Dustings #111

/

Just a heads-up. I’m in Toronto where we’re doing some focus-group testing for a future release. This is one of our only times trying this outside of NYC and it’s taking a bit more time than we had anticipated. I’m way behind on emails, so if you emailed me in recent days and I haven’t gotten back to you yet, that’s why. I’ll catch up early next week.

In the ad for Craig Petty’s Infinity Deck, it’s repeatedly suggested that it can be used for a “full act.”

“a powerhouse 10-15 act”

“A fully customizable act in one deck of cards with infinite possibilities.”

“[T] his deck ALONE could be your WHOLE close-up act.”

Similar things are said about other special, non-playing-card decks.

While I’m sure it’s true you could do a full act with these cards, I don’t recommend it.

For two reasons:

First, it lessens the novelty of the deck and the trick. I want the person to leave with a specific moment of magic crystallized in their mind. I don’t want them leaving saying, “He did a bunch of stuff with a deck of cards with pictures on them.”

Second, I’ve had David Jonathan and Dan Harlan’s Snaps for years, and the only time people have openly asked whether the deck is legit is when I’ve done multiple tricks with it. So I think doing multiple tricks with an unusual deck raises the suspicion, as opposed to normalizing the deck like you might hope.

I can understand the other argument—that you might want to portray yourself as someone who can do lots of magic with any type of deck—that makes sense intellectually. But in my experience it lessens the novelty and impact, while raising the suspicion on the cards. So my philosophy is to find the strongest thing you can do with the deck and just do that.

While it’s not an official GLOMM booting until conviction, let’s just say I highly recommend you not hire Scott Morley, owner of Morley’s Magic Shop in New Jersey to perform for your kid’s kindergarten graduation.

This first paragraph of this article is about all you need to know.

“A pair of children's underwear and a slew of photos depicting preadolescent children engaging in sexual acts were all part of magician and theater owner Scott Morley's ‘fantasy,’ the Butler resident allegedly told authorities prior to his arrest earlier this month for possessing child pornography.”

This one is particularly sad to research, because if you look for pictures of Scott, you get a bunch of him with his wife and two little girls.

That’s right, Scott, it is. Perhaps start your math journey by learning to count up to the age of consent.

If you open up a magic shop in a small town, there’s no way you’re doing it because you think it’s a good money making proposition. There’s must be something else driving your actions. What could it be…? 🤔

I’m not saying we should toss all small-town magic shop owners in jail preemptively. But maybe before getting a permit to open such a store, we could strap them to a tumescence monitor and have them watch an episode of the Suite Life of Zach and Cody or something? Anything?

I wonder what exactly Walmart was trying to offer me here?

This Doesn't Work Like You Think It Does: Shuttle Pass

/

When we were doing the focus group testing more regularly, there were certain techniques that would regularly raise suspicion from the audience. These included techniques that are used by performers all the time.

For example, the “verbal ruse” that I wrote about in this post.

Now, when I say these techniques would raise suspicion “regularly,” I don’t mean 100% of the time. But at least 50%. Sometimes something closer to 60 or 75%

In my opinion, if something draws attention to itself that regularly, it’s not really workable. I don’t know if I would use a technique that even 20% of people found questionable.

Today I want to talk about the shuttle pass.

Now, the shuttle pass itself is fine.

But I want to talk about a use for it which doesn’t work like magicians seem to think it does.

You’ve just pushed the cigarette through the quarter.

“Here,” you say, “take a look.”

I see this all the time. The shuttle pass used to “end clean.”

The problem is that this isn’t how humans hand things out. They don’t take it from one hand and put it in the other and then hand it out.

Would you like a lollipop?

Here, take this sheet of paper.

It might not look that weird to you, but only because you’ve seen it done a million times in magic.

If someone does that to you in real life, you’re in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers scenario, and they’ve been body snatched.

In some situations, this might go unnoticed. But right at the end of the trick, where there is intense suspicion on the object, unnecessarily transferring it from one hand to the other is going to ring false to people. Whether they catch the switch or not, it doesn’t matter. They’ll feel like you did something. Sorry. I know it’s an easy way to clean-up, but you’re going to have to figure something else out.

What should I do?

Bitch, I don’t know. It’s going to depend on the item you’re switching and the situation in which you’re presenting the trick. You need to find a way to motivate handing it from one hand to the other.

For example, if you’re performing for a few people standing in a semicircle, you can show the object to the person on your right, then pass it to your left hand and give it to the person on your left to pass around. That gives you at least a somewhat plausible reason to pass the coin between your hands.

But of course that doesn’t work one-on-one.

Sometimes, if you have multiple things in play (multiple coins, or a coin and a cigarette, for example) in the process of gathering the items to hand out, you can do the switch at that point.

I don’t know. As I said, it depends on the routine and how you’re performing it. I’m not here to tell you exactly what to do. Just to point out that if your idea of “ending clean” is handing an object to yourself before handing it out, that doesn’t work like you think it does.

Vibes

/

As I suspected, yesterday’s post led to a number of emails which have helped me understand how clear or unclear the concept is. I’ll devote next week’s mailbag to the subject. But before moving on to normal posting tomorrow, let me clarify my intention with an analogy.

At any large school, or large office, you’ve probably encountered a guy who is super-handsome, who is a complete dud with the women. Like, when they first meet him, they’re really taken with his thick hair and his chiseled jawline. But once people get to know him, they’re pretty disinterested in his company.

Then you’ll have a guy in the office who is maybe not traditionally attractive. Maybe he has a receding hairline or a little gut. But people—including many beautiful women—are drawn to him.

The hot guy walks into the break room. He sees the average guy at a table in the far side of the room. The average guy is pushed back from the table and leaned back in his chair. He’s gesturing widely as he tells a story, or maybe it’s a joke. Claire and Susan from HR are on either side of him. And Brenda from accounting is sitting on the edge of the table in front of him, leaning in with her elbow on her knee and her chin in her palm as she listens attentively.

The average guy’s voice builds. “I’m going nuts. I’m rushing down the stairs. I’m pushing down my hair. Brushing the crumbs off my shirt. I open the door…” He pauses. The women lean in. “And it’s my mom.”

“Nooooo!” Brenda shouts.

“Oh my god,” Claire says, resting her hand on his shoulder.

They all laugh and put their stuff away as they get ready to head back to work.

Susan says, “You’re coming this weekend, right?”

“Absolutely,” the average guy says. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

They exit the break room, squeezing past the hot guy, with only the average guy acknowledging him at all with a quick head nod.

“What the hell…,” the hot guy thinks. “What’s that guy’s deal? Why are they so into him? His stomach isn’t toned at all. It’s crazy.” He stands there wondering what it is he has to do to attract these women. His frustration turns to excitement as he thinks…

“I know! I’ll lift more weights!” He nods to himself. “Ooh… and maybe I’ll get an eye-catching hat!”

The hot guy has a vibe problem. A charisma problem. He doesn’t generate the right energy when you’re around him.

But he focuses on muscles and hats.

Magic has a vibe problem.

It frequently comes off as egocentric, try-hard, and needy. You could argue that it’s inherently those things. How else would you define learning how to do some arbitrary thing that seems impossible (but isn’t) and then showing it to people and not telling them how it’s done?

That is what magic—as traditionally performed—comes across as to many people.

This is why they can watch you do something impossible. Be shocked by it. And never think of it again after 30 seconds.

You fooled them, but you didn’t connect with them. And it’s very likely because the vibe was wrong.

I think a lot of magicians sense this disconnect. And their solution? Stronger tricks.

Stronger tricks = muscles and hats.

We’re focusing on the wrong thing.

It’s like a guy who bends thick steel bars, and he’s not getting as good a response as he would like from the people he bends steel bars for, so he thinks, “I need to bend thicker steel bars!” That’s probably not the answer.

Creating the right vibe is the answer.

Consider this…

If you do a trick that is a 10 out of 10 for impossibility, but has a bad vibe, people will immediately say it was “just a trick.” People always have that means of dismissal at their disposal. “I don’t know. It was some kind of trick.”

But…

If you do just a good trick for people, and the vibe is on point, they will talk about it for the rest of their lives.

The biggest improvements in the quality of the reactions I’ve gotten from performing have come from generating a better vibe for the performance. Creating a more natural flow into the trick and setting myself up to exude comfort so they can experience genuine comfort too.

When I saw Punch Drunk Love years ago, a homeless man entered the theater halfway through and sat in the front row. The entire theater gagged at the smell of old jeans that had been pissed in, left to dry, pissed in, left to dry, and pissed in again. The smell was unavoidable. Breathing through my nose was torture. Breathing through my mouth felt like chomping on a piece of piss-flavored Freshen-up gum.

Why do I bring this up?

Well, do you think I was swept up in the majesty of Punch Drunk Love during that showing?

No! Because with every breath I was assaulted with the fetid musk of sopping, hot Levis.

If there is tension or discomfort in the air, you can’t build on that.

And this is an issue with magic because that tension is baked into it. As I mentioned yesterday, a spectator who has never seen you perform may never have even seen any real life close-up magic. So they might have tension about what exactly is the nature of the interaction. They might be worried about feeling stupid. Or they might be concerned they have to coddle you and pretend to be fooled.

This is part of the reason why there is that disconnect—why the reaction to magic so often seems shallow. The vibe isn’t right. And performing magic as most people do just reinforces that bad vibe.

But when they’re comfortable and they know what type of experience they can expect, they open themselves up to the fiction. They want to get swept up in it. It’s not a competition or a battle of wits.

In one word, I’m describing that vibe as “Carefree.” But don’t get too hung up on that word, it’s just to have an umbrella term that describe a general state that includes feeling: comfortable, relaxed, present, confident, non-needy, worry-free, effortless, normal, relatable, fun, unforced, natural, etc.

Carefree Magic

/

I always like to keep you apprised on where my head is at with magic. There’s a danger in this. If I fall in love with billiard ball magic and start only writing about “the beauty of the spheres” and the “celestial waltz of the orbs twixt my fingers,” then I might encourage a few people to pick up billiard ball magic. But most people would eventually stop reading the site. Maybe checking in every few months wondering if I’m “still obsessed with that dumb ball shit.”

I’d lose readers. I’d lose supporters. And soon the site wouldn’t exist because I wouldn’t have the time to devote to it because other work obligations would get in the way.

So you would think, for my own sake, I’d want to stay on top of where the magic winds were blowing and write about more popular subjects.

But that stuff doesn’t usually interest me. And if I wanted to write about stuff that doesn’t interest me, I have more lucrative options to do so other than a magic blog.

The best part of this site, for me, is being able to follow my own whims. And so long as there is a small group of people whose interests occasionally overlap, that’s enough to keep things going. You don’t need to like and subscribe. You don’t need to smash that notification button. We’re good.

Over the past few months, I’ve been more annoyed by magicians than usual. It feels like every product release I see is extra-stupid and less connected to any sort of real-world performing situation… especially for social/casual performing.

I don’t think it’s really the case that there’s some sort of noticeable difference in what’s getting released. It just feels that way to me. I’m finding a lot of magic corny at the moment. But it’s a me-thing, not that magic is any cornier than it’s always been.

But that’s good. Whenever I find myself feeling more disconnected to magic culture, it usually pushes me towards a new personal understanding of how I want to present magic and connect with people through magic.

Strangely, one trick that’s been causing me to think a lot recently is the 21 Card Trick. I was working on a presentation/variation of the trick for a few months, and it was going over much better than I had anticipated. I mean, I expected it to be much stronger than the traditional 21 Card Trick. But I didn’t necessarily expect it to elicit great responses. Nor did I think I’d enjoy performing it that much.

It was in the middle of one of those performances, at my friend’s home, hanging out on her couch, that I was asking myself, “Why is this trick going over so well. Why is the vibe so good here?”

And then it hit me…

What kills the magic experience?

I think the answer is tension.

Tension kills the vibe.

Yet, so often, the performer is tense about if they can pull off the trick. And they’re tense about how it will be received.

The audience might be tense about exactly what is going on. They might feel tense about looking stupid. Or they might feel tense about not being fooled but having to pretend they are for the magician’s ego.

What made the 21 Card Trick variation I was doing feel so good is that there was no tension. It was an easy trick, performed for people who understood what to expect from this type of experience, in a casual environment, within the flow of a normal human interaction.

I felt no tension. And so there was none for my friend to pick up from me.

The experience was completely carefree.

Carefree. That’s the term I’m using for now. I may come up with a better one (or you might).

I’m trying to capture a quality of magic that I like and that I think goes over best in casual/social performances.

Is this trick impromptu? Does it reset instantly? Does it pack small and play big? Is it EDC? Is it mentalism or mental-magic? Close-up or parlor?

I don’t really care about these dorky magician-centric concepts. I’m looking for Carefree magic tricks.

To be clear, “carefree” doesn’t refer to the storyline of the effect. The story can make people feel tense, or scared, or emotional.

I’m using “carefree” to describe my comfort with the trick and with the person I’m performing for.

A trick that goes beyond your abilities to comfortably perform is not Carefree. But you can have a Carefree trick where the premise is that this thing you’re doing is incredibly difficult.

Carefree is effortless. Carefree is not needy.

Being worried about the sleights you need to perform is not Carefree.

Being up in your head when you perform is not Carefree.

Fully-scripted patter is not Carefree.

The “stuff my pockets full of tricks” philosophy of EDC is not Carefree.

“Audience-management” is not Carefree.

Focusing on your hands while doing tricks is not Carefree.

Trying to appear “real” is not Carefree.

Being constantly on guard and trying to control what the spectator looks at and touches is not Carefree.

When you are comfortable and the audience is comfortable, then you’ve created an environment where people can feel more free to give themselves over to the magic experience.

Carefree magic is vibe-centric.

Too often we’re focused merely on the strength or the impossibility of the trick, and not what it feels like for us to perform it, and the spectator to watch it. And so we end up with these tricks that fool people but don’t pull people into the experience.

It may seem like I’m reframing stuff I’ve talked about on the site since the beginning. And that’s true. But I’m just kind of putting all the pieces together myself.

Almost every concept I’ve written about over the past decade hasn’t been about making tricks more deceptive, but about making the experience more casual, fun, natural, and enjoyable. Imps and Reps are about creating a better flow into and out of the trick. E.D.A.S. displays and Wonder Rooms are more natural ways to get into tricks than going into your secret magic area and bringing out one particular trick. The Engagement Ceremony is to get the mood right for a process-heavy trick. Peek Backstage and Distracted Artist performing styles are just more carefree ways to present tricks you already do.

It’s all vibe stuff. And the word I’m using to describe that ideal vibe for social/casual magic is Carefree. This is nomenclature I’m sure I’ll refer back to in the future, so get used to it.

I think what was frustrating me so much about magic in recent months was that everything I saw felt soul-less and vibe-less. I’m sure it wasn’t that way any more than it’s ever been. I was just picking up on it more than usual.

But that frustration has refocused me on what I’m shooting for when I perform and what I hope to write about here.

More on this tomorrow. (I think.)

Mailbag #118

/

Can you provide any additional information on the billet switch you mentioned in [a trick in the last book]? I’ve been getting into billet technique lately and like the look of the switch that was demonstrated in the appendix. —FB

Sadly, there’s not too much to add to the description I wrote in the appendix:

I act as if I’m going to open the billet in my left hand, but I just sort of touch my hands together and start unfolding the fingerpalmed billet in my right hand while curling my left fingers in. This move probably has a name in the world of billet technique, but to me, it’s just: “The Most Obvious Thing You Would Do To Switch In A Billet.”

Keep this in mind as you get into billet work… Normal humans aren’t on the lookout for a billet switch. As magicians, when we see someone write something on a little piece of paper, we already have it in mind there’s a good chance it will get switched. But that’s not at the front of regular people’s minds. What they are on the lookout for is anything that feels strange.

Magicians often use an awkward handling, that they think looks more fair, rather than a casual handling that is perhaps less objectively “clean.”

I wrote a post here once on Casualness vs. Clarity. With billet technique, I believe you should almost always favor casualness over clarity.

The reason you like the look of the billet switch in that GIF is because there’s no weird pause or unnatural action. Not because of some great technique on my part. The only additional bit of information I would give is that the billet that’s fingerpalmed should be ready to be unfolded, whatever that means to you. For me, it means holding it like this.

Then I just push that little dangly part forward with my thumb to start the unfolding.

If I was just getting into billet work, I would film myself handling a billet “normally” with no subterfuge. How do I hold it? How do I fold it? How do I unfold it? How do I take it from one hand to the other?

Then I would look for techniques (or create them) that are most similar to the way I already move. I would avoid awkward techniques, even if they’re technically “cleaner.”

Regarding the Jerxian Quick Start Guide:

Great. Really good notes. Thank you.

I was surprised by the step of saying “just kidding” but I’d imagine it’s a great setup to “except for this which is 100% real”.—JF

Yes, it’s a set-up for that moment, but really the purpose is just to be extra clear. At that moment, I’m prioritizing clarity over good magic or an affecting experience.

This assumes I’m performing for someone who doesn’t know me well.

I perform the trick. Then I give the fantastical explanation. What I don’t want them to think is that:

  1. I’m a lunatic, and I really believe the story I’m telling.

    or

  2. I’m a weirdo, and I want them to believe the story I’m telling.

That’s the reason for pulling the rug out from under the premise so quickly.

I like to give them a beat where they’re not sure what to think, but then clarify it for them quickly.

Do you think it’s too magician-y to carry around a Sharpie marker?—AJ

At this point in history, I don’t think it’s any weirder to carry a Sharpie than it is to carry any other writing implement with you.

If you look at the EDC subreddit and search Sharpie, there are a lot of non-magicians who carry a Sharpie every day.

That being said, the members of an EDC subreddit might not be the best measurement for what is “normal.”

My concern wouldn’t be that it seems “magician-y” so much as that it seems overly prepared. Which I generally want to avoid. So I don’t ever just have a Sharpie floating around in my pocket (despite what you assumed was the outline of a Sharpie Mini in my pants).

If I need a Sharpie for something, I’ll carry one around in my bag. This feels more natural to me and less like I’m Mr. Markerboy, the guy who left the house this morning planning to show someone this specific trick with a marker.

Until June...

/

This is the final post for May. New posts will begin again on Monday, June 3rd. The next issue of the newsletter will be sent to supporters on Sunday, June 2nd.

The publishing rights to two of the posts I made this week have been purchased, and those posts will be disappearing from the site by the end of the month. Just FYI.

I’m curious how your daily work flow is managed. I understand you often work at coffee shops and such but do you have a tool that keeps you disciplined or a unique to-do list which has worked well for you? Sounds like you have multiple writing projects so I’m curious how you decide to divide your time or if you have real or pretend deadlines set up. —JF

This will be of use to no one, but it’s the most beneficial thing I’ve done for my productivity recently. It will really only work for people who create their own schedule.

The issue started because for years I’ve been trying to craft a schedule that works for me. Like maybe I should do work on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and keep Wednesday free for errands and other things. Or maybe I should focus on work for the first half of the day Mon-Fri. Then tackle personal productive activities for the second half, and every other Sunday I’ll do some sort of self-care exercise. Blah, blah, blah.

My schedule is fucked up because I have my magic-related work which involves a lot of writing, but also a lot of meeting up with people to test out tricks and ideas for the newsletters and books. And then I have my other non-magic related work which requires a different type of approach and scheduling. And every scheme I came up with to plan out my time would solve one problem but create another. I’d always end up screwing myself over in some area of life: my magic work; my non-magic work; my everyday tasks and errands as well as productive time for exercise, learning, etc; and my relaxation/recovery time.

I was constantly rejiggering my schedule trying to get it right. And finally I came to a realization. I couldn’t get my schedule to work because I was trying to divide everything up on a seven day week schedule, and what I had to do just didn’t divide well by seven.

It did, however, divide up into a good five day “week.”

So now I operate on my own made-up calendar. With six 5-day “weeks” every month. The “week” always starts on the 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st, and 26th of each month. (With 31 day months I just have an extra bonus day at the end of the month.)

I had to come up with my own day names: Dawnday, Blossomday, Frostday, Twilightday, Moonday. Each day has its own purpose and concentration.

The plus side is that I’ve never been more focused and organized with my time. Everything fits so well for me in this structure.

The downside is that my friends think I’m a little crazy for creating my own calendar. And I rarely have any idea what day it actually is.

Something like this wouldn’t work if you have a traditional Monday-Friday job. It would just be unnecessary. But it might be worth considering if you make your own schedule. You might find the things you need to do are better broken up along some different schedule. Maybe three 10-day “weeks” a month. Or seven 4-day weeks. Or ten 3-day ones.

I know it sounds a little crazy, but if the ideal schedule for the work you do is two days on followed by one day off, and you’ve been trying to correlate that with a 7-day week, you will drive yourself nuts the rest of your life. Might as well just go with your own thing.

What is your current note-taking app/set-up? —OU

At the moment, I don’t use anything special. I just use Apple’s Notes app. I have it set up so the Action button on the iPhone automatically opens my primary note where I dump in ideas, thoughts, quotes, or anything of any nature that I want to follow up on later. Then every week or so I go through that one long “brain-dump” note and put the ideas where they belong.

Another note-related thing I’ve been using lately is a keyboard notepad like this.

It sits in front of your laptop or desketop keyboard.

I find it to be the least distracting way to capture notes and ideas that come to me while I’m working. I don’t need to change the screen on my computer or pick up my phone. Both of those things can end up derailing me.

So with this, I just have the idea, pick up my pen and jot it down. Then at the end of my work session I transfer those written notes to something digital.

I like watching movies, but when I’d put a movie on in my home, I would find myself dicking around on my phone or otherwise being distracted. In a way, I was thinking, “Well, I’m watching this movie for entertainment, and I’m on my phone for entertainment, so what difference does it make?” But I realized I wasn’t getting the most out of my movie-watching time. I’d barely remember anything about the movie, and it was kind of a waste of two hours.

So now I have a new movie-watching approach. I call it Movies as Meditation. I put my phone in the other room and don’t allow any distractions (except the person I’m with and maybe some snacks). The idea is that this isn’t solely for purposes of entertainment. Now, watching a movie is an act of focus and giving my attention over to something completely. Ultimately, I end up enjoying the movie much more. But I sort of trick myself into that by coming at watching a movie as an exercise in mindfulness.

Some other music-related tips related to Tuesdays post:

  1. The weekly Pitchfork Selects mix is a good place to find new music if you like a wide-range of genres.

  2. Here is the “minimum effective dose” to keep yourself somewhat attuned to the music scene. Find a good-sized subreddit for a genre of music you like. For example, indieheads for indie music, or hiphopheads for hip-hop. Once a month, go to the site and choose it so it sorts by the “top” posts over the last “month.” Check out the top 10 or 20 posts and take a listen to see what grabs your attention.

  3. I generally don’t have a lot of interest in top 40 type music. But I do like to follow this guy on youtube. He’s a musical genius. He can be critical of modern pop music being generally pretty terrible. But he listens with an open mind and gives a lot of respect to modern performers where deserved.

See you back here on the third!

Splooge: Finding New Music

/

Do you use google sheets to keep track of your music listening or artists? How do you find new music? Is there an app like letterboxed or something (I've googled and searched and would not bug with this email if I'd found something great). —TH

I’m a big believer in the importance of music in people’s lives.

I know some people don’t really care about music. They give it no thought.

People who will go on a road trip and just drive along in silence, accompanied only by the sound of their tires on the pavement and their own Slim-Jim-farts muted against the car seat.

People whose first dance wedding song was At Last by Etta James because…well… I don’t know. Seems good enough.

People who don’t have a carefully curated sex mix for when they hook up with someone new. They just pop in this CD of “Cool Rock” and pump away.

But for most people, music is (or at one point was) an essential element to their lives. Essential for connection to the world around them. Essential for feeling out and processing emotions.

Despite that, if I ask most people over the age of 28 to name three new bands from the last 5 years, they will be unable to do so.

When we’re young, music can feel so vital, but still a time comes for most people where they’re just listening to stuff they already know or the occasional new song they’ve become familiar with because it’s overplayed on the radio.

Unless you have a system or a process to keep new music coming into your life, it can be easy to get left behind and fall off the path of keeping current.

Here is the system I use to find new music.

There are two aspects to it.

The Scattershot Approach

Every week, Apple Music puts out a New Music Playlist that is based on the music you already listen to. (I assume Spotify does something similar).

So once a week I’ll go through that list and note bands that I already like that have released new music. I’ll add those albums to a list of albums I want to check out.

I’ll also skim through the other music in the playlist and see if there’s anything else that appeals to me. Any song that sounds good, I’ll add to a Weekly Music mix that I’ll listen to throughout the following week.

At the end of the week, I’ll reassess the songs in that mix:

  • If I decide I’m not that into them, I’ll delete them.

  • If I like the songs, I’ll add them to a playlist that is sort of my Personal Radio Station. This playlist consists of all the music that is new to me over the past year.

  • If I love the songs, then I’ll make it a point to look more into the band and get their latest full album.

The Birthday Candle Approach

When you’re using a match to light candles on a birthday cake, you light the first candle, and then you use that candle to light the other candles.

Similarly, when I find a band I like, I use that band to find more new music.

  • I find out what bands this group has toured with

  • If they’re on a niche label, I look into other bands on that label

  • I find out if the members are in other bands

You can also use this site called Music Map to enter a band name and see what other bands are similar to them.

But perhaps the most fruitful technique along these lines is the following, which works best for more obscure artists. When I find a band I really like that isn’t that well known, I’ll put that band name into google, along with “best of,” their album name, and the year their album came out.

For example, last year I got into a Chicago indie band called Cusp.

So I put Cusp “best of” “you can do it all” 2023 into google.

And that search leads me to some other people who also thought this emerging band had one of the best albums of the year. And then I can see what other bands they were into, which will likely lead me to some other music I might appreciate, because we’ve already demonstrated similar taste for this lesser known thing.

Obviously, it’s not quite as significant if we share an appreciation for something that’s wildly popular. “Oh, you like Marvel movies? Crazy! Me too!” That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll share other similar tastes. But when you find someone who appreciates the same unsigned band, independent film, small-town, or out-of-the-way restaurant, you can often use them to guide you towards other things that will appeal to you as well.

The final thing to do is to make listening to new music part of a habit.

For me, I try to listen to my Weekly Music mix (which is a few songs long) and a newly released album each day. Usually it’s the same album for about a week. So that’s about 45 minutes to an hour a day of listening to music. I’m doing other stuff at the same time. I’m not just sitting in a chair staring into the void.

At the end of the week, I’ll decide what songs from the Weekly Music mix and the new album are going to go into my Personal Radio Station and I transfer them over. I listen to the Personal Radio Station whenever I’m in the mood to listen to new-ish music.

Then, once a month, I take anything from my Personal Radio Station that was added more than a year ago, and I transfer those songs into my primary playlist of all the songs on my Apple Music.

This system requires something like Spotify or Apple Music to work. But if you’re the sort of person who is going to benefit from an influx of new music in your life, then you should already be subscribed to one of those.