Mainly aimed at those who use Spotify, Tidal, or any other streaming service like myself, but those who pirate music should still feel free to answer!
How do you organise your music library? Creating playlists is pure torture, in my opinion, because there are so many songs that overlap in genres. I’ve tried creating lists based on genres, but I’m the type of person to listen to multiple genres in one session so the switching between playlists kinda becomes inconvenient. Same with based on mood, I can still listen to discoesque or fast-paced songs when I’m feeling sad.
Genuinely considered hiring somebody to create the playlists for me, lol. I know having 800 songs in one list is clunky, but having everything in the same spot is a source of relief. Ugh.
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 :)
Interested, but you know there’s already FunkWhale, right?
I didn’t know about it, and looks really interesting (I’ll start to use it). But looks like it is more a player with social network features, while my focus is to share and import your playlists across different services. i.e., you have a great Playlist but use it in Spotify. Then, you share it in this system I want to create and I can import this Playlist in Tidal. But, definitely, Funkwhale is a great source to get some “getting started” of code, so thanks for sharing it :D
${MUSICDIR}/artist/song.extlolNo /album/ ?
Seriously, the person you’re replying to is committing a crime by leaving that out.
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.
I don’t. I only have a Liked Songs on Spotify. I like the randomness of it all.
(This is for native storage but I’m bored and want to contribute)
I do the genre thing. I’ll simplify them first. Like I have-
1 big one for Ska.
1 for first wave ska.
1 for second wave.
1 for 3rd.
No reggae, thats 1st wave. Same with rocksteady, dub, dance hall, etc.
Metal is all metal. No crossover or Nü.
I do separate Punk and Skate Punk though, the latter being the old Thrasher Mag Skate Rock tapes.
Rock is a mess but everything from AcDc to Pusa. Hip-hop is anything that even could be considered rap.
EDM is the same.Just super broad strokes. Then a playlist is either a genre or two or the entire catalog of a few bands. Occasionally, if I get super motivated, I’ll do a playlist with albums, but rarely any more specific than that unless I need something particular- Like one for running, or a game session.
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.
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 <artist name>” 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 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.
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.
What do you have against the number 4?
Very similar to my old system when I was iTunes-based. Smart playlists for days.
I download my music and order it by Artists>Album>Song, basically without exception. Occasionally annoying when a song has multiple authors, because people don’t always write the metadata the same way and it fucks with my music player, but that’s besides the point.
When I make playlist, I just take a whole album, filter out a few songs if need be and shove it into a given playlist, sometimes I can do that with an entire artist, but it’s not always that easy.
Another issue with my approach is the odd single song from a random artist that’s really good, but everything else they ever made makes me fall asleep, that’s a really annoying one… Might start making my own fake albums.
Only 3…
- Albums -> Full albums
- Recopilations -> Compilation albums
- Random -> Songs
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.
Shuffle!
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…
https://soundiiz.com/ does this. It’s a pay service, but inexpensive and allows import/export of open formats such as CSV.
It works with most streaming services.
