Mainly aimed at those who use Spotify, Tidal, or any other streaming service like myself, but those who pirate music should still feel free to answer!
How do you organise your music library? Creating playlists is pure torture, in my opinion, because there are so many songs that overlap in genres. I’ve tried creating lists based on genres, but I’m the type of person to listen to multiple genres in one session so the switching between playlists kinda becomes inconvenient. Same with based on mood, I can still listen to discoesque or fast-paced songs when I’m feeling sad.
Genuinely considered hiring somebody to create the playlists for me, lol. I know having 800 songs in one list is clunky, but having everything in the same spot is a source of relief. Ugh.
Organization of them is highly dependent on what kind of player you’re using, because they don’t all have the same tools. Someone else would have to help you regarding services and software.
But I’m never shy about having a few dozen playlists. Nor about changing them on the fly. My digital collection is only about a terabyte currently, after a recent purge of duplicates and stuff I had saved for other people. But I’ve got something like thirty playlists on my pc, and about the same on my phone, dedicated phone music player, etc.
Since all my apps/programs default to alphabetical order for playlists, it’s pretty easy to know where the list I want is. Just scroll and find it. The band specific lists, I’ll always know where they are. Same with purpose lists like holidays. For vibes, I tend to go with the kind of mood I want to be in after listening for a bit.
Then again, I actually enjoy making playlists. I find it fun to make a list that flows, regardless of how many genres are on it.
Like I have a list called “rain” on my pc. Every song is about, or includes rain in the lyrics. The ones that use rain sound effects (like Garth Brooks, the Thunder Rolls) start the list. Garth’s is the last song on that section, and Keith Whitley’s I’m no stranger to the rain is after that. That transitions into I wish it would rain by the temptations, and so on. As the list gets played, there’s a sense of progression like a rain storm can ebb and flow through rhythm and strength.
That’s just fun for me. I get to listen to the music and really sink into it as I adjust the list for how the vibe shifts, the speed of it, etc. I’ve got lists that are similarly built that are themed on wolves & werewolves, good & evil, dreams, etc. It’s almost a hobby sometimes, just not a super frequent one.
But, I also have a miscellaneous list on every device. No real organization of it, it’s just a long list with stuff I know I’ll enjoy listening to for extended times. If I want to change the order, I can switch the sorting via the player from artist, album, or whatever options are available, and it becomes a different playlist. The one on my main phone is something like 300 songs, and that’s the smallest of them.
My “feel better” lists can range all across the board for genres, like you. They tend to start with sad songs as catharsis, stuff that I know will make me cry, or at least make me intensify the sadness so that I can’t keep it locked down and controlled, which lets me feel the sorrow more fully. Then the songs gradually shift to things that help me contemplate and process. Then finishes with things that are uplifting for me, and/or make me laugh.
I don’t know if any of that will be helpful at all, but there it is lol.
Fwiw, there’s nothing wrong with getting help building a list. I do it for my wife fairly often, and for friends too.
The key to making that easy is naming things in the same way you’ll be looking for the list