Creating a "deep" auto playlist

[Kelleytoons]

First of all, I apologize if this is a simple case of "user ignorance" but so far I can't find an answer to what seems to me to be a simple question and I'm trying to decide here if I want to start paying for Spotify after my free trial expires so I need to know.

I'm coming from Apple Radio which has a pretty simple way of creating the playlists I like -- I can add artists, songs or genres to the list and it combines all of them into a "master" or "deep" playlist that sometimes (more often than not) works for me perfectly (it's only drawback is that it then tends to repeat the music after an hour or so, which doesn't seem right to me given how much they have to draw upon).  I can't find any way to even come close to this in Spotify.

For example, let's say I want to create a playlist for one of our Florida pool parties -- I start with the "Steel Band" genre and then add "Jimmy Buffet" (the artist) and perhaps "Girl from Ipanema" by Astrud Gilbert (a song).  All three of these things give me a terrific playlist that I can then thumbs up and down to further refine. Additionally, I can tell it I DON'T want it to play any Reggae (in the same manner as adding genre, artists or songs, I can tell it NOT to play any of those).  It only takes a few minutes to create something that's pretty impressive. I have a lot of great stations in iTunes like this -- Male Jazz singers, Female folk singers, Disney themed music, etc.  

In Spotify I can create a Radio station with an artist or a song (not a genre unless it's one of the provided ones which are VERY limited -- no Steel Bands there) but that's the end of it.  I can thumbs up and down songs, but I can't further tailor it by adding or subtracting things.  So far, with hours of use under my belt, I haven't even come close to creating a Radio station I like.

Now -- I can go ahead and create a playlist of specific songs (I assume) but if I do this I might as well use my own music library in iTunes (which has about 20K worth of songs I really like).  But perhaps I'm missing the point of Spotify, and I'm hoping here someone can enlighten me about it.

[Joe]

Actually spotify is better. Once you have created a playlist - start a radio station from it.  No idea what platform you are using but, with the desktop client, it's an option when you right-click on the playlist name.

[Kelleytoons]

Okay, let me see if I understand you (and I'm *very* literal minded so bear with me): I create a playlist with whatever songs I want and make a radio station from that?  So in that case I would have the ability to add specific songs but still not genre or artists, correct?  Also, I wouldn't be able to say "never play anything from this artist" in my radio station, correct? 

What I'm getting at here is that iTunes both gives me "discovery" (artists I would never have chosen but fit the categories) as well as "negation" (artists I don't want to be exposed to regardless of what the curators think is best).

But I'll give it a try (and I do appreciate the reply. so thanks greatly).

[Joe · Accepted solution]

Literal is good 🙂

Yes your understanding is correct, you can only influence genres and artists by the mix of tracks on your playlist. If I remember, radio only looks at the first 200 tracks in a playlist so it needs some thought but the good thing is that you can, if necessary, refine the playlist and start a new radio station from it.

There's no limit to the number of stations you can have and you can delete the ones which didn't work out. Spotify will play similar artists and you can use like/dislike as you listen, Not as refined as itunes but see how you get on 🙂

[Kelleytoons]

Thanks.

I'll give it a shot and see how it works out.  While on a whole I try not to get into the whole "I'm used to things this way and that's the way I like it" thing I have to admit the iTunes model makes a lot more sense than trying it this way, specifically when it comes to adding genres and putting negations into things.  But we'll see -- the nice thing about a free trial is you aren't out anything but time if it doesn't work for you (my next thing to try will be Beats, which I'm hoping will somehow evolve into the best of iTunes Radio as well as what Beats has to offer, considering the owners).

As I mentioned earlier, iTunes Radio does exactly what I want *except* for the repetition (but that may be a problem with all of these -- there may be no perfect world, at least for my musical tastes and needs).