Discoverability of anything outside of the main stream is always difficult.
I listen to a sub-sub-genre of an already niche sub-genre (raw black metal) where it takes A LOT of work to pick out the small amount of good from the large amount of bad. Many of these bands are NOT on any major platforms except for bandcamp.
There are a few review blogs that highlight some of the top stuff (although, most of the reviews are at the black metal level, not the sub-sub-genre), but I find my main source of discovery is bandcamp.
What I do is: 1) Follow LABELS on bandcamp that specialize solely in the music from bands I like, 2) follow other users that have a similar purchase history, 3) and of course follow your favorite bands for updates.
My biggest issue with bandcamp is that I find their notification system and wishlist to be quite lacking.
For notifications and discoverability, I take all the notification emails I get, filter them based on type (new release, new items [gear,stickers,vinyl], and general message updates) and move them into my RSS system (FreshRSS)[0]. I get new music updates every day of things I probably want to at least check out.
For wishlist management, I wrote a simple desktop app[1] that lets me rate, tag, comment, and listen to my albums from my bandcamp wishlist quickly. Anything I _might_ be interested in, I put in my wishlist, then use my app to keep track of if I like it or not. Stuff I don't like stays in my wishlist, but gets a low rating and filters to the bottom while stuff I want to purchase filters up to the top.
Don't get me wrong, you are still going to need to spend time exploring, as you aren't getting your weekly curated playlists.
I listen to a sub-sub-genre of an already niche sub-genre (raw black metal) where it takes A LOT of work to pick out the small amount of good from the large amount of bad. Many of these bands are NOT on any major platforms except for bandcamp.
There are a few review blogs that highlight some of the top stuff (although, most of the reviews are at the black metal level, not the sub-sub-genre), but I find my main source of discovery is bandcamp.
What I do is: 1) Follow LABELS on bandcamp that specialize solely in the music from bands I like, 2) follow other users that have a similar purchase history, 3) and of course follow your favorite bands for updates.
My biggest issue with bandcamp is that I find their notification system and wishlist to be quite lacking.
For notifications and discoverability, I take all the notification emails I get, filter them based on type (new release, new items [gear,stickers,vinyl], and general message updates) and move them into my RSS system (FreshRSS)[0]. I get new music updates every day of things I probably want to at least check out.
For wishlist management, I wrote a simple desktop app[1] that lets me rate, tag, comment, and listen to my albums from my bandcamp wishlist quickly. Anything I _might_ be interested in, I put in my wishlist, then use my app to keep track of if I like it or not. Stuff I don't like stays in my wishlist, but gets a low rating and filters to the bottom while stuff I want to purchase filters up to the top.
Don't get me wrong, you are still going to need to spend time exploring, as you aren't getting your weekly curated playlists.