I want to get off spotify, but I want a way to discover new music, and be notified of new music from bands I listen to. I don’t want ads, and I’m fine with piracy so long it is a relatively painless experience. Something like stremio but for music.
My dream service would be one that could recommend music based on a given song, and provide details about the artist and things. And even better version would have an API I could tap into so I could connect the service to music assistant. Hell I’ll make a (mostly) locally hosted version of the spotify dj if I can.
Rateyourmusic is great for stuff that appeals to internet music nerds. You can find hundreds of cool bands by just messing around with their chart filtering functions, then you can dig further in by taking an album you really like and looking up the user made lists and even forum conversations that mention it straight from its database page.
I don’t know how active it is nowadays but I found a lot of cool stuff on last.fm back in the day by looking at the libraries of users with similar taste and listening to whatever seemed cool and I wasn’t familiar with.
However, for some genres the best service is going outside and attending events. Do you like jazz? Go to the jazz bars in your area that have live music and see if anything sticks with you. EDM? Start going to raves if you want more than just the very popular mainstream stuff.