It would be nice to know "where".
Perhaps a savvy FM radio format could lead to me the promised land of all the musical cream which seemed to once easily rise to the top instead of all the searching producing skimmed milk today.
I tend to find new music as tangents off of other things, like related videos on youtube. I'll give things a quick listen, and if a song intrigues me enough, I look into more songs by the artist. If multiple are good, I usually buy an album or two to hear more at higher quality. I've also found plenty of artists I now like thanks to threads on here like the
21st Century Playlist thread.
I basically never use the radio. The antenna in my current car has stayed down for the 5 years I've owned it. However, when I have to drive other people's cars, I put it on 101.1 out here in the Chicago area. They tend to have decent stuff playing all the time.
Here's my contribution to the thread as a whole:
A problem I see is that the older crowd usually thinks everything "back in the day" was better. Now, I'm not talking about just the legitimately great songs with excellent writing. I mean every damn song that hit the radio. That's simply not true. Most of the stuff that hit the charts has been forgotten over time, or is still thought of as great because of fond memories. For example, Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar on Me is basically the same idea as 50 Cent's Candy Shop, just not as explicit. I'm sure there are plenty of people on here who would say Def Leppard is great and that's a great song while also saying rap is crap and 50 Cent sucks. The truth is both songs lack depth, but both did what they were made to do: become popular and climb the charts. You'd just rather have a repetitive guitar riff and metaphors for sex than a repetitive rap beat and metaphors for sex.
Another issue is that many of the people on here like things in the style of what is now classic rock. Let's narrow it down to the '70s for an example. The rock music of the '70s climbed the charts because rock music was the most popular genre in the '70s. The "club music" of the '70s was disco, so disco also climbed the charts. This is now 2014. Disco is dead. Rock is not the most popular genre anymore. The electronic and hip-hop music that gets played in today's clubs did not even exist back then, and many of today's pop songs borrow from those genres. That is the kind of music that is popular with many of today's kids/teens/college students/whatever, a.k.a. the target market for radio. Some rock and rock-influenced music still manages to get on the charts, but it's a completely different style than '70s rock. The music that climbed the charts in the '70s would never do so today due to different tastes in the general public of pop radio's target audience.
As for lyrical content, think about how many top hits of the '70s and '80s contained pointless or cliche lyrics. Pour Some Sugar on Me was a huge hit. There is no depth. The only thing they did great in that song was making something catchy in a genre that was popular. That is the key point.
Pop music for radio is not about depth or great songwriting. It's about making something catchy in a popular genre. If you're not looking for something catchy in one of the currently-popular genres, don't bother looking to radio stations that play pop.
A good song should tell a story like Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust.
You don't see much of that anymore....
That song only hit #35 in 1975. When you go back and look at the
Billboard Hot 100 of 1975, it isn't even on there. You know what is? Kung Fu Fighting. According to the charts, Kung Fu Fighting is better than Diamonds and Rust. Love Will Keep Us Together is the greatest song of 1975 according to the charts. The charts don't matter. Just because what you would consider to be great songs aren't on today's charts doesn't mean they aren't out there. The radio is not a representation of top-quality music. Pop radio plays what's on the charts. Artists from the past like Iggy Pop and Tom Waits that are now well-known and have been hugely influential didn't even get on the charts. Look elsewhere for today's great music.