Musical Garden
My many playlists
There’s plenty of things I don’t like about the streaming service I use, but it’s difficult to leave, not least because of how many playlists I’ve saved on there over the years.
I’ve made almost 350 playlists in the decade I’ve been using my streaming service, the majority of them in the last four years. I notice that many of them were not made merely for the purpose of listening to a set of tracks together. They’re also a convenient archival tool I use to track my listening habits over time.
Playlists as archives
My listening habits are a big part of how I conceive of my own history. If I think back to the time I was in college, for example, the fact that I listened to just a ton of Sufjan Stevens back then is usually top of mind. The different albums and songs I listened to at a given time start to define that period of my life for me.
As I’ve become more aware of this dynamic over time, I’ve learned to lean into it and make even more playlists. Sometimes I make playlists and never even listen to them, just so I have some certain songs grouped together with a particular date on them.
For example, I have an ongoing series of “Lunation” playlists consisting of my 30 most-listened tracks for each lunar month. I listen to them occasionally, but their primary purpose is archival. At a glance, I can get a feel for what I was listening to at the time.
Playlists as expression
Playlists can also be an expressive medium in their own right. In a sense, the archival playlists can express the feeling of a certain time for me, but I also make playlists with the explicit goal of curating a certain feeling or perspective on music to share with others.
For example, I have a playlist of songs that I all feel contain a sense of sunshine. I have another one of songs I think Toad from Mario would like. Making playlists like this is more of a creative act. It scratches some of the same itch as writing a piece of music, but instead of putting together notes, the elements you work with are whole pre-existing songs.
Do you make a lot of playlists? What do you make playlists for? Let me know your thoughts at alex@musical.garden.