You can only sort of ever keep up.

The main issue preventing you an Old, from finding more about people who are Young, is that the Young don't exactly love the old filling up their spaces, trying to remain hip.

This is exemplified by the slow death of social networks as they grow in popularity. A new social network pops up, its quickly populated by the youth. Slowly, as it becomes more popular, Olds start creeping in, until there are so many Olds that the youth want to go somewhere else because they no longer have privacy.

When Mom and Uncle Jim are in the conversation, everything is suddenly less cool.

Happened to MySpace first, and it's happening to Facebook right now. It's basically ghost towns of people who will be dead soon.

We are limited because the youth will always want their own private spaces where they can truly be themselves without their weird expectations of the older generations. If you're older with zero expecations for the youth, congratulations: you're unusual, so don't hold it against the youth that they assume you're just another boring old person who is going to judge them for something. Most adults are out here judging them, so give them a break on assumptions they might make about you.

I used to keep up with music through YouTube channels, but even the ones I used to follow are aging up and soon enough those people I was listening to are Old now too, and they're doing the same thing as me, trying to keep up with what's hip and good.

I understand the desire to do so. New music is often so good, and I really get sick of people who act like the music they grew up with is the best in history. It's not, and it never will be. Music is always growing and making music is more accessible than ever, which means its really exploding and evolving. There's never been a better time to love music.

However, as Olds, we're just going to miss a lot of what's cool with the kids simply because we're Olds. So much is just going to naturally be hidden from us.

I enjoy listening to college radio stations. They're usually varied in music genres and tend to reflect what college students want to put on the airwaves.

I'm a fan of 88.3FM Central Carolina Community College Radio.

Start dating a 19 year old.

Never take a break from culture. As soon as you take a year off you will be irrelevant. If that sound exhausting (it is) then congratulations; you have discovered why older people are never on top of pop culture.

Start paying attention to the top new & trending Spotify playlists in genres you're interested in.

Aging? At 30? Kid, are you mocking us?

That's one of the reasons I spend a lot of time in forums like this. To keep up with the latest stuff.

But then the latest stuff started being hella weird and I still couldn't follow it even knowing the origins and context of popular trends and now I'm grumpy about kids on my lawn. 😬

Early 30's here. I was at a small gathering my best mate put together about a year ago, and his 19 year old nephew was there. He expressed his interest in anime and we got chatting. While showing me some newer anime-related TikTok stuff (I have no social media myself and haven't really kept up with modern anime), I heard some fucking awesome 'aggressive trap' stuff and asked him who the artist was. It was Lil' Darkie and I was immediately hooked. I went down a rabbit hole searching his best stuff as well as other similar artists, and now have a huge playlist of great music I'd have never discovered on my own.

imo music discovery is a pretty organic process for most people. It's cultural and spreads via word of mouth. Chatting with younger people may be the best way to go, but understand that the youth rightfully don't want us in their spaces lmao

Bandcamp is nice, they have a curated genre section that updates frequently. College radio stations as someone mentioned, then just Shazam or whatever or look at their playlist online. I hate Spotify because it just gives you pop shit and doesn’t do anything niche or indie. There’s also SoundCloud, they make curated playlists of new stuff frequently. Sound cloud also has labels on there which curate some of their newest bands. It’s super easy to find niche indie labels I think. Lastly, look at lineups of local music spots. I used to listen to Deezer for finding non-US artists, but haven’t used it in a while since Bandcamp is kinda great about covering everywhere.

Listen to music.

Get a skateboard and go to your local skate park. Walk up to some kids and say how do you do fellow kids? What are we listening to today?

just let the algorithm feed you the cultural gruel

College/independent radio

As someone else said, bandcamp is pretty good. Their articles are, so far as I can tell, written by actual people and thus have more soul to them. I'm sure some asshole is plotting to replace them with LLM, but until then!

Also, go to shows. Go see live music. Usually folks have opening acts. Sometimes you can even make friends.

What could be more current than the beatles?

I just take older bands/artists that I like, and look up "artists similar to...." On Google, and start from there. Easy enough.

My dude, I'm the same as you and I just keep radioing shit on Spotify and shazaming shit I hear and doing the same for TV shows and movies and tapping into the Spotify premade playlists from time to time. Works aight enough.

Just my opinion, but I feel like you're far to concerned with being "current". No offence.

I'm 48 and when I was younger I swore up and down that "I wasn't going to be like my parents, stuck in my ways musically, blah blah blah." But you know what, it doesn't actually matter. Literally at all. It's vapid pop culture stuff that in adult world, no one actually cares about. Your friends aren't going to be your friends simply because you like the same music as them. You're social circle isn't going to rise and fall based on how "current" you are because outside of highschool, literally no one gives a damn.

Like what you like. Listen to what you want. and don't worry about staying "hip" because the entire concept is subjective and meaningless in the actual day-to-day world. No one is going to shun you for not knowing what's happening between Kendrick whats-his-face and The dude from Degrassi. And if they do, they're not really the kind of vapid social media obsessed people you should be associating with at your age anyway.

Again...just my opinion.

I would start reading Rolling Stone and similar stuff. The radio should also help.

Or are you looking specifically for only hip-hop?

44 year old, lifelong metalhead here. I refuse to listen to a bands current album if it isn't my favorite of theirs. Too many bands phone it in after only a few years. So, I definitely need to find the latest music available. Metal Injection has a ballot every year of about 200 albums. Of course it isn't a definitive list, but it's enough for me to keep up with everything.

I like to listen to a new album every Friday. You're streaming platform will recommend "New Albums for you" and just listen to one. Sometimes it's great,sometimes it isn't, but it is new and fun to explore.

Late thirties is aging? That's like peak life. You have money and family (at least a chance of that) and purpose in your life. You have confidence and you know who you are.

You are still a bit dumb, but less dumb than twenty somethings. I liked my late thirties.

Sign up for email lists to smaller venues (<1000 capacity) and check out the bands getting booked. Also, sign up for record label mailings, indie labels tend to have bands with similar vibes. Spotify and algorithm recs are not the way to go

I think the difference is that as a kid music is forced on you from all kinds of sources: parents, friends, radio, etc. So you don't realize how much time you actually spent just listening to new music.

As an Old, you probably don't have nearly as much random exposure, i.e. you control when you listen to music now. Which means the answer to your question is that you have to consciously set aside time simply to listen to music. It may feel like a "waste of time" for each track you think is shit, but that's just part of the process.

Good luck, and thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

Find a scene you like and subscribe to the artists and their labels. As for trends and gossip, it's cooler to remain oblivious to that brain poison.

Honestly, just follow some Instagram meme pages or browse SoundCloud's rap playlists. As a young person™️, this is how I've always found stuff, including xxxtentacion and lil peep when I was younger and they were both still around. If you're worried about "invading" our spaces like the other comment says, I think that sentiment is changing. I've befriended some older peeps online just for having anime pfps and stuff lmao.

Dude. Dude. You're still a kid ;)

Age jokes from an old fart aside, it's about your willingness to go looking.

It does mean you'll end up using some otherwise shitty services unless you are active in a local music related scene (like clubbing). But YouTube, Pandora, spotify, and most of the other music streaming services have some degree of recommendations. They aren't all that great usually, but in the absence of being immersed with real life music explorers, it's the best option.

You can check out the Billboard top 200 and go the route of hoping your preferred music genres chart in the first place, but also being fairly reliable that other fans have vetted tracks for it to get there.

And radio still exists. You can pick a station that's genre specific or a top 40 station and find stuff that's already a little popular that way. It isn't as reliable as it used to be, but you can find newer raising acts that way.

There's forums. I haunt the typical lemmy based music C/s, plus the ones for my favorite genres, which keeps me fairly up to date on new releases as well as some new acts.

And, always participate in your local scene when possible. It's harder with hip-hop since finding local acts outside of cities is damn near impossible, but if you're into other stuff too, it can be a great way to catch acts before they get going, if your local scene is active enough. I'm fairly lucky in that bluegrass is one of the genres I'm into, and I'm not too far away from one of the better known cities for country and bluegrass music. So it's easy to find new bands and solo acts performing at a bar or local festival that end up getting popular eventually. That's an example of what i mean, making use of what's already there locally.