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It’s a rainy Monday morning.
You arrive at work, grab your cup of coffee, and sit down to be productive.
There’s one problem: your fun weekend memories are still fresh, making it hard to focus on the tasks ahead.
You decide to play some music to get into the flow, but you find yourself scrolling through your media apps without success.
We all know the feeling. You’re stuck in a musical rut and desperate to get out.
Today is different, though, because I listed eight tools that can help solve your problem.
So go on and discover some new tunes!
I’m expecting that many of you already know this youtube channel, but if you don’t, you are in for a treat!
Tiny Desk is an NPR Music initiative that invites artists for a 15-20 minute live concert. It’s an acoustic setting with great editing. I think many of the songs featured here are much better than the official Spotify versions.
Tiny Desk went virtual during the pandemic, allowing more artists to perform. Some amazing concerts to check out are Anderson Paak (USA), Tangana (Spain), Natalia Lafourcade (Mexico), and Burna Boy (Nigeria).
Several years ago, Benjamin went for a test drive in his dad’s new vintage car.
The car had a wooden radio and a magic vibe, but when Ben turned it on, a wave of commercial music directly broke the spell.
That’s when he had an idea. Why not create a tool to travel through time musically?
Radiooooo was born.
A platform that divides the world per country and decade, allowing users to play music from any place and time. You can choose from three categories, slow, fast, or weird. If you’re a paid user, you can also pick themed playlists and skip songs (free users just have to ride the musical wave).
If you’d like to learn more, check out my interview with Radiooooo’s founder Benjamin.
Do you already use Shazam to its full potential? Here are two tips to get more out of it.
1. Connect your Shazam to your Spotify account. This will automatically upload all your Shazam songs to a Spotify playlist. You can do this by going to Library – Settings – Connect to Spotify.
2. Turn on Autoshazam. This step will allow you to automatically shazam all songs during your next road trip or at your favorite festival. If you implemented step 1, you can drag and drop the songs from the Shazam playlist to a new one. In this way, you can relive your memories whenever you want. You can find this option via Library – Settings – Auto Shazam.
A friend who toured France for a few weeks during the summer recommended the FIP radio channel.
The channel offers a variety of genres, but the main two I’d recommend are Monde and Jazz.
The Monde channel is a bit random, featuring very low-key artists as well as famous international artists.
Although some are better than others, it’s an excellent tool to discover music almost without commercial breaks.
Radio Garden is another excellent tool for finding new music.
It works similar to Radiooooo, but here you can choose radio channels per country instead of songs.
You have access to the most popular and obscure radio channels worldwide.
Pick a place and turn up the volume. You’ll see it’s not easy to stop once you use this website.
Spotify is the go-to music discovery machine. However, not everyone is aware of using all features. I’m particularly fond of “Song Radio” and “Discover Weekly.”
When you hear a good song, right-click on it and select Go to song radio (below Add to queue). This option will play similar songs to the one you chose. I’ve tried it with some of my favorites, and it works like a charm.
The second option is Discover Weekly. You’ll find it on your home page. Discover Weekly is a specifically selected playlist for you based on your current preference. The playlist changes weekly (hence the name), and it’s easy to add songs to your collection.
Alright, I know, this is a bit of an odd option. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad one, though.
Dating apps (like Bumble) encourage you to link your Instagram and Spotify to give your profile more flair. I’m a big fan of the latter because it allows you to find many new artists while swiping away.
If you’re keen to try this, focus on potential dates with similar music tastes. If 80% overlaps, but two artists are new, likely, you’ll also like these. And who knows, you might meet your future husband or wife in the meantime.
Are you ready to salsa your way through the rest of the day?
Or do you prefer dancing to Turkish Rock or grooving through the week with Ghanian Disco?
My Analog Journal offers all of the above.
It’s a Youtube channel exploring rare grooves worldwide on vinyl. It’s similar to Tiny Desk but for DJs.
Some of my favorites are the Colombian Salsa mix above and the 70s & 80s Japanese Funk and Soul mix.
In that case, you can subscribe to my bi-weekly newsletter below.
You’ll receive music tips (as well as books and movies) from around the world and valuable tools like the one in this post.
There are also plenty of new artists to discover on the country pages.
If you have tools or apps I didn’t mention, let me know by leaving a comment below!
