I’ve just got a general playlist, sad stuff, gym, and ERM. 95% of stuff gets dumped straight into the general one

Shuffle!

tbh, I’m always “getting” ready to create a social network to share Playlists based on ActivityPub because sometimes I want Playlists from my friend but they all use Spotify and I use Tidal. Your post inspired me to start it, because now I know there is others with the same need. Anyone who wants to join me, please send me a DM :)

I make all my playlists by hand. I have three types:

• Mixes that I’ve made, either as gifts or for myself; where the order is carefully chosen so one song leads into another pleadingly, where no one artist dominates the tracklist, usually with a specific mood or theme, like “cleaning” or “summer” or “breakup”. These kind of playlists are additive and creative; I start with an empty playlist then add and rearrange tracks until I’m happy.

• “Best of” playlists that are every song I like of a genre or artist or local scene or year or music label. These are usually in release order, grouped by album; or sometimes in descending order of how much I like them (but still grouped by album). These kind of playlists are subtractive and reactive; I dump large swathes of the library in and then remove whatever I don’t like enough until only the cream is left.

• Hemerographs, which is a word I made up to describe playlists where I’m picking songs one at a time and adding them to the queue, but I’m saving the whole queue to listen to again later to recreate the vibe of that day / party / activity. It’s additive like the mixes but more flow-of-consciousness and reactive; and also includes inputs from other people, since I’m usually making them on the fly in a social situation.

Most of the music I listen to is OST, so I have a ton of those playlists where it’s the full soundtrack, whether or not I like the specific song.

And then I have two other dedicated playlists. One is called “Eclectic series,” which is composed of literally anything I find in the wild and like, and therefore is my largest playlist (besides one huge playlist surrounding a certain webcomic). The other is similar in inspiration, but is music that I liked and want to keep for reference but probably wouldn’t want showing up in my shuffle queue. This tends to be any lyrical music that I find and like.

And then I just throw it all except the lyrical music into a third-party music shuffler.

The trade-offs with this model are that it takes a lot less effort to build up your playlist because everything goes into basically one place, and so your library and exposure grow fairly quickly, but at the cost of less control at playback, since everything is either grouped canonically or unsorted altogether.

Works for me since I don’t listen to much lyrical music and can get into the dynamic flow and artistry of the music without the distraction of words, but it’s probably not great for people who enjoy lyrics and poetry.

Edit: I should mention that I’ve been working on-and-off on a tool that automates and facilitates playback for god-lists and ant-lists alike for a while now. It’s been a minute since I’ve touched it, but maybe I should get back to it.

I make playlists by what songs i was feeling each year. This way I can go back and reminisce and reflect on what I was going through.

Some lists repeat the same songs but are generally uniquely. For example, Radiohead’s Creep is on many of my lists.

Outside of work I really only listen to one band. So I have one playlist that is their entire discography, one that is their singles (not released on albums), and one of their instrumentals. Those are all ordered chronologically.

At work I have a play list of a bunch of bands I like but have clean vocals (as opposed to growls). That one is grouped by when I heard the song and added the album to the play list.

I have smart playlists for genres and for star ratings (1-5). The way the star ratings work is as follows (keep in mind that I mostly shuffle the entire library while on the go when reading how I interact with the library):

- 1 star | This is something to delete (from the days before I could do that on-device); I don’t have anything that’s 1 star anymore because we moved on

- 2 stars | This got my attention and made me check my device to find out the song / artist; this song is something special

- 3 stars | These are the bangers of my library

- 5 stars | There’s nothing better

I don’t use 4 stars; therefore, everything is either no stars (meaning normal) or 2, 3, or 5 stars.

The rule is that if I check my device to find out the song / artist and the song doesn’t already have a star rating, it automatically gets promoted to 2 stars. If it already has a star rating, it goes up by one, from 0-2, 2-3, or 3-5. This system works perfectly for me, such that when I bumped a song from 2-3 stars the other day, I said to myself, aloud (in my car), “the system works!”

I either select a genre and shuffle / randomize or I select a star rating and shuffle / randomize or (most often) I choose the entire song library and shuffle / randomize. This works well enough that I have no need for manual playlists. The only exception to this was creating a playlist for a dinner party where all the guests were other couples and the music was highly curated for a single evening.

I just katamari all of my music into one big obnoxiously large playlist. If I want to hear music of a specific type, that’s what albums are for.

Genre --> Author --> Album --> Song.

I go by vibes or topics. Half the fun is coming up with a name.

For example, “Kodak Daydreams” is full of shoegaze and dreampop with like a bright but relaxing vibe

Vibe, and purpose. I have a gym playlist full of metal, 90’s rap, and some bebop. I also have a playlist for rock, another for metal, a classical playlist, a medievalish playlist (think Danheim, Heilung, The HU, etc), and another for just jazz. I also have playlists for the decades spanning from the 50’s to the 90’s. Ended up doing playlists for whenever I’m feeling really good, and for whenever I’m down in the dumps, just in case.

The decades playlists really help with being handed the aux. Most people don’t do well going from Toto or Green Day to Messhuggah and Opeth, so, dividing a genre by decade is good. I know my grandma will not vibe with Polyphia, so I play her some latin music, classical, or jazz, and she’s fine with it.

This leads to many, many playlists, and there’s a lot of overlap, but I don’t really mind as long as I can make sure I have a playlist for any mood I might find myself in.

${MUSICDIR}/artist/song.ext lol

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