The Lost Art of Playlist Making

You baked your banana bread. You spent 2 hours learning a 15 second TikTok dance. You read 3 pages from that book you finally found some time for. And you just spent your entire Thursday afternoon finishing Tiger King. What the fuck do you do now?

We live in an age where most music playlists have lost their creativity. Allow me to take a page from the old head music bible. Playlists used to have more meaning behind them. A big reason is because cassette tapes and CDs are limited by the amount of storage they can hold. While this is a fairly big downside, it also means that, typically, more thought would go into making a playlist to burn onto a CD or record onto a cassette.

Every track had to be carefully selected because you only had limited space. Whether the playlist was for your partner, a friend, or just to bump in the car, the amount of effort that went into the curation process made for an overall better listening experience. Playlist making has become a lost art.

Nowadays people have 200+ tracks on a Spotify playlist and end up skipping 90% of the playlist (I, too, am guilty of this). Why do we settle for some mid playlists if most of the time they’re meant for our own consumption?

During this quarantine, take the time to make a playlist that is max 20 tracks. Try and tell a story or evoke a feeling/idea. Go through your other massive playlists and see if there’s a couple tracks you can pull to include in your curated playlist. Go through an artist’s catalog and find a track that fits into your theme. Really listen to the songs. Explore new shit. Have fun.

If y'all make any playlists after reading this, please share! Here are a couple playlists, from my personal Spotify, that I’ve been working on during this quarantine period:

“Tomorrow” (my attempt at trying to make a storyline with songs): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6rDnb7eka3Mjr0nwqsDXGj?si=GTWpNTerRq2pOMkojVZSVA

“In Transition” (a playlist inspired by movie transitions and living in transition): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4rYVM88LOpHiF6YNCv5Rpf?si=7l5ispKWRT2hfe8QUjZB2A