Where do you go to discover new music? Nowadays there are so many choices: streaming services, blogs, torrents, tweets from favorite artists… It’s hard to have a single source for what’s fresh and going to tickle your eardrums just right.
Pandora can help you find music that sounds similar to what you already like. Soundcloud is great for new music from artists that you follow closely. Spotify helps you pull together a little bit of both, but you do have to pay to skip the commercials. And the list continues as the internet gets better at globalizing the curation and distribution of music.
But where do you go to find music outside your favorite genre? Outside the recognizable?
Please turn your attention to 22tracks, the best music resource you didn’t know how much you needed. It’s a concept that was originally created in Amsterdam — and has since expanded to four cities, has received numerous innovation awards, organized a summer music festival, and revamped their iOS app.
The long story short: 22tracks finds the best music curators in Amsterdam, Brussels, London and Paris, and each city has 20 or more playlists by genre of must-listen recommendations.
Since 22tracks now features more than 100 DJs and bloggers across these genre-based playlists, we can’t possibly feature everything. The company claimed last year that more than 70 percent of the music featured is not available on Spotify (how’s that for fresh?).
To help you get started, here are our favorites from each of the four cities:
AMSTERDAM
First, Lenzman. He is not underground– if you listen to DnB you know the name well. But his taste and selection on his channel is like no other. He curates nuggets old and new, and features remixes of his own before releasing tracks anywhere else. Lenzman’s DnB channel on the Amsterdam Tab of 22tracks is our most frequented page.
- Other noteworthy channel from Amsterdam: Soul channel with Full Crate & FS Green.
BRUSSELS
We usually seek out the Alternative channel with Sylvestre Defontaine. He is a huge curator of great music is Germany. Alternative means something completely different than what it means here in the States. Defontaine features everything from experimental-sounding funk tunes to heavy tracks that feature Goldlink, and a new one featuring George Clinton.
- Other Noteworthy Channel from Brussels: Global channel with Lefto.
LONDON
One of the most captivating channels we have browsed in London is Hannah Faith. She currently curates the Soul channel and it couldn’t be groovier. There is all sorts of Grime and Dub to listen to coming out of London, but this channel has something special to it. The songs she chooses are those gems you get giddy playing them. There is a reason she is doing work with Soulection now, she curates nothing but the best.
- Other Noteworthy Channel from London: Funk channel with Chris Read & Nick Armitage
PARIS
The city of lights has always been a city of sound and center of trendsetting music, that’s why we check this channel regularly. Nick V’s Deep House channel is a great place to start. This is the real selection, not a bunch of junk with a deep house song here and there. Nick V has been doing it for a long time, so trust him to select the right tracks so you don’t have to:
- Other Noteworthy Channel from Paris: Bass with Lucid
This is only a fraction of what is available to listen to on 22Tracks. They are constantly adding new features to the site like Tip22 which is the hidden finds among the entire 22Tracks collection, and they also are profiling clubs from the cities featured like La Cigale in Paris.
Do yourself a favor when you want new music, explore a new channel on 22Tracks. Streaming algorithms don’t measure up against the talented people who actually live and breathe the music scene they are curating for. Plus, it’s wildly easy to purchase tracks or share your new finds with friends via social media — because we all like to brag we.heard.it.first.