Back when we had music stores and CDs, you could count on your friend who stocked the CD racks to recommend new artists. What casual fan has the time to discovery cool new music, after all? It’s always so much easier to just turn to your friend and say: “Hey, I’m a big fan of this. What else would I like?”
But what do we do now in a world without the likes of Tower Records and their armies of professionally trained music snobs?
Well, it turns out, there’s a place for that on social news site Reddit, for music and more.
r/ifyoulikeblank (“If you like blank”) is a hive of nearly 5,000 music, film, and television aficionados whose only goal is to recommend the best they can based solely on things you like.
Like alt rock bands like Guster and Dispatch, for instance?
Redditor SaiGone recommends Pat McGee Band, the Virginia Coalition or the John Butler Trio.
Or what about indie band Beiruit?
Redditor paulderev recommends “Depeche Mode, M83, New Order, anything with big arpeggiating synth melodies.”
But what makes the subreddit really useful is how the variety in tastes. It’s not just for hipsters. You can ask anything: from Gossip Girl to Bruce Springsteen to, well, r/ifyoulikeblank.
The community describes itself as “A subreddit for people who are in search of new, relevant media.”
But it’s more than that. It’s the kind of place any number of clever music and movie services try to be—a Netflix recommendation queue, but based on discussions, not algorithms.
And its also yet another example of how how Reddit is as much about social learning as it is social news.