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.
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.