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.
Genre --> Author --> Album --> Song.
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.extlolNo /album/ ?
Seriously, the person you’re replying to is committing a crime by leaving that out.
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
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.
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 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.
-
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.
Only 3…
- Albums -> Full albums
- Recopilations -> Compilation albums
- Random -> Songs
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.
deleted by creator
I have different folders for different genres, then subdivided in folders for year of release.
I spent way too much time organizing this way back so I stick with it. Problems with this are that genes can overlap (could be fixed with symlinks?) and the year is something you often have to look up (id3 often shows year of the album which is not always the year it came out).
Shuffle!
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
Somewhat haphazardly. I typically listen to multiple genres in one session as well. What I usually do is if I hear a song I like that’s not already in a playlist (or if I like it enough that I want it in multiple playlists), I’ll chuck it in at the end of one. Then when I have downtime I play around with the song order so that I like how each song transitions to the next. I enjoy doing that as a way to unwind. This method isn’t great if you’re the type that needs everything organized all the time though since my playlists are usually in some level of a work in progress state! The names are very boring - P01, P02, etc. I also have some playlists that are more themed, for instance a road trip playlist with more upbeat songs. I’ll usually play around with that one based on who is road tripping with me and what type of music I think they’ll enjoy.
