Ways you discover new-to-you music

I know similar topics have come up before, and I was put in mind of this due to another topic (see some of the comments HERE.

What are some of you strategies, approaches, means to discovering new-to-you music? I find music when I'm looking for it, and sometimes when I'm not searching but just notice it referenced... This could be contemporary music or not.

I want to focus on how you find music now or in fairly recent times more than in the distant past, although comparing that is of interest too.

I have liked to use the Rate Your Music charts to find albums, either with looking up the general music charts for a specific year or adding filters such as genres and country. I do like how customisable those charts are for search results, that one can use and search multiple tags for albums.

While I don't post at Reddit, sometimes I have google searched specific kinds of discussions at that site. This has helped to find names I like with similarities to others I like. I think I discovered Vanishing Twin through breading a thread there on bands with similarities to Stereolab and Broadcast.

Sometimes I discover something I like that comes up on youtube, at other times I find things through the Prog Archives forum. A name might come up that piques my interest, a thread is made on a band or it comes up in a topic, or ones that are specifically recommended to me.

At one time I did discover many albums thanks to blogs. And I did download albums that had not been re-released about 20 years ago. I felt no guilt about that if it was not available by other means (not including buying old used albums, often for a very pretty penny, which I have done), but then quite a few of those albums gained traction as it gained audiences via the internet and did get released on CD. So there was more than one silver lining to such sharing of obscurities -- people discovering music, exposure, and the music getting re-released. Nowadays anyone can stream most of what they want, although I do like physical product.

And what are some of you newest discoveries of which you are very fond and how did you find them?

A big one for me and a big name has been Sufjan Stevens. I knew music of his, but quite recently I started to deeply explore his discography. I can't recall how or why that happened (some associative process).

While I have known Fishmans' Long Season for years, I noticed on the rateyourmusic charts how high one of its live albums ranks. I checked it out and fell in love with it, which led to me listening more deeply to other Fishmans music (and to suggesting the band for PA).

The summer before last was rough, and I had been playing Weyes Blood on youtube, which I love, and a track from Beach House started playing which I loved. That led to me getting quite a few albums by Beach House.

I got really, really into Boards of Canada, Portishhead, Swans, Stereolab, Radiohead and Godspeed You! Black Emperor over the past decade for various reasons -- Portishead and Stereolab due to a Chris Morris radio show that was put it up in podcast form called Blue Jam that mixes music with surreal and dark comedy.

Lingua Ignota was a big discovery to me of the past few years, and that was thanks to a PA topic on her music. I also have discovered lots through the Interactive Polls which I then explored albums by, and as, said, specific recommendations to me.

I spend a lot of time on ProgEars and ProgArchives where I hear a lot of suggestions. On PA its primarily from the genre teams I'm on (Eclectic and Avant), on PE they have a lot of posters who are into the avant rock and jazz I'm into so I track their suggestions.

Bandcamp is a source of a lot, with lots of emails coming from labels I know are releasing the types of music i like.

I fairly regularly deep dive into a genre and check out lots of bands tagged as stuff I'd like.

Facebook isn't bad for new music if you know what to look for. Festivals have been a great source of discovering new bands.

Progrock.com radio shows provide some stuff but thats mainly one show dedicate to Psyche where stuff interests me.