The people I follow are mostly people I actually know along with a couple of musicians whose work I'm interested in.

Discovery isn't something that I've ever really thought about because it's not a problem I have. The initial person I followed was a relative. By the end of the first year I probably was only following four or five people. Today (15 years later) I think the number is less than twenty.

A separate explore page is fine. I'd probably open it once to see what it was and then close it. Those types of things are generally made to serve the interests of the service and not the user.

I think social media is generally a terrible idea. I am a fan though of a social network.