> stumbling across something new just from having public radio on in the background still feels magical, organic, and overall such a good way to broaden your musical horizons.
I've largely given up on algorithmic recommendations and gone back to human curation. There are humans out there writing about music, movies, and everything in culture. I've found the ones whose tastes I largely trust, and I follow them via RSS to read about the things I might like.
Are some of those critics probably using algorithms themselves? Sure. Let them dive into that swamp and pull out the gems. I'll stay on the shore, watch, and wait.
> human curation
More and more I feel like recommendation algorithms for discovery of anything seem to just not actually work for finding things which are new and exciting, but perhaps that's by definition.
If information is surprise then the most interesting things are those which aren't like the things I already know. And the easiest way to find those things I find is to just tune in to something where you don't know what you'll hear, and simply wait. That's it. It might take a while, but I bet you'll find something that feels new, exciting and perhaps expands your tastes a bit. And what could be better?
Absolutely. I've made several new Spotify and Pandora accounts over the years. Initially they offer good recommendations but eventually the algorithms always aggressively funnel down to the same 2-to-3 dozen similar-sounding songs (though its a different set of songs with each new account). Once trapped in that algorithmic tarpit, the only thing to do is start over, which is annoying. Now I let myself discover things via human critics or just in the course of life.
I use the song radio mode to find tracks relevant to distinct songs that I've enjoyed recently, and I find this incredibly effective at unearthing new material that I really like. For many years, I've had no trouble with this finding new artists and quite different songs. Then if I've listened to those a few times, that seems to populate Discover Weekly with a new angle.