As someone who is aging. Late thirties. How can I keep my finger on the pulse of current trends, particularly in music?
As an example. I grew up in hip-hop but at a certain point I stopped listening to new people and realised recently that I’d slept on some bangers. Like Kendrick particularly, but even people like Juice WRLD and Xxxtentacion.
The same for the Kendrick and Drake (the nonce) beef which has given some rabbit holes to go down.
So I’m wondering what I can do to keep in the loop with my younger brothers and sisters?
Is it something as simple as watching trending videos on YouTube (somtheing I’ve never done) or are there people to follow etc. I don’t like Twitter though so hopefully it’s not that.
Edit: Man I got so many replies. You guys are awesome. I am going to work my way through them all today, but I’m hella tired and off to work so may take a while. I will reply to you all.
Edit part deux: God damn I think I got all the replies.
It depends on which algo/service. Pandora and I have never meshed so I just avoid that one. YouTube occasionally tosses a good one in my feed. Spotify does well enough that I pay. SoundCloud is probably my favorite.
Aside from that, I'm subscribed to a few music communities here. That has widened my net. Same with imgur - 99% of the time I'm there for the memes but occasionally someone will post something that helps me find a new band.
I've gotten back into going to concerts. I go by myself and end up meeting bunches of new people and we all end up talking about music, sharing the names of our favorite tracks and bands.
You're going to have to blaze your own trail. There's so much new music being made every day that it's very much a "needle in a haystack" thing.
Plus, don't automatically rule out a band because they're not new. That is, Alien Ant Farm was never on my radar until last year. Their cover of "Smooth Criminal" hit my SoundCloud recommendations. It's from before MJ died...anyway, I've listened to some of their stuff and added some to my playlists.
Thanks for this. Soundcloud has been shouted out a few times on here so I’m gonna hit it up.
Do you have a few music communities on here or how you found them. Wait Imgur can up my severely lacking meme game?
Concerts is a good idea and I like to do things like that on my own anyway, nobody I know would ever come to a classical music venue so had to fly solo.
AAF Smooth Criminal is fire. Now I gotta go give it a listen it’s been a minute.
Yeah, it's been years since I went to a show. Went to see Grouplove a couple of months ago and nobody I knew was familiar with them (very sad) so I decided to fly solo. Going to see Bleachers soon. Again, by myself.
Imgur will help your meme game, though not your sex appeal.
On here, I just started searching for things like "indie," "alternative", etc. I haven't really come across too many communities dedicated to individual bands...well, none that I am interested in. YMMV.
SoundCloud has been worth the subscription fee, imo.