This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
I love apps like Metronaut and Tomplay, which let me carry a collection of classical (sheet) music on my phone. They also provide piano or orchestral accompaniment for any violin piece I want to play.
Today’s post shares 10 other recommended tools for music lovers from my fellow writer and friend, Chris Dalla Riva, who writes Can’t Get Much Higher, a popular Substack focused on the intersection of music and data. I invited Chris to share with you his favorite resources for discovering, learning, and creating music.
By day, Chris works at the music streaming service Audiomack. His debut book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves comes out today, November 13, 2025, via Bloomsbury. He wrote it while listening to every single #1 hit in history. The rest of the post👇 is by Chris. – Jeremy Caplan
Learn about Music
Genius
Chris: If you are looking to understand the lyrics to your favorite songs, turn to Genius, a crowdsourced website of lyrical annotations. Sometimes you’ll even find artists annotating their own lyrics or breaking things down in a video. (FREE)
WhoSampled
Searching through WhoSampled is like looking at musical DNA. Based on crowdsourced information, the site allows you to see how songs are connected through samples, interpolations, and covers. This was an incredible resource for researching the decline of cover songs in my book. (FREE, but you can pay $3/month for additional features.)
Discover new music
Every Noise at Once
Maintained by Spotify’s former data alchemist Glenn McDonald, Every Noise maps all genres on Spotify. For any of the thousands of genres in Spotify’s catalog, you can see four playlists.
- The Sound Of playlist will give you a wide taste of the genre.
- The Intro playlist is where beginners should start.
- The Pulse playlist is what fans are listening to right now.
- The Edge playlist spotlights more obscure tracks in the genre.
(FREE, though more useful with a Spotify subscription.)
