I ask my friends, I ask the people at my local record store, I read blogs and listen to podcasts. What I don't do is rely on the terrible Amazon style "if you bought this, you might buy that" style of nonsense.
Pandora has the technology, but their catalog is way too limited. I've said this before, but music discovery is a problem that is not obviously amenable to a market-oriented solution.
Pandora has a much larger catalog than your local record store. Pandora is amazing for music discovery, I'd say far better than the hipsters working in amoeba records that are seldom older than Jerry Garcia's guitars.
I used to use your methods, but have discovered far more thanks to pandora and YouTube than I ever did.
I can't say I am impressed with Pandora. Eventually all my Pandora stations just start playing The Cure. The Cure is okay, but not what I was looking from in my "Hall of the mountain king" station...
I think that they suffer from overtraining problems that limit the diversity of their suggestions. They've got a good catalog but, in my experience, are poor at diverse suggestions.
I ask my friends, I ask the people at my local record store, I read blogs and listen to podcasts. What I don't do is rely on the terrible Amazon style "if you bought this, you might buy that" style of nonsense.
Pandora has the technology, but their catalog is way too limited. I've said this before, but music discovery is a problem that is not obviously amenable to a market-oriented solution.