Saying that I like to make Spotify playlists is an understatement. I have spent entire days adding, deleting and re-adding songs until I’m 99% satisfied with the way my Spotify library looks (only to redo everything two days later). Am I a bit too obsessed? Maybe. But I’d like to think that my hours of obsessing have paid off just a little. I am currently the proud owner of 54 Spotify playlists, and while they aren’t quite perfect yet, I thought I’d share a little bit of my creative process in making them.
Organization
Organizing my playlists is very important to me. Most of my playlists are sorted by artist, but I also custom-sort my playlists from time to time. I do this so that all the songs from the same artist and/or album are grouped together. I also prefer shorter playlists to long ones, which is why I create so many in the first place. Finally, I use folders to group my playlists by category. Creating folders requires using the desktop app, but I would highly recommend doing this especially if you have a lot of playlists like me. I will expand on each category in the next section.
Playlist Categories:
- Current Faves
-
- Recent Discoveries
-
These playlists don’t belong to any folder, but they are probably my most important playlists. My “Current Faves” playlist is what I listen to the most, and I update it on a fairly frequent basis. I also have a “Recent (re)Discoveries” playlist to keep track of all the new (and newly rediscovered) songs that I add to my Spotify library.
- Artist-Focused
-
This category is pretty self-explanatory; they are playlists dedicated to a specific artist (or artists). I like to create these for my all-time favorite artists, and each playlist includes both solo work and collaborations.
- Genre Playlists
-
I prefer to sort my music by genre because I find it to be a fairly straightforward method of organization. However, determining the correct genre of a song can get difficult, especially if the song blends multiple genres. That is why I try to keep my genre playlists as vague and broad as possible, so I can easily dump songs with similar qualities onto one playlist (for example, “Pop and Chill” is basically anything that sounds like mainstream pop).
- Mood/Vibe Playlists
-
Playlists based on a certain mood or vibe are the hardest for me to create, because the category isn’t concrete. I know a lot of people are able to intuitively throw together an amazing mood-based playlist, but the process is much more stressful for a perfectionist like me. However, I do have a few playlists based on moods that I believe are a bit easier to define. For example, “the future is female” is filled with songs that make me feel empowered, and “in my feelings” consists of mostly emotional ballads.
- Music Eras (by year)
-
My “Music Era” playlists are based on the release date of songs. Not only does this guarantee that every song in my library will be featured on a playlist, it also creates time capsules for me to look back on how music has changed over the years. I have a playlist for every individual year starting from 2010.
- Not in English
-
This year, I began listening to a lot more music that isn’t in English, and it has led me to discover so many amazing new artists. Personally, I prefer to create separate playlists for my non-English music, but I also add non-English songs to my “Mood/Vibe” and my “Music Era” playlists. As of right now, I have playlists dedicated to Spanish, French, Japanese, and Korean music.
Aesthetics
Finally, you may have noticed that all of my playlists have some pretty cute covers (if I do say so myself). I use Instagram photos for my artist-focused playlists, high-quality stock images from Unsplash for a few playlists and album covers of songs from the playlist itself for others. If I’m making the cover using songs from the playlist, I try to choose album covers with colors that coordinate with each other. For example, in my “Alternative Pop” playlist, I chose albums that have black and blue color schemes:
So that was a basic rundown of how I create my Spotify playlists. Hopefully I was able to provide you with some inspiration as well!