Inside the Playlist Factory

July 26, 2016 2:53 AM

As streaming has gone mainstream, these curators, many of whom began their professional lives as bloggers and DJs, have amassed unusual influence. Their work, as a rule, is uncredited — the better for services designed to feel like magic — but their reach is increasingly unavoidable. Spotify says 50% of its more than 100 million users globally are listening to its human-curated playlists (not counting those in the popular, algorithmically personalized “Discover Weekly”), which cumulatively generate more than a billion plays per week. According to an industry estimate, 1 out of every 5 plays across all streaming services today happens inside of a playlist. And that number, fueled by prolific experts, is growing steadily. [slBuzzfeed]
posted by ellieBOA (43 comments total)

The big problem I experience with most auto-generated playlists is that you end up feeding the results of an algorithm back into the algorithm, and the results get narrower, rather than broader. To get more interesting results, I find myself deliberately going to human-curated lists, the weirder the better. This has the effect of 'shaking up' the results in a way that works for a couple of weeks, before the playlists self-homogenise again.

The day someone creates an AI John Peel will be a good day for playlists.
posted by pipeski at 3:26 AM on July 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

Whoever created the Star Wars Force Awakens playlists was very funny. The Emperor's dubstep is still on my regular shuffle, and I also go back and forth on Leia, Padme and Rey. They're all fantastic although I have serious head-canon issues with the Obi-Wan playlist....
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:46 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I unintentionally play Six Degrees of Credence with Pandora all the time.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 4:03 AM on July 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Spotify playlists are actually pretty good. I've been pleasantly surprised and discovered a lot of really great work.
posted by Annika Cicada at 4:34 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've been using a playlist called "Hello Internet", which has a lot of stuff by two dudes talking. ;-)
posted by MikeWarot at 4:52 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Whoever created the Star Wars Force Awakens playlists was very funny.

oh god yes. I really didn't expect much, but they were a genuine pleasure to go through. I don't use any other streaming service but Spotify, but I've really enjoyed their playlists. I didn't realise it was the human touch!
posted by cendawanita at 4:52 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

This article was way more fascinating than I expected. If these guys end up helping to kill the friction between genres I'm all for it... It's always felt like a lazy part of our culture.
posted by selfnoise at 4:58 AM on July 26, 2016

The day someone creates an AI John Peel will be a good day for playlists.

Amen brother.
posted by 1head2arms2legs at 5:55 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

The article was indeed interesting. I've been using Pandora, but it's rare that it makes an unexpected connection, and certain artists I don't like all that much keep resurfacing no matter what I do (like the Pixies, say). So the timing of this is good, since I've been thinking recently that I should look into the other streaming services and see which might work better. I like the idea of curation and surprise, though I still want enough control to steer things away from certain directions (like the Pixies, say).

The day someone creates an AI John Peel will be a good day for playlists.

This is what I am really looking for, and probably will never find. Every so often I will turn on the local community radio station and the DJ will just be perfect, going in unexpected directions and making great connections, but the next time it will be, if not terrible, not great either. I want a streaming music service that is like the good DJ 24/7, and with the widest of repertoires.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:00 AM on July 26, 2016

Wow, this would have been my dream job if it had existed when I was in college. I've been super pleasantly surprised by how good my Spotify Discover playlist usually is. I've become a huge fan of one singer that I never would have heard of it it weren't for the Discover playlist, and I went to her show a couple of months ago and actually spoke like a sentence to her at the merch table on my way out. Amazing. Spotify has been such a net good in my life.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 6:42 AM on July 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Whoever created the Star Wars Force Awakens playlists was very funny.

Holy shit, you're right! Those are amazing. I would love if people could share other great playlists in this thread.

And I agree with banjo_and_the_pork, Spotify has kind of changed my life since I found the Weekly Discovery playlist. It's almost all I listen to, and it almost never has any duds.
posted by lollymccatburglar at 7:22 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've been increasingly curious about the role and visibility of human curation (twitter particularly, tumblr is another) and this article is much appreciated.

I don't yet have enough insight to say whether this is a pushback to the increasing bottification of things, and/or algorithms; or simply the value of the human touch?
posted by infini at 7:22 AM on July 26, 2016

I have no idea how to find new music on Spotify other than the Weekly Discovery list. It's like a dead end for me.

Crazy that these people get paid to make playlists!

Here are some tips on playlist management that may be of interest. Making dividers, who knew!
posted by asok at 7:27 AM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I really REALLY miss the apps function of old Spotify. The Hype Machine app was so good at giving me a lot of unexpected music. Now, my favorite playlist for that is the Just Blogged playlist from Hype Machine. Its constantly updated several times per hour, so if I hear something I want to dig deeper into, I drag it into my "to listen to" playlist.
posted by onehalfjunco at 7:33 AM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yeah, I'm not entirely pleased with the direction Spotify is going as an application (visibility of the "queue," anyone?) but I am nonetheless quite happy that it's been more broadly adopted by users in the past few years. Used to be I'd be at a party or sitting in my local coffeeshop and I could just tell by the incredibly stale, strait-jacketed playlist that somebody was piping freaking Pandora into the room. Spotify keeps things way more lively. I know human curation is part of that, but their playlist algorithms are better, too.
posted by Mothlight at 7:39 AM on July 26, 2016

If I want an ideal playlist, I want imperfection, not perfection. I like Discover Weekly precisely because it treads that fine line between over-repetitively (like Pandora) predicting what I "usually" listen to and throwing in unexpected stuff that I would never have thought to look for on my own (not just based on what I "usually" listen to) that ends up being fantastic.

I miss the apps from the older versions of Spotify too -- and it drives me crazy that they do not let you search ("filter") anything but playlists.
posted by blucevalo at 7:42 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have no idea how to find new music on Spotify other than the Weekly Discovery list. It's like a dead end for me.

Here's what works for me, though it's a bit time-intensive, and involves going off-Spotify for the research. When I find a band I really like that's new to me, I go to their Facebook page and see what other bands they've liked, and go to those bands "about" sections to see what they say about their music. If it piques my interest, I'll hop over to Spotify and check out a few songs, see if they're good for me. If they are, I click the "follow" button so I don't totally forget about them. I also check out who the bands I like tour with, because often they're touring with bands that have similar aesthetics. I find some good stuff by watching videos of bands I like on Youtube and seeing what's recommended on the side bar. Record labels usually have Spotify playlists, so I also follow those playlists.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 7:43 AM on July 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Shouldn't there be something like this here on MeFi somewhere -- "curators," their playlists, some kind of listener feedback mechanisms to drive improvements in playlists, etc.? A mixtape board? I hear the internet is good at this sort of thing.
posted by PandaMomentum at 7:53 AM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

I've found plenty of great volunteer-(i.e. user-)curated playlists on Spotify, but it's hard to distinguish the really good ones from the "throw a bunch of stuff in a folder for my weekend trip" playlists.

And I really thought Spotify Weekly was human-curated. Guess that explains why its picks are cool and obscure but not super, er, "challenging" to my ears.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:09 AM on July 26, 2016

This is a great companion to last month's Glenn McDonald FPP about playlist curation at Spotify.
posted by anthom at 8:20 AM on July 26, 2016

In the old-fashioned radio world, this job is called "program manager." In commercial radio and at some college stations, the PM would literally program the music and breaks on the station, start to end. At other college stations, they would set up DJ schedules, and the individual DJs would make their own shows.

College radio is a mix of things, rarely predictable. The worst part was that DJs aren't generally coached on their on-air presentation, so you get people shouting at their radios for the DJ to just shut up and play more music! But those DJs also bring some amazing variety to the airwaves and internet. If you want that sort of thing, Wikipedia has a list of campus radio stations from around the world, and Radio-Locator.com has a filter for college stations in the US and Canada.


Shouldn't there be something like this here on MeFi somewhere -- "curators," their playlists, some kind of listener feedback mechanisms to drive improvements in playlists, etc.? A mixtape board? I hear the internet is good at this sort of thing.

I liked This Is My Jam, but when that died, I tried Lets Loop, and it was decent, except now I can't actually log into that site, and it's not as good at browsing tracks or finding other users, compared to TIMJ. 8tracks was mentioned before, but it's been a while and I can't see if the service is still up and functional (work filter).

In short: I support any such MeFi mixsharing, along with more CD mix swaps. (Note: I owe MeFites a CD swap, and a quonsor gift, and more ... sometimes I suck at follow-through.)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:29 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I want a streaming music service that is like the good DJ 24/7, and with the widest of repertoires.

KCRW Eclectic 24 is still a thing
posted by gusandrews at 8:34 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

The worst part was that DJs aren't generally coached on their on-air presentation, so you get people shouting at their radios for the DJ to just shut up and play more music!

This is hilariously true. There is a new local indy station here that was created by former WRVU DJs and while listening in the car it is rare that I'll hear more than 1.5 songs before I arrive at my destination, but I'll get plenty of rambling anecdotes about how the DJ ran into Jonathan Richman's old tour manager a few years ago at the Exit/In or something.
posted by ghharr at 8:41 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

so you get people shouting at their radios for the DJ to just shut up and play more music!

Dear GOD yes. To make matters worse, they can't get the mix right so the DJs sound like vague mutterings from the bottom of a well half the time. Mutterings that go on and on and on and on...

I want a streaming music service that is like the good DJ 24/7

Is soma.fm curated? The playlists feel super deep if nothing else... I've had some good luck finding internet radio stations over the years.
posted by selfnoise at 8:42 AM on July 26, 2016

There's a lot to be said for human curation of music.

I grew up in Las Cruces, NM and the big bold amazing radio station to listen to in the 70s and 80s there was KLAQ out of El Paso. Their program director, Magic Mike, took over as DJ regularly, and he had such an eclectic taste in music that he would regularly break out of the nominally Rock Radio format to bring amazing new music into my life. Quite a bit of of the favorite music and artists I carry with me in my life through to this day originated with Magic Mike saying something like "Well, this is a bit outside of what you might normally hear here, but we got this amazing album yesterday, and here's a cut from it."

But i have to say, my absolute FAVORITE human curation moment was being in the Lone Star bar in San Francisco (a bear/leather bar) and the bar DJ that night went from Enter Sandman to Patsy Cline's Crazy. Seeing basically an entire bar of big bearded leather-or-flannel wearing men suddenly looking down into their beer glasses all singing quietly to themselves "Crazy / I'm crazy for feeling so lonely / I'm crazy / Crazy for feeling so blue" all in solitary meditation, and then looking up and around and noticing that everyone else was lost in the same meditation of loneliness and lost chances for love... it was a moment that drew the bar together into a party of unity and solidarity in a way that I have never encountered before or since.

Robots making playlists could never, ever engineer a moment like that.
posted by hippybear at 9:05 AM on July 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

I got good playlists hmu
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:21 AM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

What's weird is that I've been listening to a lot of South American rock (the new Los Fabulosos Cadillacs album in particular hits my sweet spot) and big band (for my dance classes), and yet my Discover Weekly sounds like the finest in NPR-core. I know I'm a woman and I'm pushing 40, but REALLY, guys?
posted by pxe2000 at 10:24 AM on July 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

oh gawd - from the article:

"We’ve come to expect that virtually all of our problems can be solved with code, so much so that we summon it unthinkingly before doing almost anything: from choosing what movie to watch, to finding a doctor, to deciding where to wake up the next morning and who with."
posted by nikoniko at 11:22 AM on July 26, 2016

My moments of human selection for you today:
* Siimba Liives Long - Cocaine Bimbie (music video)
* Todd Terje - Snooze 4 Love (Luke Abbott Remix)

Not the worst segue, but I think I'll look for a better bridging track. Really, it's just two things I wanted to share.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:37 AM on July 26, 2016

I never have any luck with the curated playlists. They seem to cater to styles that are just not up my alley. I wish Spotify made it easier to discover other users playlists. I bet there are far more mixtape/playlist geniuses that are regular users on Spotify than paid curators by a factor in the hundreds or thousands. There are some websites I've found, but you have to leave the app, which I might do if I am on a PC but definitely not on the phone or Roku.

As regards algorithm-generated playlists, I'm surprised by how people are comparing Pandora negatively to Spotify Discover Weekly in terms of variety. After a year on Spotify, I am starting to get tired of the Discover lists and finding the maybe half of the playlist is artists I know and like but maybe I don't know that song while a quarter of the playlist is composed not only of music I know but music I have discovered through Discover Weekly. Enough of this last category are misses that it gets annoying to have an artist I don't like back in my playlist again. There is no way to block or at least deprecate artists or songs so they just keep coming back. There is also just a lot of sameness in general, although more stuff I like than don't like. It seems like the way to increase the variety is to "follow" groups you like, but I haven't seen any documentation of that. It certainly doesn't seem to take account of all the songs you (or your kids) play if you don't follow the artist (probably a good thing). Pandora on the other hand is completely wacky and can go all over the place; it just depends on your seeds and your up and down votes and whether you check the box to increase variety. Definitely leads to more jarring results for me. So with Pandora, I get more variety but with Spotify I get more "How did I not know this existed? This is EXACTLY the kind of thing I like! But I'm getting kind of tired of it...."

Anyone using the Spotify "radio" function?
posted by nequalsone at 1:24 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

P.S. pxe2000, I meant to address my comment a bit toward your observation: I think that is because it doesn't select music for you based on what you listen to but based on what artists you "follow."
posted by nequalsone at 1:29 PM on July 26, 2016

I work on Apple Music, and before that, Beats Music. Also, my thoughts are my own and not my employer blah blah blah blah......

Back at Beats, there was a decision to focus on the human side of things since our competitors were going down the algorithm path. I always believed that was a good choice, and this article kinda proves that point as the rest of the services are also now putting focus on humans picking the music.

The curators in the article came from Beats, and with that I believe Apple Music has kept in the best part of Beats Music.

That said, we also announced our "Discovery Mix" feature at WWDC, which will be algo-built weekly playlists similar to what Spotify offers.
posted by sideshow at 1:35 PM on July 26, 2016

I prefer the UI of Google Play Music to Spotify, and Google's playlists have been great since they acquired Songza.
posted by wannabepre at 2:05 PM on July 26, 2016

I've only just started using Spotify's Discovery feature about a week ago and I'm hoping it shows me some more stuff than what it has so far.

The way I find new music is primarily through looking at "related artists" on Spotify and going down a rabbit hole, but I'd love it if there was some way to listen to a radio show/DJ who was playing like, new "hip" music. I haven't had a computer in 2 years and therefore my "cool, new, hip" music discovering has been nonexistent. It use to be that I'd find probably ten bands in a day and be overwhelmed trying to listen to all the music I found. Now I don't listen to much anything new and it has me depressed.
posted by gucci mane at 2:11 PM on July 26, 2016

This article was way more fascinating than I expected. If these guys end up helping to kill the friction between genres I'm all for it... It's always felt like a lazy part of our culture.

What does this mean? Serious question. I originally interpreted "friction between genres" to mean "interaction between genres" but then it context it seems like you probably meant you wanted more of that, not less - i.e. thinner genre boundaries. Or a greater willingness to mix genres in a playlist?
posted by atoxyl at 2:13 PM on July 26, 2016

Last.fm really had the only truly good algorithmically generated radio, and it was a thing to behold. Sorely missed.
posted by threeants at 6:38 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Honestly, so many great music discovery products have come and, unfailingly, all gone that we've somehow looped back around to a place where Pandora is one of the better alternatives around again, which is depressing as fuck because 1) it's literally exactly the same as it was in 2003 and 2) its stations are still basically the same experience as pulling from an allmusic.com "related artists" page in 1998.
posted by threeants at 6:45 PM on July 26, 2016

Radio on Spotify is great
posted by Sebmojo at 10:11 PM on July 26, 2016

This is hilariously true. There is a new local indy station here that was created by former WRVU DJs and while listening in the car it is rare that I'll hear more than 1.5 songs before I arrive at my destination, but I'll get plenty of rambling anecdotes about how the DJ ran into Jonathan Richman's old tour manager a few years ago at the Exit/In or something.

I fell in love with western swing because of Hipbilly Jamboree. I used to go on right after Randy's show and sometimes he'd play some Bob Wills for me just because he knew I liked it so much. I'm so happy they got WXNA off the ground.
posted by antimony at 10:33 PM on July 26, 2016

I've found the recommended four songs at the bottom of a playlist to be better than discover weekly in Spotify. My guess is discover weekly looks at all the songs you've listened to whereas the recommended songs are linked to that particular playlist.
posted by ellieBOA at 11:25 PM on July 26, 2016

Thanks, banjo_and_pork. I was hoping that there might be some way of doing that kind of research from within Spotify. Such as playlists curated by bands or something.

I am part of a collaborative playlist group which posts a new playlist on a weekly basis. I don't often have much to add as I don't find much new music and the playlist interface shits me. I can't find a way to re-order and when I delete a track I can't add it back to the playlist.

Anyway, if anyone would like to be part of the collaborative playlist Memail me.
posted by asok at 5:43 AM on July 27, 2016

Some bands do curate playlists, if you click into the band and scroll down to below their singles, any playlists they make should show up toward the bottom of their band page. It's kind of hit or miss as to which bands bother to do it, the ones that are more active on social media seem to be more likely to make Spotify playlists. I can recommend one playlist in particular- James from the Twilight Sad has a great playlist and he updates it semi-often with good new stuff. If you google James Twilight Sad playlist you'll find it.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 7:07 AM on July 27, 2016

I find that Spotify is really good about finding songs that I like but not bands that I like. And like to go to shows so it's useless to me to only like one song or two from a band. I had better luck with AudioGalaxy (the original version).
posted by LizBoBiz at 12:27 PM on July 28, 2016