Bored with your music and not finding good recommendations on your favorite music streaming platform? These music discovery apps recommend songs you likely wouldn't have come across otherwise. Some have music generated by AI that isn't even available on devices like Spotify or Apple Music, while others push indie artists who usually go unheard.
1. Tuneful (Web): Tinder-Like Song Discovery App From Previews
Tuneful is a song discovery app with an interface adapted from dating apps like Tinder. Tell it a musical genre you like or would like to discover music in, and it'll start showing you a series of songs, playing a 20-second preview. You'll see the artist's name, song title, and album cover.
Like with Tinder, you can like or reject a song by swiping right and left or tapping the buttons. There's no option to "skip" a suggestion, forcing you to mark a song so that the algorithm learns your taste and suggests better options. If you made a mistake or simply need to find an older song, there's an option to go back to previously played songs.
You don't need to log in with your Spotify account to use Tuneful, but it would be useful too. If you do that, Tuneful automatically adds Liked songs to a playlist, so you don't have to remember them and can easily access them later.
2. NewMusic.AI (Web): Discover New AI-Made Cover Songs by Different Artists
Drake singing Fifty Fifty by Cupid. Ariana Grande singing the Korean hit Everytime by Chen & Punch. Michael Jackson singing The Weeknd's Starboy. AI has made it possible to hear what some of the most popular artists would sound like if they were to sing one of your favorite songs. It's a viral trend on TikTok and YouTube, with AI content creators churning out new artists and songs almost every day. But of course, they're scattered across the web.
NewMusic.AI is a single place to discover the best AI-generated music covers from across the internet. There are five featured songs at any point, followed by a long playlist of all the songs that the website has added so far. You can play all in a row right from the site itself and even shuffle the playlist.
Next to each song, you'll see how many times it was played by other users, giving you an idea of its popularity. Unfortunately, NewMusic.AI doesn't have any options to filter by popularity or other such parameters. That said, it does offer a cool search engine to quickly find your favorite artist's covers.
3. Strimio (Windows, macOS, Linux): Discover Livestreams and Online Radio Stations
RadioBrowser is an online community-driven effort (like Wikipedia) to collect online radio stations and live streams on platforms like YouTube or SoundCloud. Strimio packages the data from RadioBrowser in a free desktop music player that is much easier on the eyes and also lets you organize your livestream preferences.
The player feels sleek and modern, presenting all your options in an iTunes-like interface. You can browse streams from categories such as Featured, Now Playing, Top Voted, New in Town, or browse by genre. Strimio also sorts streams by country, language, and tags if you are looking for something local.
You can save streams to your library to revisit them later. Strimio also lets you create folders in the library to arrange and organize your favorite online radio stations. Your recently played streams are automatically saved, and the app also remembers where you last left a stream to resume it when you reopen Strimio.
Download: Strimio for Windows | mac OS | Linux (Free)
4. BeatSense (Web): Create or Join Live Group Playlists
BeatSense is a social music discovery platform to meet people with similar tastes and get song recommendations from them. You'll need to register for an account, which gives you 30 "beats" tokens, and you'll earn more tokens periodically. You'll use "beats" to do actions like creating a BeatRoom or adding a song.
A BeatRoom is an online chatroom where participants listen to a group playlist. The creator can choose to be the only one allowed to add songs or let any participant add songs from YouTube. You can see the upcoming playlist, like or dislike songs, and save any track to your favorites. If a song gets a score of -3 Dislikes, it's stopped and removed from the playlist. And, of course, you can chat with the other participants in the room.
The main BeatSense interface looks a lot like any social network, as people compose posts and comment on each other's posts. You can follow some of the top "jammers" and see the list of live jam sessions on the right to join a BeatRoom.
5. Freecords (Web, Android, iOS): Discover Indie and Unheard Artists
Freecords is a music streaming platform aimed at discovering indie and emerging musicians. Unlike several other platforms, Freecords is free for both the artist that uploads the songs and the user who listens to them.
The app focuses on music discovery by giving you a variety of filters such as genre, mood, beats per minute, instruments, release year, song length, artist type, studio type, region, and language. You can also browse the Freecords Top-Lists for the most played and liked songs on the platform in different genres such as hip-hop, alternative, rock, etc.
One of the coolest ways to discover songs on Freecords is with the random shuffle feature, which it endlessly plays songs by different artists. The app remembers your last played songs, and you can add any song to your favorites and create playlists on the fly.
Download: Freecords for Android | iOS (Free)
Try "New Song Daily" Venues
With so many ways to find new music worth listening to, you'll have no trouble discovering a new favorite artist or band. But these apps are worth your time when you're looking for new tunes. What about the serendipitous discovery when you're not actively searching?
For that, try some sites, podcasts, or social media accounts that recommend one new song every day. We've previously talked about the Song Per Day daily newsletter as one of the best ways to discover music recommended by real people and not algorithms. You can also try KEXP's podcast Song of the Day, curated by KEXP's DJs from Monday to Friday.