I’ve been doing an occasional playlist called Songs I Like Right Now using Spotify. Each of the playlists is exactly ten songs long and is sort of a snapshot of what I’m listening to at the moment combined with some old favourites of mine.
I’m now on the 7th one and while they haven’t always followed this earlier on, I’ve started to develop rules on making a good Songs I Like playlist:
I also think quite hard about track ordering. Where possible I like songs to follow each other naturally even when there’s a big difference in style, so I spend time listening to the end of one track and beginning of the next to make sure I’m happy with it. Pinning down the criteria that seperate good transitions from bad is tricky; it’s sort of an intuitive thing that comes from a combination of factors, although some people would probably say I’m just overthinking it.
I haven’t explained my choices before, so I thought I’d use this Tumblr business to do so. But first a bit about Spotify, which is an excellent music streaming service I use. This is going to sound a bit like a sales pitch, so sorry about that, but my only motivation is that I want more people on my list and I genuinely think it’s a good service.
If you don’t have Spotify (and you live in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Finland, or The Netherlands) now is an excellent time to grab it. They’ve recently improved the software to allow you to integrate your own music collection and use a bunch of social features like friends lists. There are now two free options: firstly an unlimited ad-supported option which you can get with an invite (I still have some invites, so if you want one, DM me your e-mail address and I’ll gladly oblige); secondly a similar option which needs no invite but is limited to a fairly hefty 20 hours of streaming per month. As well the free options, there’s the £9.99 per month ad-free premium subscription that gives you online, offline and mobile access to the music and they have now added an ad-free £4.99 per month tier which seems like an absolute bargain to me.
Once/If you have Spotify you can find me via this link and add me to your friends list, and you’ll be able to see the Songs I Like and other playlists I’ve made. Click and drag a song onto my name to introduce yourself and I’ll be happy to add you in return. Later on tonight, once I’ve finished Songs I Like Right Now #7 I’ll do another blog to link to it and talk about the songs I chose.
