SpotifyThrowbacks.com

You know, I know the title of today’s post may seem a little odd. I had an interesting conversation with someone on reddit. I wanted to get a sense of how people find new music; and whether or not people still use Facebook or even Tumblr to find new music. I mentioned a very popular site called Pitchfork. Pitchfork is a very well known site that writes about new, and often times eccentric artists. Personally, the kinds of music Pitchfork writes about really wasn’t my type of music (to tell you the truth), and I still considered myself a pretty musically open minded person. The fellow reddit user shared that he doesn’t read Pitchfork anymore because (I get a sense that) in essence they’ve changed focus on the kinds of artists they now write about.

Finding new (whether an old vinyl, or fresh hot off the radio) music still requires a lot of soul searching. People take for granted just how hard it is!

I guess a bloggers focus can change, yes… But, understand that the whole purpose of having a blog is to share your journal of personal interest and make them public. Having a blog is similar to having a personal diary. So, as your interest change, so will your favorite blog. On the other hand, we have to remember that, it is also true that growing up, music was always filtered on the radio. In other words, we were fed music we were supposed to listen to. Today, we’re exposed to more music than we’d like to deal with. Perhaps this is the perfect case for the importance of just listening to your favorite streaming service, and allowing the algorithms to do its job and learn your taste. I don’t have a complete understanding of how scientifically the algorithms work, but it’s pretty mind-blowing how over time the streaming services actually recommends music along the lines of my taste. it’s frightening how what boils down to AI (artificial intelligence) could learn me and my tastes like that!

What’s the secret to making a good playlist? Well, in my opinion, let me start off by writing what it should NOT be! Today, the reality is for a significant part of our global population has been affected as a result of social media. And I’m sure more than others depending on whether or not you have a site to promote. Having said that, a playlist should not be created for the purpose of getting likes or thumbs up. Now, I don’t mean to stereotype anyone. I’m pretty sure that a lot of my thoughts come from the fact that I came from a different generation when it comes to music. However, if you’ve listened to as much music as I have throughout my life, you can not only judge the quality of music (based on my preferred genres), but you can tell what songs belong together or blend well within a playlist. When creating a playlist, these things should be taken in to consideration. It’s too easy for someone who has a little technical ability, or ssshoo, no technical ability at all, that can through up a website. There a lot of free or low cost services that will allow you to drag and drop a few elements on a page and voila! You’ve got a website!

It’s important that a playlist have a theme

You know, in this era, it appears that no matter who you are, or what you are, people frown on advice. Not only that, it seems that good advice from life experience, is now seen as being synonymous with “someone tryin’ to tell you what to do.” People are so offended by, or even threatened by new information today, that almost anything can be seen as an insult at will. You’re then scanned up and down, given you the signal you’re about to be paid back with a barrage of insults to your character, or even the way you write. “It is said that music is supposed to sooth the savage beast,” yet, it doesn’t seem to do anything for some of today’s “music lovers” behavior. Hmm. But I’ll digress on that one.

The fact of the matter is, we all don’t have the same taste in music. It is important to give clues as to what the playlist may contain. It’s the same idea when you’re trying to find a good movie to watch. This is why many of us still search for movie genres. Unfortunately, many streaming services, including Spotify has moved away from music categories. Perhaps this is due to AI becoming so sophisticated, they’ve mastered your listening habits. I can respect that. However, when it comes to playlists, notice that there still exist basic categories to help users find the type of music their looking for. Don’t name your playlist “the best-est playlist in the entire world,” and plop 9,000 random songs, or dump whole albums in it and expect followers. Unless you’re one of those people that payed for bulk followers. Those aren’t real people! The one thing that hasn’t changed in the music digital age is that, it still takes heart and lots of thought to put together a playlist for your audience!  In the seventies or even the eighties, when you met someone new, you’d never dump anything random on a cassette tape to give your crush/valentines. Why would you do that for your fans you’re trying to build?

Recently, I’ve written about my decision to use what I call “link aggregators,” to help pull songs/playlists from various streaming services, such as YouTube and iTunes. Well, I’ve discovered that there are great disparities in content between services. I think it’s time that we as music bloggers start to talk/write about what I now realize is still a problem. It also shows which are the streaming services that are truly worth using.

*GASP* iHeart Radio is the worst when it comes to missing content.<2h2>

One of the biggest disappointments I’ve discovered is iHeart Radio! They are one of the biggest supporters of artists and artists events. Yet matching songs against YouTube, Spotify, and even iTunes is a nightmare. It’s so bad that, at one time, Amazon Prime music started off with around 2 million songs. Now Amazon has more music than iHeart (it appears). At least in terms of music matches. I will most likely drop iHeart radio from my playlist making, because they just don’t have enough music licenses to match the music I have among other streaming services. At the same time, I guess I can’t complain or blame them. Because the reality is, Spotify is at the top of paid and free active users! YouTube is close to second, and although iTunes is way low on their music streaming user base, they’re still better than iHeart and Pandora in terms of music licensing.