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 make playlists by what songs i was feeling each year. This way I can go back and reminisce and reflect on what I was going through.

Some lists repeat the same songs but are generally uniquely. For example, Radiohead’s Creep is on many of my lists.

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.

I don’t. I only have a Liked Songs on Spotify. I like the randomness of it all.

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.

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.

I never felt the need of creating playlists. I just have one playlist with all my songs. My local music player allows to switch between platlists and albums so if i want to listen to a whole album, i don’t have the remember the last position in my big playlist

Shuffle!

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.

(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.

Only 3…

• Albums -> Full albums
• Recopilations -> Compilation albums
• Random -> Songs

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…

Music I DJ with I mostly play the same genre of music so I have a few playlists for stuff that is outside of my normal genre.

Then within the stuff I usually play I’ll have smart playlists for each key (using the Camelot system so 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B etc)

I have a playlist for each month that has everything I have imported for that month of the year.

Some smart playlists to filter out a specific BPM or BPM range.

Playlists containing all the releases I have from specific labels in case I want to do a label only mix.

A playlist containing all the acapellas I have (I don’t use a massive amount) so they are all in the same place to throw over the top of some other stuff if the feeling takes me.

Then I also have some playlists that I will create off the cuff throwing in selected artists that I might want to play at a particular time to capture a certain feel or vibe, then usually they stick around and I come back to them occasionally.

A preparation playlist which is a temp playlist where I’ll throw random stuff I want to play that day maybe. Like for example I might have like this months additions and marchs additions to my library so I’ll just throw both those playlists in the one preparation playlist to play from so they are all in one list.

My music is organised in alphabetical folders within each folder I have a folder for each artist where all their releases go. If I start getting a lot of stuff from one label or end up buying a label discography I’ll make a folder for that label and remove any releases that might be in the individual artists folder and place it in the label one instead.

Then I have one random folder that has a few genre specific folders inside where I collect music from artists that I might just have one or two tracks from so they don’t deserve their own artists folder.

When I actually listen to music on Spotify I don’t use playlists. I want to listen to albums in the way they were intended, front to back usually, so I’ll usually just pick what ever album I want at the time. Occasionally if I want to delve into an unknown to me genre I might search out a playlist made by someone else to explore artists I don’t know to give me an idea of what I might want to then pursue listening to further.

I used to put so much time into playlists and general organizing/finetuning back when I used iTunes. Since the streaming age I just have a huge list of favorites and play that on shuffle sometimes.

I have some special playlists. One has songs I like singing along to and one has a few womens power ballads by Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion that I like to turn up on long car trips from time to time.

I also had the thought that I would like someone to curate playlists for me based on mood. I often listen to a song and think, damn I wish I had a playlist with songs like this. Then I create a playlist with one song in it, struggle with naming it, name it „Vibing“ or „Goose bumps“ or something stupid like that and then never touch it again.

Genre --> Author --> Album --> Song.