all the discovering and journalism keeping the scene alive. There’s a lot of good shit out there, from Resident Advisor’s insistence on keeping up with all the best electronic to Bandcamp Daily’s reporting on all things indie. More granularly, you might want to identify and follow specific reviewers who really know their shit, like intensely thorough scene reporter James Gui, Brazilian–funk–head Billdifferen, and the bane of all oldheads, Alphonse Pierre, who seems to get into controversy with every other review he takes on.
Blogs, too, allow free rein for some of the most unique writers to shine lights on their niche interests. There’s a reason why hip hop had some of its most illustrious years in its late–aughts blog era. Any genre you’re interested in is bound to have a couple of folks who’ve written everything there is to know about it. And there’s a goldmine of voices on Substack—a notoriously snobbish blogosphere for millennials but also a hub for some of the busiest diggers to share their unearthed riches. Newsletters like Tone Glow, with some of the most distinctive experimental music essayists and interviewers around, and Upee Review, which has turned me onto a ton of the best underground stuff coming out of China, constantly churn out insightful work.
The fourth layer—and one you really can’t get involved in without being considered a nerd—are the sites dedicated to music discussion. There’s a lot out there, but the largest are Rateyourmusic and Album of The Year—sites both considered the “Letterboxd” of music, reputed for being echo chambers but possibly invaluable for developing personal taste. Mostly I’ll talk about Rateyourmusic, which is older, and designed much better for discovery. There’s a lot going on with this site (its UI is more than a bit outdated), but there’s only two features you should care about.
First, there are charts—filtered by genre, language, and year. Typically, this page is an echo chamber: the yearly album ranking aggregate ends up being a mess of sitewide genre biases. But narrowing the search gets you more obscure releases rated by people more familiar with the music’s context. It’s the best way to get a taste for any genre immediately (besides just looking it up on YouTube, which I’d also recommend). If you want to know the best French–language synthpop of the 90s, it’s just a few clicks away.
And second, there are lists, made by those who know what they’re talking about intimately, and have curated an array of stuff they think the world should know about. Want to keep up with the best ever cloud rap according to this random guy? Every K–Pop release in 2025? Every vocaloid–shoegaze song ever? Hundreds of opinions on the best albums of the year? Rateyourmusic has you covered.
The layers of music discovery go much deeper than what I’ve outlined so far. But for the vast majority of people, spending hours looking for tapes on Soulseek and getting involved in niche Discord servers just isn’t an accessible or desirable option—very understandably. So for my sake and yours, I’ll stop here—we’re a far cry from TikTok now, anyway.
With all this, I want to emphasize again that music is an unfathomably huge medium. Coming across cool artists with massive followings and thinking “how the hell did I not know about this?” is just a fact of life. Even more satisfying is coming across hidden gems, and being the one to share them with the world. As I’ve said, you never actually need to be doing all the digging, and there’s nothing wrong with being guided by your For You Page. But if you’re down to be freed from the algorithm, then conscious music discovery really does prove to be a rewarding path to take.
