I don't select anything. I go where my current mood takes me. If I like something, I like it. If I want to hear it again, I save the music or add it to a playlist.

I'm from the MTV generation, we heard music on MTV and that got us to buy CDs. There was also rock radio. Rock radio doesn't really exist anymore, at least not in the west. Radio isn't free to run, so to run music, they have to run ads to pay the bills. When their bills go up, they either increase ad time (take away from the music), or they play cheaper music. So, slop like pop and country that costs them less. Streaming has similar bullshit. You add a song to your playlist. You go through the artist's discography to choose the song from the original album release — or maybe you go with the remaster. We're not debating that here. Either way, the song comes up on shuffle and all of a sudden it's from a soundtrack or Greatest Hits compilation. See, it's the same audio, but being from a compilation means it costs the streamer less, and they hope you don't notice/care about the album art. Generally if you set it back, they'll leave it be, but sometimes they'll change it again.

Anyway, rock music is kinda dead in the west (it's really not) because the venues promoting it (MTV and rock radio) no longer do so. So western (USA, UK/EU, Australia) rock is mostly indie these days. Or old timers hanging on. In the east though, business is booming. Anime is getting a lot of western eyes and ears tuning in, so they use the opening and ending themes to highlight music from their country. Streaming music from these bands and artists lead to more, similar Japanese songs. So for example ONE OK ROCK never did anime before, but I discovered them because I discovered Survive Said the Prophet via either Vinland Saga or Banana Fish and, hey, these other guys sound similar. (ONE OK ROCK has since licensed their song Prove to the children's anime Beyblade X, over a decade after becoming popular.)

Back in the day, yeah, I listened to my friends and what they listened to. These days I'll listen to a song I like, see what other playlists it's on (this is on Apple Music), and sometimes I'll play that playlist to see what they have.

I also run a music community (on the instance I'm on). I'm not 100% clear how to link them, and the guy running my instance has had beef with the people running .world (the instance this was posted on, the instance OP is a member of). So, out of respect for .world and for them allowing me to be here, probably best I don't? Even though I have no real part in that issue, whatever it was. Music can be, but isn't political for me. It's more spiritual, as in, I listen to music to soothe my spirit. Anyway, I run a music comm and I post a song every day. It's mostly western (American, European, or Australian) rock, or Japanese rock. There's like one country song. The first song I posted was Celtic (it's Enya), but, mostly it's rock. So you could say I don't have much variety. I dunno, I'm going through my favourites. And I'm telling stories with a lot of them. Anyway, the comm's open, I haven't messed with any of the settings (I don't even have a header image yet), so anybody is free to post whatever. Though, .world has a music comm as well. .world doesn't need your help, it's the biggest one, but I'd still always advise anyone on any instance to support your own instance. That's why I made a music comm, we didn't have one. Figured I could post on any other music comm (and maybe even be welcome to post daily), but... I wanted to support my own instance. And I wouldn't advise anyone else otherwise. But hey, if you wanna see what I've posted... it's just called "music" on the instance I'm on. Shouldn't be hard to find.