5 Music Discovery Tools That Aren't Spotify or Rdio

By Carolyn Heneghan

As streaming becomes the prominent method of listening to music, online music discovery tools have arisen en masse. However, at this point, they’re really a dime a dozen. To help you on your search, we’ve curated five of the best music discovery platforms that are sure to bring about a heaping helping of bold, new favorites for your music collection.

seevl

A passion project of rising startup MDG Web, seevl presents a new way for music lovers to both discover and find information pertaining to new music. Seevl is an unlimited and targeted music discovery platform that, immediately from its homepage, offers suggestions based on what’s trending—though there’s plenty more to it. One registered, the site is a rich resource for personalized recommendations. While music platforms like YouTube, Spotify, and Deezer are focused on content licensing, seevl turned to improving music discovery as its primary objective.

The seevl platform is built on a pipeline that creates an enormous, cloud-stored graph of data that is based on the mining of music information from the Internet, including artist genres, record labels, band members and more. Armed with this extensive graph, MDG has also built a series of algorithms that govern the ability to search, discover, and make recommendations.

What’s perhaps most interesting about seevl is that it not only presents you with songs, artists, albums and recommendations—most music discovery platforms do that—is that it provides users with information about why these recommendations are being made. Not only do users discover new music, they also learn how certain music is related, how music can lead to seemingly different but still relevant songs, and why a musical style might best fit their personalities based on the songs they’ve already chosen.

seevl too has incorporated a social feed that allows you to follow other users who share similar tastes and discover music that way. But having explanations for music recommendations is something that sets this platform apart from others.

LuckyPennie

What’s distinct and fresh about LuckyPennie is the way it brings local artists and concerts into the music discovery process. Just recently launched on iOS, the app not only allows users to discover music through other users they follow, but it also gives users access to local tastemakers, who can recommend both recorded and live music in their area. Its location-based design connects users to other artists, music experts, and hand-selected users. Users can also see what their “crew” of friends and other local users are listening to and which concerts they plan to attend.

To listen to songs, you can hear 30-second clips via iTunes or stream full-length audio by connecting with Rdio or Spotify. As you use the platform, you can earn “cred” by posting likable songs and concerts and gain influence on the app to achieve more visibility. You can also post your songs and activities directly to Facebook and Twitter.

Taking a localized approach sets this music discovery platform apart, and it’s bound to create new connections between music lovers as they discover music and make new personal connections.

This Is My Jam

Ever have that one song that’s been stuck in your head for days? That one song that comes on in your car or on your home stereo, and you can’t help but say out loud, “This is my jam!” Well, the web platform and Spotify in-app This Is My Jam should hit the sweet spot for you.

When you access the homepage, you’re first greeted by the day’s most-loved jams, which include anything from Van Morrison’s “Natalia” to Daft Punk’s “Around the World” on a given day. You can then browse for more jams by using filters such as “Popular,” “Breaking,” “Rare,” “Newcomers” and “Chance.”

The basic premise is that a user can upload any one song—you only get one, so choose wisely!—that will stay up for one week max as his or her current jam. Users can look at other users’ jams and even follow people whose music tastes they love. You can then play all their jams in one click, which creates a playlist you can play from the Spotify app. You can also browse past hits and find new people to follow from inside Spotify.

You just never know how many times you might find yourself saying, “This is my jam.” “No, this is my jam!”

The Hype Machine

Instead of gleaning songs from other people’s playlists, why not see what the music experts have to say? With The Hype Machine, you can do just that. This music discovery tool sifts through thousands of articles written by music lovers from around the world and keeps track of a handpicked selection of MP3 blogs’ daily musings. They then present the tracks and info to enable easy analysis, consumption, and discovery for its users. While you can’t download the music from the site, you can preview songs via play buttons next to each track.

Besides being a unique and valuable music discovery option, The Hype Machine has created a tool that supports and even empowers independent music writers across the globe. It gives even more meaning to writers’ words by translating those articles into easy-to-browse selections for music lovers everywhere—extending a writer’s reach and enriching his or her effect on other people. You can also purchase individual tracks and CDs using the Amazon and iTunes links that The Hype Machine includes next to most tracks, which provides a new venue for musicians to get their music out there in front of potential fans.

With The Hype Machine, you can both support the musicians and writers you love while discovering new tunes and increasing your music library all at the same time.

TuneIn

If you’re more into sitting back and letting a radio station find and choose music for you, TuneIn should be your top destination. With more than 100,000 stations and 2 million podcasts from around the world at your fingertips, you can find yourself bombarded with hours of music discovery. Browse by genre, station, what’s trending, popular shows or even scan the stations that are in your area.

Take a look at these discovery options, and feel free to tip us off to any new apps that you think work as well, if not better!