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

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.

Now that I think about it, using a website that could gain access to your playlist and move around the different songs to new playlists (based on genre/mood/etc) would be a godsend…

Most of my playlists are actually by artist. Silly as it sounds I will put whole albums by the same artist in release order into new playlists by their name so I can just ask Siri to “play playlist ” and listen to the albums in order as I tend to listen to whole albums. The other playlists are like my year in review playlists that were automatically generated and some curated playlists like “weekly new music” and “top alternative” type stuff that I didn’t create but added and listen to often.

If I want a mix of stuff I like, I don’t turn to playlists anymore and instead I just ask Siri to “play some music” because the “just for you” radio is so good that I get tons of hits and top songs for my own taste as well as discover tons of new to me music that gets sprinkled in that the algorithm finds for me.

If the “play some music” stuff ends up not what I want to hear right then, I’ll just make the same request again or “play some different music” and it will switch to other music it knows I like. This is helpful when one request sends me down electronic path when I want more alt rock, etc.

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.

Only 3…

• Albums -> Full albums
• Recopilations -> Compilation albums
• Random -> Songs

I don’t really do playlists for day to day. I pick an album and put it on. My music locally is organized into folders by group/album. I mostly use Bandcamp for streaming, where it’s mostly album oriented.

If I want to make a mix, where it usually have some sort of theme or coherence instead of just being “these are songs I like”, I stick it in Spotify if I want to share it.

I tend to be more depth first than some people. I find a band I like, and check out their stuff for a while. I don’t do the like “grab 3000 songs at once” mode. That sounds kind of impersonal to me, but if it works for other people it’s not my business.

I have a few playlists that are accompaniments to particular stories/pieces of media. Basically playlists with a narrative they follow. Those are somewhat easy to make, because then I just add any song that makes me think of the story and then I sort the songs into chronological order of which part of the narrative I feel they apply to. Then I have a playlist for political music, so I guess that’d be a playlist by topic.

Normally when I listen to music on Spotify I just shuffle my liked songs though.

Shuffle!

I used to put so much time into playlists and general organizing/finetuning back when I used iTunes. Since the streaming age I just have a huge list of favorites and play that on shuffle sometimes.

I have some special playlists. One has songs I like singing along to and one has a few womens power ballads by Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion that I like to turn up on long car trips from time to time.

I also had the thought that I would like someone to curate playlists for me based on mood. I often listen to a song and think, damn I wish I had a playlist with songs like this. Then I create a playlist with one song in it, struggle with naming it, name it „Vibing“ or „Goose bumps“ or something stupid like that and then never touch it again.

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

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.

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.