We all need order in our lives – Jane Kim
Imagine crying to your Joji queue and all of a sudden, “Like a G6” by Far East Movement starts playing. Or you’re in charge of a dinner party’s ambiance and the evening is wrecked by a 21 Savage song that was shuffled in your disordered single playlist.
There’s a quick solution for these musical disasters: split your music by genre or by artist into many separate playlists. Instead of letting different genres and artists accumulate into a miscellaneous, chaotic playlist, making a few distinct playlists, based on mood or category, can make your listening experience effortless. Easy as pie.
Having multiple playlists can also improve music streaming platforms’ algorithms for recommending songs. Under Spotify playlists, there’s a recommended section “based on what’s in this playlist.” Consistent one-genre listeners get new artists they haven’t listened to suggested to them, broadening users’ tastes in music and promoting up-and-coming musicians.
According to tinuiti.com, Spotify’s AI-powered algorithm “analyzes three main features when determining to recommend content: lyrical content and language, song features, and past listening habits.”
For example, my Korean ballad playlist will have recommendations that reflect my and similar listeners’ previous patterns, while still introducing experimental musicians and bands that sing in the same language.
Not only that, there’s a certain art to listening to an album, all the way through, without stops. Musicians like The Weeknd and Justin Timberlake, with “Stargirl Interlude” and “What Goes Around… Comes Around (Interlude)” respectively, specifically craft interludes and outros to complete the experience of the entire album.
Commonly, musical interludes are meant to show the thematic flow of the entire body of music. By placing songs haphazardly into assortments, listeners can lose the experience artists deliberately try to build when releasing an album.
Splitting your entire music library into numerous, vibe-specific playlists will help you reach new music and acquire a musical repertoire unique to you.
We all need chaos to live – Ananya Cox
Whether I’m driving home from swim practice in the dark, wanting something melancholy to listen to, or reluctantly heading to school at 8:30 to the sounds of thrash metal, my 26-hour infinite-genre playlist always has something I want to hear.
As I am currently listening to my mega-playlist titled “most of the time,” (false as I listen to it all the time) I see the beauty in the chaos. While writing this article, I began with Japanese Breakfast and The Clash, and just ended with David Bowie and Taylor Swift. What some may call disorder, I call diversification, an extremely important aspect of the musical experience.
This varying list of artists that reaches you when shuffling large playlists brings a sense of balance to the listening experience.
Some may argue that this variety could ruin an experience, like a dinner party, let’s say. In my experience, it gets more people involved in the music and everyone has a more enjoyable time. People have a greater chance of hearing something they like and statistically, more attending parties can enjoy.
When I shuffle my music, my always-growing playlist keeps me on my toes. If I hear a new song and add it to the playlist, I begin to bring it into my daily life and through the exposure, become familiar with it.
It is just boring to listen to the same kind of music over and over again. I understand music moods or checking out a new album drop, but most experiences are transformed into better moments and memories by all varieties of music. It makes it a fun experience to never know what you might hear and gives each song you love an equal opportunity to grace your ears. It is too much work to organize songs you like into 14 different groups with aesthetic names and photos. Just enjoy!
With more than 400 songs, I am proud to say that I can listen to “Party In The U.S.A.,” “Highway to Hell,” “Punisher” and “American Girl” one after another.
I would, however, recommend you clean out the playlist-everlasting once in a while. “Centuries,” added in 2017, haunts me to this day.
You’ll also always get a good laugh if a funny song or inside joke song comes on. If you care enough, search up “It Was Supposed to Be so Easy” on Spotify, go to 2:20, and imagine listening to it with any other human and not absolutely losing it. Aren’t you curious? Just check it out. You’ll be amazed by the English rap.
That is the beauty of the mega-playlist. You can discover and rediscover music, while still leaving open the possibility to get some fun out of it.
Photo by Hammond Cole Sherouse/The ECHO
