14 Ways To Discover New Artists On Apple Music

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you some ways that you can discover new artists on Apple Music.

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So I think one of the best reasons to subscribe to a subscription service, like Apple Music, Spotify, or something else is to discover new artists. After all since you're paying for access to all of the music you can easily search for and try out new artists. It's one of the best reasons to use a streaming music service rather than paying for songs and albums one at a time. 

When you start with Apple Music you're going to see a screen like this that asks you to select some of your favorite genres. This is the best way to get started. Now you may skip this screen or not pay too much attention to it but it is important to go ahead and select these to get off to a quick start. After all Apple Music can't suggest things to you if it doesn't know what you like. Then you can continue to narrow things down by selecting artists you like and eliminating ones that you don't. So now you're off to a good start. But it's important before you do anything else to start by adding some of your favorite albums.  You already have music that you like that's in Apple Music. Now it's, of course, easy to search for an album. So when you search make sure you select Apple Music here at the top and then Search for an album that you like. Of course you can just play it and search for it again anytime that you want to play the album. But if you Add it to your Library then it's easily accessible when you go to look at your artist and albums and it also tells Apple Music that you like that album. It's part of your collection. So now suggestions are going to be weighted knowing what's already in your collection. 

Another way to indicate that you like something is to listen to it, of course. So maybe give your favorite albums another listen. Also you can rate them. To do that click here and then select love. Take some time to do that now by adding some of your all time favorite songs and albums and going to different songs and loving them if you really like them. So now that you've set that up let's discover things that are completely new. Apple Music gives you two different screens. Listen Now and Browse. They are both very useful and overlap a lot in what they do. Let's go to Listen Now. You'll see here Top Picks for you based on what Apple Music knows about you. So this is going to change over time as you add more music and love more music. Not what you're not going to see here right off the bat is a list of Playlists customized for you because you've just started with the service. But here's what that screen looks like on my real account. You could see there's one here called New Music Mix. That's updated every Friday. I love listening to that. It's new music that just came out and it includes a lot of my favorite artists that have new songs out. It also includes artists that are close to the ones that I regularly listen to and have in my library. So every Friday I look forward listening to the New Music Mix. I don't like every song in there. I'm sure to use the love and dislike options to express my opinion of each individual song so the next week's New Music Mix will be even better. 

But you can use Listen Now and Browse sections to get other ideas for things you want to listen to. It's really useful if you select something and give then it a try and then love or dislike something in there. By selecting the things that you could be interested in and ignoring the ones that you're not you're also telling Apple Music what you might like to see here in the future. Don't look past the Browse section either. There are more categories in here that while not as tuned to you specifically they show you a lot of what's new. Like there's a New Music Section. Songs We Love. Some curated lists. Things like that. So you go in here to see what's really new that other people are listening to and maybe try out a few things. 

You don't have to go and listen to something to figure out whether or not you might like it or not. For instance you go into an artist you don't recognize and immediately you're shown a genre here so you get an idea. If you don't like country music and it says Country you know to probably skip it. You also get a description that you can read. This can often help you decide whether or not you want to give this music a listen. I love exploring this. It's kind of like the modern version of browsing through a record store. But you don't have to just see what's in here. Apple Music is filled with Playlists, both specially curated playlists by Apple employees and individuals like yourself that have published playlists. So you can go and Search for Playlists. So, for instance, if I wanted to search for classic rock here I could take a look, again making sure I have Apple Music selected. I have Top Results, Artists, Albums, Songs, and here are Playlists.  You could see there are more than just the ones shown here. So there are a bunch of different playlists. If I'm in the mood for listening to classic rock I could go through this and find a list that maybe fits my mood, go into it and listen and add songs, albums, and artists to my library and also love or dislike songs. Enjoy listening to this but it's also teaching Apple Music a little bit more about what to recommend to me in the future. Of this is going to be a list of mostly older music. But if you search for something and go for a playlist that includes new music in it you might find some interesting things. 

Now at the bottom of Browse there's a section here with More to Explore. You could do things like Browse by Category. So if you want to skip searching through all those different things to find music you like you could simply go into here and select something. Go into that specific category and there's a page here with Playlists, New Songs, New Releases, Artist Playlists, and all sorts of other things including Stations. So you could go into here, for instance, and see there's an Apple Music Hard Rock radio station. You can click on that to just listen to a continuous stream of what's available. So you're probably going to discover some new things in that genre by listening to one of these stations here. You'll also notice here at the bottom of Browse there is Charts. You'll find other Charts here as well including City Charts, which are new so you can see what people in different cities are listening to. For instance here's the current chart in New York and you can see what's there. You can then see what's in Los Angeles. I find these charts particularly interesting because if you listen on the radio and you hear, say, a top 25 chart it's usually the top 25 pop songs. It doesn't include music from lots of other genres. Whereas these charts are really about what people are listening to in that particular city regardless of the genre. So while there may be a few things on there you may like listening to the list may expose you to different kinds of music entirely. 

There are also daily top 100 for different countries that you can listen to. But if you're in the United States and look at the list it's amazing how different some of the lists are in different countries. Even other English speaking countries have completely different songs all throughout their top 100 lists. And at the bottom of Browse here there's also a Charts button so you can go into that if you just want to see different charts. There's City Charts, Top 100, Top Playlists, and Top Albums. Another thing you could do is create your own radio station using a song, album, or playlist. So, for instance, I could take this song here, click the more button, and there's Create Station. This will create a new radio station using that song as the basis. In other words it's going to keep playing music based on that song. So if I go through the songs here I could just keep going and play different songs all based on that. You could do the same thing with the Album, in general, here. Create Station. So a station is just going to basically play different songs from Apple Music that fit that song or album that you selected. 

But you could do the same thing with a Playlist in a little different way. It's a new feature. If you have a Playlist playing already you could click here to see the list and make sure you're set to Playing Next. There's a button right here and this is for Auto Play. But I call it infinite playlist because what will happen is with this turned on it will basically go through the playlist and play all the songs in it and when it gets to the end it will continue to play other music that fits the songs in the playlist. So instead of your playlist just ending after say ten or twenty songs it will just keep going forever. 

Now if you don't feel like browsing through all of this stuff to find some new music or listen to something that fits a certain genre or mood you could always just ask Siri. So you could do something like this. Play indie music. Now also note that Apple has some radio stations that are actually real radio stations. So we're not talking about radio stations in terms of just playing random songs specifically tailored for you. We're talking about with DJ's and shows and everything. So if you go to listen now and look for Radio there's Apple Music 1 which is the primary station with all sorts of shows and DJ's. There are a few other ones as well. You can click on the little calendar button and see different shows. Look through Listen Now and you usually find a section called Apple Music Radio Shows. You can go there as well. So you can find a Radio Show that kind of fits the type of music that you like and give it a listen. It may not be something you want to listen to all the time but it's an easy choice if you're driving or you don't have time to select music. You just want music to start playing and, of course, you're going to discover new artists this way. 

Of course another thing you can do is listen to real, actual radio stations from all over the world. Apple Music taps into to Tune In and I Heart Radios. So if you search for radio stations by its name or call letters you can usually find it. Sometimes you have to try a few different things. You can do your search and you'll see results. Sometimes you see results for albums and songs and everything that match it. But you scroll down until you find stations and then you can play that station and listen to it that way. Of course, pay attention to what the songs are and then you usually can search in Apple Music to find the songs or artists that you discover.

Another thing you could do is you could Share playlists. So I've got this playlist here. I can name it something. I could publish it so other people could find it. Also, if I Control click on it here I could Share and Copy a link to that or send it in an email. What that means is I could create my own playlists and send them to friends. Which means, also, that friends could send playlists to me. So you could challenge other friends that have Apple Music lists to make a playlist for you. Have them pick songs that you like and send you the playlist and you can in exchange send them a playlist of songs you think they will like. It's the modern day version of exchanging mixed tapes. 

So I hope this gave you some ideas of how you can use Apple Music without remaining in your own echo chamber of just the music that you like. You can use it to discover new artists and do so without having to worry about paying for each individual song to give it a try. You can just explore and enjoy new music as much as you like.