how I find music these days

Labels, dead links, conversations, side-project rabbit holes, and the handful of habits that still lead to real discoveries.

The old pipelines mostly don't work anymore. Algorithmic recommendation feels like being handed a mood board that someone made for a version of you that stopped developing in 2019. I mostly don't trust it.

What still works: people. Not influencers. Just people who clearly have an actual relationship to what they're recommending. A friend texting you a Bandcamp link at 2am. A label bio that sounds like it was written by someone who cares about what they're putting out.

The rest of this is method. Things I've tried, kept, or abandoned, and what the current version of my listening practice actually looks like.