Ok, maybe a dumb question to post here, but I'm at a bit of a loss.

I kind of see a lot of potential in (free) Spotify or similar service to sample and discover new music you might like, but in practice it seems like so much work to find something close to your own taste. If you just do general searches, e.g. genres, it's much too vast and most suggestions you'll get is mainstream stuff you either already know or don't like. Playlists are also hard to search for if you don't know precisely what your looking for. But if you know people with similar taste on Spotify etc. it should be easy to follow their playlists. Only, how would you go about finding them? Are there any good forums for things like that?

I'm mostly asking for general advice, as I don't expect many people to share my taste in music here either, but I'm also curious, do you create and share your own playlists?

i can give you my vlc playlist - all songs i first listen to them before adding to playlist so there's nothing bad in it at least for me. it has 98 hours 40 minutes

Personally I don't use streaming services, to new for me, and I dont like streaming services full stop for anything. That being said, the best way to find out about music you would like is to look at festival lineups, they tend to bunch certain types together. Check out bands websites, see who they are touring with etc.
Go old skool and actually go to gigs, meet people. Also depends on what type of music your after...

I don't use streaming services, as I prefer to not be dependant on an internet connection. I do, however, use Bandcamp, and sometimes rather randomly check out their lists of what's new or best-selling, possibly also filtered by whatever genre the artist thought fit to tag the release as.

When I use Bandcamp I normally use the tags to find the kind of music I like and feel in the mood for. Might have to try some bands and titles to find something I like, but after that I use the suggestions of the bands I've found (if they have any).

On my internet radio I use the name of a band I like and the radio will give me suggestions for stations that play similar music.

What about using radio feature?

You pick song, album or band and run radio based on it and it should play songs similar to your starting thing genre.
I find it a bit weird sometimes and it tends to repeat songs from the original band a bit too much but it still helped me to find some new stuff.

I've been a Spotify Premium subscriber for a little bit more than three years and, even though I don't really listen to music that often, I can say that it's super worth it. No ads, better quality and offline usage (with the app) are what you'll be missing out on if you stick to the free version.

I'm not exploring music, though; I'm only sticking to two bands plus some occasional extra listening if I feel like it. Since you'd want to find playlists similar to your taste, it's going to be a bit more complicated: there are genre playlists but, as you said, they are too vast to find unknown gems; there are personal recommendations based on your previous listenings, which are pretty all right ("all right" because I've personally never used them to find anything, but I just checked and it seems like they show stuff that I would listen), but since you'd be new, I don't know how that'd work; there are friends and Facebook integration if you so choose but I've never used any of that, so I don't how that works; and finally, there's the community website where you can more easily find playlists, people with similar taste, etc., but I've never used it, either.

Go to Google Play Music, select a genre, thumbs up the music you like, and viola.

Step 1) Go to your local record store
Step 2) Browse through the music for sale. Find releases that catch your eye and peak your interest.
Step 3) Ask questions to other customers and to the people on staff. See what's available in the listening stations.
Step 4) Actually pay real money for the product you wish to consume, ensuring that music will still exist in the future
Step 5) Listen to the music you purchased. Fall in love with it. Have it move your soul and change your life. Listen often.

I haven't used Spotify that much, and I don't think I've ever bothered with it for Internet radio/music discovery (though it's cool if you have specific songs you want to listen to). Basically, I don't like the interface of the web version, and I refuse to download the desktop app. I had a Pandora account going back several years, and that's still pretty good for discovering stuff somewhat similar to what you already like (though it takes some time to fine-tune a station to the theme you're going for). I think there's some way to search for people by their e-mail address on Pandora (I know there used to be, at least), and then you can follow those people, and check out any custom stations they've made public. I never bother with that, though -- I just make my own stations.
I have no idea whether Pandora is available in Germany, though, and if so, how much music is available through it there.

Death metal project HAIDUK returns with a crushing new release:
“DEMONICON”!

Not everyone has a local "record" store (and not every such shop has listening stations ;) ).
There is absolutely nothing wrong with streaming music, as long as you buy some of the music you actually enjoy. I agree, though, that "renting" music as a replacement for purchasing a copy is a bad idea.

Is it live, or is it Spamorex?

Thanks for all the posts! I won't reply to each one individually, but I'd like to clarify I mostly use Spotify as my personal radio station, with hopes of discovering new stuff or just casually listen to music when I'm at home doing chores and I'm online anyway. It's just an opportunity for me to check out songs and albums without having to buy them first, similar to those listening stations in record stores. I still got my vinyl, CD and mp3 collections and I support artists I really like by buying their music. So I don't see this as an alternative to the traditional ways of listening to music, but as an addition. That being said, I don't know of any cool record stores anymore that are fun to browse, unfortunately. And some things I'm looking for aren't easy to find in retail stores either (e.g. stuff in other languages than English, German or French). Thanks for the offer, but that's precisely what I'm not looking for. I'd prefer shorter, heavily curated playlists containing music that *I* am very likely to enjoy, no random suggestions of music that other people like. ;) Isn't Bandcamp a streaming service dependent on internet connection as well, as long you don't pay for the downloads? ;) Granted, you don't need to log into an account to stream the music, so I can see the difference. I like Bandcamp, too. Those are good suggestions, but they'd require active work on my part, which is totally fine, I already do similar stuff, like googling "best of [insert genre/type of music] [insert year of release]" blog articles or checking what people who bought my favorite albums on amazon also listen to etc. But the ideal thing would be playlists I could just listen to while doing other stuff and that feature various artists (not several songs by the same few bands), some of which I might not know yet. The automatic "skip to next video" function of youtube sometimes does that for me, but what I'd really like is curated playlists by people with similar taste. I guess your suggestion comes closest to what I'm looking for. I already know of this function but I keep forgetting about it. I should use it more often. :)

Thanks again, to everyone!

Sounds delightful, once they have enough information on what you prefer then they can whack that out to the GRU group (Gollum's R Us - its a conglomeration of Film/Music/Game industry focused on preventing anyone access their IP) who pay large dividends on the advertising front.