The internet is a treasure trove if you look in the right places. If you’re sick of Spotify radio spewing out the same five songs you’ve already had on repeat for months, the artificial AI-generated DJ whose voice has turned into an unwelcome interruption to your flow, this is a list of hand-picked, eclectic rabbit holes to wander into. Some old, some new, all whimsical in their own way, I hope that one of these sites will have you eager to click away, as launchpads to your next obsession. In the words of Addison Rae— “Get Your Headphones On”.
For fans of Letterboxd, Rate Your Music is the music reincarnate and your place to be. This is a user-based database for ratings, reviews, lists, and thereby an ideal selection for anyone who enjoys keeping a digital diary of their recent listens. 25 years on from its launch, RYM is the largest music database on the internet hosting 1.3 million users, a genre giant in need of a mention. Though the site is questioned over bias and an objectivity over ratings, it has nevertheless struck a shining impact, credited for spiking interest in albums and launching careers for musicians, such as Duster. Another crowd pleaser on the same wavelength: Album Of The Year. Both being database driven communities, AOTY has earned its praise next to RYM with a modern, newer, and thus more intuitive friendly interface and design, in pairing with RYM’s comprehensive backlog of music wide-ranging across genres and time periods.
Charming with its funky name, Gnoosic is objectively simple. Type in three favourite artists, and the site will do the rest, churning out a new musician based on your taste. The creators’ music-map function takes you further, weaving a web of different artists that are visually represented in terms of their familiarity in music to each other. The “network of discovery” is endless, and it’s a simple input for a high reward nudging you towards finding new music and small, upcoming artists you’ll appreciate. For a true rabbit hole experience however, click on everynoise.com. As the domain self-proclaims, Every Noise At Once is a site that truly prioritises its variety— a ‘scatter plot word map’ of a website created by former Spotify employee Glenn McDonald. The genres from Spotify Wrapped are transformed into little word sprouts on a screen; with each click being playable, music modes are transformed to life form in a matter of seconds.
Once you’ve enjoyed bouncing through jumbled music strands, you might also enjoy bouncing from location to location and decade to decade. Radiooooo is a site that pairs time travel with music listening in real time. A somewhat adorable, funky database, it will feel like you have stumbled into a little indie safe-haven full of global tunes at your disposal, presented in a curiosity inducing, fascinating way. Simply type in your email, and you’ll be able to fly through cities and genres in this ‘musical time machine’, and have some fun while doing so. For actual “real” radio, you might also enjoy radio.garden, an accessible radio concept visualised on a rotating globe of dots where you can tune in from home to almost anywhere in the world.
And what about student-essential websites for slower background noise and ambience? You might enjoy lofi.cafe, a vaporwave-style radio station for lofi tunes. Though not completely music inclined, my personal, underrated study favourite is mynoise.net, a database of categorised soundscapes with isolated sound sliders adjustable to suit your preferences.
The internet used to be a place — more than it is now — but that doesn’t mean you can’t continue to scramble down rabbit holes yourself. There are truly some wonderful music-surfing, and other niche corners of the internet out there waiting to be found, and I hope this article encourages you to go knocking.
“Sony Headphones” by JohnKarak is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.