Your method for discovering great music.

Most of my discoveries over the years have been through Pandora, Spotify radio, Linn Jazz radio, Radio Caroline, PowePop Criminals site and reading reviews.

Now you can try before you buy.

I album surf and research, get tips from friends. I had a Qobuz account for a little while and found that it hit the bigger titles, but not the rare groove stuff in post-bop jazz. I think the process of discovery is itself quite rewarding and I enjoy doing the research as well as "the hunt" for a good copy. You learn something about the musicians, the genre and perhaps the cultural context in which they created. All fascinating to me, beyond the simple enjoyment of the music, performance and recording itself. 

My method for discovering great music: I walk over to my record shelves, grab an LP and put it on my turntable. Works every time.

• Choose some favorites on Tidal and let Tidal's radio take over when my selections are finished.  I write down the names of the artists/songs I like,
• Just added Qobuz, which opened up a new library of music
• My neighbor is in a blues band so I listen to their gigs or practices occasionally and write down selections that I enjoy but have not heard
• Listen to Sirius XM in my vehicle and occasionally hear new music on BB King's Blues, Lithium, or one of the other stations
• Suggestions from posts here on Audiogon and suggestions by my friends

@aewarren Yes, I have a lot of great recorded music in my collection. And I do play a lot of it, well, a lot. But to me, that rarely represents a discovery or broadens my horizon any further than that music already has.

@mahgister I used to subscribe to a magazine called The Oxford American which was a southern art and culture magazine. Over the years it got predictably ideological to the point of being a cliche'  and I stopped subscribing but every year they came out with the music edition. That edition included a CD of various artists from the south across all genres. Some were extremely obscure and some were superstars. The magazine would have articles about all of the artists and songs on the CD. In the late 90s and early 2000s these CDs and magazines greatly broadened my musical horizons. I still pick up the yearly music edition from time to time. It has been a few years though. Not sure you still get an actual CD. I have 15 or twenty years worth of those CDs and they are priceless. In fact, some of them that are hard to find are fetching silly amounts of money.