“I’m stuck in the past when it comes to music despite trying something new. I occasionally force myself to listen to the top 50’s playlists on Spotify and all I find is redundant crap. My music journey now focus primarily on finding what I had missed when growing up, often taking tangents of the previously and forever unpopular but extremely good music that the music biz never deemed appropriate for mass consumption.”
I’m the same. One way I’ve found new-to-me music is by exploring the top 40 charts of the UK. While there is a lot of overlap there are actually quite a few hits there that did not chart here, or charted very low such that they didn’t get airplay.
I also did a deep dive into regional/local acts of the 60’s plus/minus a few years from my part of the country. Even 10 years ago you could find those singles for reasonable price. Now that’s a huge market for people with our same interest and Ebay prices have skyrocketed.
I have done much of the same thing, making deep dives into music that may not have topped the charts, but was very good.