Whether you listen to country, rock, blues or rap, you should take hold of your music listening to discover new horizons. Right now, you are probably a passive or casual music listener, which is to say you may have a favorite artist, but you mostly listen to their singles on the radio. This is a good way to hear new songs from popular artists, but by doing this, you are missing out on so much. Not only are you not hearing other songs from your favorite band, you also won't hear anyone outside the mainstream. I’m telling you now that the best songs aren't the ones you hear on the radio.

Take an artist you like and think about the songs you know the best or hear the most. These are called "singles," as in they are single tracks from an album. They are often released individually before an album or selected during its release to be representations of an album. These aren’t necessarily the “best” songs, but instead are often the most appealing to general audiences. This means that out of an album of eight songs, you will only ever hear two of them.

So let's dive into an album, shall we? Take the artist you were thinking of before and look up one of their albums. Their most recent one should do. Now that you have it up, listen to it. All of the sudden, you know six other songs you’ve never heard before. Now listen to another and another. You might be surprised to find some albums are better than others. You start noticing some albums have themes or ideas to them, themes that penetrate every song on the record. Not only that, some albums may tell a story with their track order.

You've run out albums at this point, so what's next? Now it gets really fun, trust me. With your artist in mind, and maybe some of your now favorite albums, it's time to find other artists. This is as simple as Googling “Artists similar to _____” or “Albums similar to _____.” Start listening to a few songs. You don’t have to start with albums right away when trying a new artist. Give them a few listens, maybe move on, maybe keep going. You might even realize you like a song better on the second or third listen. Whatever you do, don’t dwell and keep searching. There's no reason to settle after listening to three new artists. It's good to get a broad listen to a genre before going back to specifics.

I recommended Google earlier, but I know myself it's not the even close to the best way to find new artists. You can’t go wrong with YouTube recommendations, but personally, I found the best way to discover new bands is on Spotify. I’ve only been using it for a few months, but it really is the best way to find new music for me. Their related artists page always gives excellent recommendations when I want to hear something similar. Not only that, but they have a great “Discover” playlist that it makes specifically for you. It creates a playlist of songs based on what you have been listening to. It always surprises me when they find tons of great songs I’ve never heard before, every single week. Finally, their discover tab under "Browse" gives you tons of albums either based on general recommendations or artists you often or recently listened to.

Once you go from songs to albums, you'll find your entire music world open up. Instead of saying what you like by genre, you may find it easier to describe your taste by albums and artists. If you feel like you're becoming more and more interested in music and what makes something sound "good," it's not a bad idea to read about music theory. The world of music is so large, you'll never be able to listen to everything made, so listen to what you can now before your ears fall deaf, or your Spotify subscription runs out.