It also feels like these things are making me more musically illiterate.
You see enough Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Imaginal Discs and the twenty yearly Trhä albums as super highly praised and something every music nerd should listen to, and forget what kind of music most people actually like... which if you go by the spotify charts, is a lot of slop! And if you go by the radio, it's mostly the same stuff since 1995.
Wikipedia can be a useful resource tbh. Not just for music, but film reccs too. Find something you like and start reading about who else they worked with, follow the rabbit hole as far as it goes