Ask Lemmy

https://tastedive.com/

An imperfect system, but you can input any media you like and it will give suggestions of similar media.

We have a few good used book/record stores where I live and I'll just browse them every now then and find something.

I'm a very simple person though and if the cover/sleeve/jacket/case has art that grabs me I'm prone to at least inspecting it. Sometimes my ADD will kick in and I'll randomly remember a book or band or movie that I've wanted to check out and go look for it.

In short: shiny ADD browsing.

I have an entire folder of bookmarks dedicated to sketchy yarr harr matey streaming sites.

I like to listen to the radios on soma.fm

Mostly word of mouth from communities/people who have somewhat similar tastes. As much as I dislike algorithms controlling most of what you see on the internet, I have them to thank for a lot of music recommendations via youtube.

Books and games I usually pick up on 'recommendation' from someone since they're longer commitments (someone talking about the game). For music and movies, I also use lists from places like rateyourmusic and imdb so I can get a sense of what that person likes by looking at the stuff I recognize.

For music I tend to use Spotify's similar artists feature or have the Youtube rabbit hole take me somewhere new. Sometimes I'll even find new music from other media; like if I'm reading a fanfic and the author posts the song they were listening to when they wrote it, sometimes I check those out.

For books, it's usually word of mouth, and for a games, a mix of that as well as reviews from people and a perusal through Steam Sales. I'm not too big on movies though, I just let my loved ones drag me into what they want to watch and they tend to have good taste. For TV shows, I let spontaneous mood choose for me.

All sorts of ways: Word of mouth, Pandora, YouTube, randomly hearing it somewhere, looking up artists other projects, mixes, radio, etc

Word of mouth and algorithms are probably top two for me though with hearing it somewhere and looking up artists being next.

I mostly get my recommendations from small social media sites, which aren't (yet) big enough to attract people solely trying to advertise. 🙃

Even better, if people post their personal labor of love outcomes.