I realised a few years back that my music tastes had stagnated, that I hadn’t liked any new bands in… too many years, and that I was on the way to becoming to be a stuck-in-the-past old fart.
So I nuked my youtube data to glass and started again from scratch with The Technique.
Open all the interesting-looking music in new tabs, don’t-recommend-channel annoying crap, especially reaction videos. Flick through each tab, like and add to genre playlists anything cool, and open a bunch of tabs from the recommendations on that page. If I get three solid bangers from an artist, subscribe. Go with original artists rather than reposts where possible.
Rinse and repeat.
If the algorithm starts getting stale, browse and listen through playlists I want to hear more of (often using a third-party shuffle site), to dredge up the silt.
I don’t generally listen to much of a song while browsing - you can tell from a handful of samples if it’s for you or not, and moving on quickly stops it from getting tedious.
I have found and enjoyed vastly more new music in the last few years than I did in the two decades before that. It’s awesome.