All Day Playlists
One of my favorite things in life is music. Sometimes, music is an interactive experience where I purposefully put it on, and listen. Albums or well-curated playlists are great for this.
But music isn't just for active listening. It should also just be 'on'. Traditionally, this was the job of radio, which is great. But now, I have access to a vast array of music from around the world, allowing me to create my own vibe, all day, every day.
The challenge each day often lies in, what do I put on to last all day?
Spotify actually does a great job of this just 'playing' music for us, which I use. But it doesn't offer much control. And it can get stuck in a loop, playing the same track multiple times a day, or every day, for days.
There are also plenty of great all-day playlists that exist, but more often than not, I prefer listening to my music. I'm unhappy when a 'bad' track interrupts, so I tend to stick to music that I have curated.
Another option is to go to my 'liked songs' playlist and click... SHUFFLE... But let’s be honest, shuffle sucks. Sure, there are times when shuffle can be fun, but it's definitely not suitable for my all-day soundtrack. I can do better.
The trouble is is that all-day playlists are long by design. And curating a long playlist is tedious. But I've been using Sort by Tune to help and have found a simple method that works well.
First I grab my tracks. This is the fun part. Adding individual tracks is way too hard for an ALL DAY playlist. Instead, you can add playlists, and/or albums. I choose 4 or 5 full albums, maybe a playlist that I have lying around of 20 - 30 tracks (or a random 20 tracks from any reasonably well-curated playlist), you can use one of Spotify's Daily Mix playlists, or especially its Discover Weekly (great playlist!). Or even if you don't want an actual album from an artist then you can try a random 10 tracks from their This Is playlist, or Artist Radio.
The trick here(as always) is in track selection. You'll get bored if you listen to nearly identical albums all day, but it's also really nice to have a consistent feel for a day. Half the fun is thinking of a group of albums that fit together well, and combining the right playlist(s) for variablility.
TIP
One thing that has surprised me is how well full albums flow in an all-day playlist. Sort by Tune naturally rearranges them, and cuts them up, to give the depth of listening that an album provides, but the track to track vibe of a playlist.
Selecting tracks this way, it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes, to get 8 hours of music together that all fits, loosely, on a core vibe or idea. If you've added too many songs, don't worry, you can easily trim the final playlist.
Then you can simply open the playlist in Sort by Tune, and Sort.
For an all-day playlist the most important metrics are Energy, followed by Key. Staying in Key helps keep a mood, and you want slow lifts and falls of energy, so the music can go all day, being there, but not being too bossy, jumping around all the time like SHUFFLE tends to do. The default Energy setting is usually perfect.
I sort the playlist. I like a long ramp-up in the morning, with louder music in the afternoon. Often SBT does this for me out of the box, but sometimes I find I need to reverse the order to get what I want.
TIP
The graph is your best friend here, ignore BPM, just look at energy, and see if you get the rise and fall that you are looking for
If it's not what I was after then all I do is Lock 2 or 3 tracks, usually the start, end, and middle. That should give the algorithm enough of a clue to set things the way I want them.
Then I'm done. I find it's quite nice to listen to the same playlist a few times. Eventually, I'll get sick of it, but I can make a new one, or even combine parts of different all-day playlists to give me a fresh all-day mix.
Once you've made a few all day playlists, you start to get a feel for how you put them together.
Let me know how you like to make all day playlists, maybe there is a feature that will help [email protected]
Log in to Sort by Tune and give it a go.