It's all mostly happenstance and serendipity but I do find a lot of music by googling what I hear in the background of movies and TV. Letterkenny always has really good music and it's always or almost always by a Canadian group that I might not otherwise encounter.

I use a combination of Spotify discover weekly playlists, related artist lists, and lately I've been finding a random new category that Spotify curates and then searching for playlists of the same type that are curated by users. I think I get more deep cuts that way.

I mainly use metal-archives.com

everynoise.com is pretty great, though it hasn’t kept up with the absolute most recent sub genres lately. Still fantastic, though. Connects with Spotify - which I use.

Spotify's Discover Weekly used to be great for me for a long time and I'd get lots of new music that I liked. it got pretty stale over the past year or so, with stuff that I don't enjoy at all, and it often recommends me the same songs that I tell it to not recommend. it feels like I've reached the end of the internet and there's no more music left to try.

Spotify's discovery algorithm is great. Outside of that I routinely check Pitchfork for new albums. theneedledrop makes good recs too and Any Decent Music is a pretty decent music review aggregator similar to Metacritic but for more niche styles.

These days I listen to a lot of dance music though, so I tend to discover music via DJ mixes on Soundcloud and Bandcamp. Their Bandcamp Weekly section is pretty great and you can easily find music by browsing record labels, people's collections or the "if you like x" recommendations listed at the bottom of individual release pages.

To add to your sites:

• Last.fm, especially the "Similar Albums" section on Album pages and the "Similar to" section on Artist pages.
• Sharethreads on 4chan's /mu/: The download links in older threads might be dead, but it still might be useful for discovering new music.
• "Essential [insert genre] Charts"

I've discovered more music new to me on Radio Paradise the last few years than anywhere else. They stream up to FLAC quality so an excellent choice for listening on the home stereo. https://radioparadise.com/home

Bandcamp daily Blogs Since I listen mostly to hip hop and rappers collaborate often, features is a big part of the way I discover new music

I find the Tidal algorithm to be excellent. Beyond that I think a good trick is checking out different services. Playing the same artist or song radio on Spotify will be a very different experience to Pandora or YouTube Music or again Tidal. That and a few of them actually have a 'discovery', or whatever they call it, setting on the radio that will specifically recommend things that are new and/or unexpected.

last.fm has awesome algorithms.

Musicmap.com lets you search for an artist, then graphically displays similar artists around them. Great way to find new artists similar to old ones you know you like.

If you are like me and never listened to most popular artists from the bast decades 1001 Ablums Generator is a good option. Its features so many genres of music from the 1950s to the late 2010s. Its an album a day and you can do groups as well.

For me who never listened to much outside of OSTs for years this was a decent way to see more mainstream stuff.

The YouTube algorithm is sometimes surprisingly good. Like "Listen to this band with 47 plays!" and then it's a banger.

I've found a few decent hits from random music blogs. actually while writing this i went to one of them and now i'm listening to a Japanaese prog rock band that sings in an invented language

yeah, Spotify really thinks you wanna hear the same dozen or songs on a loop. I'd love it if I could "pause" a song and keep it out of rotation for a few weeks. The AI DJ is very occasionally helpful - in between sets of the usual he'll blast you with something out of left field.

I find it's more useful to look at artist playlists on spotify - see what they are inspired by. As long as the band's not too big, then it's more what their label wants to push.

I also use Bandcamp #discover where you can browse by tags - which seems kinda oldschool now. But so far works great for me

I am often getting interesting stuff from the personal discover playlists on Spotify. Often it is very obscure vands with like a thousand listeners on last.fm, so I feel like I am being exposed new and upcoming bands and not just established names.

Honestly I listen to the radio, but a radio station that's alternative and aligns with my musical tastes (www.kink.nl, a Dutch station). Stuff I like I look up, and see what's similar on Spotify or what have been influences to them.

Bandcamp via the Tags system can really yield some great results. It's got a virtual feel equivalent to browsing through a physical record store.

I basically just poke around until I find something I like then check the tags at the bottom of a release. Click the tag and then browse that for other stuff.

Used to be what.cd

Now it's just hopes and prayers

BrooklynVegan

Certainly skews towards specific tastes and genres [indie, punk, diy, and sometimes undergroud hip-hop], but super active and on top of new music and related info

I follow the news portion as well, but for pure new music discovery: https://www.brooklynvegan.com/tags/new-songs/?from=trending

honestly the spotify algorithm is shockingly good at recommending me new music. it knows my taste inside and out. And i listen to almost every genre, but have my specific preferences to every genre. Been on the same account for like 10 years so spotify knows me pretty well by now

Once upon a time there was this beautiful music player called Songbird that aggegated music blogs and let you directly download MP3s. It was magical.

Now I use Soundcloud, which has been awesome for discovering new music.

Also, don't sleep on the Internet Archive. There is some awesome music hosted there, often in FLAC.