The Best Music You’ve Never Heard
The purpose of this article is to shine the spotlight on some musical artists who may not be household names. We believe that most radio stations play it safe and rarely take chances on lesser known artists. We also believe that most of the best music is not what you will hear on the radio. Furthermore, we believe that while tens of millions1 of people in our country have terrible taste in music there are those out there who are tired of generic and disposable pop music and are looking for something authentic and true.
Thankfully, with advances in technology we have so many more (legal) ways to access great music. One of these ways is Spotify. While this is not a commercial for this extremely popular streaming service,2 their ease of use and vast library helped make this article possible.
We have decided to focus on artists that have fewer than 1 Million monthly listeners on Spotify. While 1 Million is a really good number of listeners per month none of these artists would qualify as household names.
We realize that Spotify is not the only measure of popularity, but for comparison’s sake here are the monthly Spotify listeners3 for some bigger name artists:
- Drake – Over 37 Million
- Justin Timberlake – Over 25 Million
- Coldplay – Over 23 Million
- Adele – Over 18 Million (Her newest album is not available on Spotify)
- Ed Sheeran – Over 16 Million
- Beyoncé – Over 14 Million (Her newest album is not available on Spotify)
- One Direction – Over 10 Million
- Mumford and Sons – Over 6 Million
- The Beatles – Over 6 Million (Last time I checked these guys had not made music together in over 40 years)
The playlist embedded below is made up of artists from different genres who are making quality music that deserves a wider audience. I had the help of several members of the Rambling Even On staff to come up with4 this playlist. Enjoy and feel free to give us feedback in the comment section.
- I have literally hundreds of artists that I could use as evidence of people’s poor taste, but I think Pitbull’s popularity is really enough evidence for any rational person. ↩
- The Ringer ↩
- This article was researched and written primarily during the week of June 13th -17th, 2016, so all numbers quoted are as of that week. ↩
- I thought about saying we “curated” this playlist but I was hoping to avoid sounding pretentious. ↩
- Our Favorite Music of 2024 – 12 Albums We Recommend - December 13, 2024
- Tim Keller: Our Tribute to a Hero of the Faith - May 23, 2023
- Five Albums We Can’t Stop Listening To - April 4, 2022
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Great playlist! Lots of artists on here that deserve a much bigger audience.
Many of these artist are go to stuff for me. I sure hope more people discover them.
I love the Sara Groves song. She has been around for awhile. It’s shocking that more people don’t listen to her.
It is a travesty that more people don’t listen to Josh Garrels and John Mark McMillan! Come to the light people!
Agreed!
I’m all about The Lone Bellow!
Tony, they are fantastic.
Tell me you put Brandi Carlisle on this list! Seriously?? That’s wrong on SEVERAL levels…..
Care to elaborate?
Musically and personally (her lifestyle Obviously)……