Perfectionism: How do you organize your music?

[user-removed]

Hi there!

I have been with Spotify for a while, yet I have not been able to properly organize my music. For as long as I can remember, all my songs have always been under one giant playlist (currently in Songs under Your Music). I have made multiple attempts at organizing my music, but I am never satisfied with the attempts halfway through. I usually tried to organize by the feeling of the song and what situations the song would be best in. But, with perfectionism in the way, I trash the whole project and end up with wasted time and no progress.

I was wondering, how do you guys usually organize your music? Also, how do you know which music should go under the Songs section of Your Music?

[wahoo650]

Generally what I do is save all of the music that I'm interested in under the Your Music playlist, then divide the songs that I like the most into playlists based on mood, genre, theme, etc., with my favorites going into the starred playlist. The Your Music section for me is basically just a place to dump everything that I need to listen to and sort through later, and the stuff that ends up in a playlist usually gets revisited more often.

When I first started making playlists, I made genre playlists first so that I could get similar songs and artists that I liked grouped together, and then proceeded to make thematic playlists, so maybe that'll work for you as well. Hope this helps!

[Jazzwhatever]

Hi,

First of all i think there is no rule or guideline on how to organise your music. Everyone have their own way how to organise it. If you want to keep all your songs in Your Songs then it's fine too. I just started out by creating a playlist focussed on a genre and start adding songs to it from there. Once i got about 10 playlists i made a playlist folder to put those 10 playlists in. I named it My Playlists.

I made a new map and called it: New Finds and put all the playlists from other users on Spotify in there. Actually i never used the 'add to my songs' button until recently. Now when i hear a good track i add it to my songs and sort it out later.

Anyway, i read in your post you are a perfectionist. If you are, just keep all your playlists private so no one can ever see your 'failures'. But don't be too picky, it's your own taste. It can't be that bad! 🙂

Goodluck!

[Sanik007]

Hahahahha @Jazzwhatever we have a very similar system! That's funny! 

[Jazzwhatever]

@Sanik007 Funny? Or frightening... it gives me the creeps 🙂

[user-removed]

@user-removed

I made a post that is a bit dated and probable needs reworked and updated for the newer apps as the displaying of all songs under a head Playlist Folder no longer works correctly anymore, all songs in playlists are no longer listed anymore under a top Playlist Folder. Anyway I build Artist discographies, just like some others posted here, there is no right or wrong way to organize the music you listen to, just design things the way it makes sense to you and how you build and/or consume music and it's various styles. Anyway here is how to sort of build a Music Library using Playlist Folders and creating playlist folders within one another in order to place individual playlists inside playlist folders to organize things better: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Desktop-Linux-Windows-Web/How-To-Recreate-a-Library/m-p/824739/highlight/true#M89856

[spiritofradio]

I must admit I find organising my music a bit of a headache on Spotify. I'm not really a "singles" or playlists orientated person. I prefer to listen to full albums. I listen, mostly, to the albums in the "Your Music" section which is, obviously, made up of albums received directly from Spotify or my personal albums that Spotify also has. However, as a consequence, I tend to miss out my playlists, these are generally, those albums imported from itunes that Spotify doesnt have in its' catalogue. I know its an old gripe but I wish there was a better way of integrating these two sections so all my music is in one place.

When I first signed up to spotify premium I set up a number of playlists such as "New Unheard", which I think is self explanatory but I also created "New to Me" made up of albums that had been around for, often, a long time that I'd never got round to listening to but could do  so because they were now easy to access, Marvin Gayes' What's Going On was in this category. Unfortunately, I haven't really kept up with this as I add lots of music. Now I just organise my "your Music" folder by "Recently added" and work my way through that.

[Elise93]

I've been struggling with this for a very long time and had different ways of organizing over the years. The most suitable way for me was to just sort my favorites by time periods. This I found to be ideal when I discovered a bunch of my nostalgia-inducing old music.

So I'd create a folder, "By Time" adding all my favorites in each time period:

2015-2020 

2010-2015

2005-2010

2000-2005

1990-2000

1970-1990

1960-1970 (I often split them during major music revolutions)

1950-1960

1920-1950

If you listen to the same type of music today as you did 10 years ago however this probably won't be useful.

I also keep another folder where I sort by major genres instead ("By Genre"): (loosley following https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_popular_music_genres )

Electronic

- Tropical House

- New Beat

- Hands Up

- Europop

- Disco

- Trance

- Electro

- Hardcore

- Club

- Chillout

- ...

Pop

- Contemporary

- Acoustic

- Hip Pop

- Hip Hop

- Electropop

- Pop Rock

- Oldies

- Latin

- ...

Rock

- Punk Rock

- Alternative

- Acoustic

- Hard Rock

- Heavy Metal

- ...

Blues / Jazz / Country

- Bebop

- Swing

- ...

World

- Celtic

- Guangdong

- Oriental

- Danceband

- ... (whatever odd regional genres you may have)

[drewkellar]

I typically use the "Songs" tab to save any song I like in general, no matter what genre it is. I normally use this section to shuffle music when I just feel like having music play in the background while doing other things. 

From there, I make playlists based on different situations where I listen to music. Whether that be working at my computer, driving, or running, I make playlists based off of those. So when I find a new song that I like and want to save, I save it to my Songs, then also add it to the according playlist to listen to it when I'm in a certain situation. Most of the time, I add them to my driving music for more upbeat music. 

[JoshuaBennett]

Okay so I am a clean freak, so organising my music is a regular thing for me.

What I do is I make a playlist and organise it based on the year and then alphabeticallly. I do that for as many playlists I make all for various purposes.

I usually put the music I'm tired of under Songs.

[JoshuaBennett]

Good idea SweRaider. I used to do something similar.

[ajordann]

organizing is something  i really enjoy doing and am good at,but music is one ive struggled with,genres?artist?mood?bands?times?

But what i found works best for me is have a playlist with 'old' songs i love mainly from 90s-2010 and having an older songs playlist concentrating on 50s-80s perhaps abit earlier.

i have a playlist for songs i can listen to wheneve (songs i likein general)

and a recently favourite playlist often monthly.

my spotify a.jordann

[madison_c]

i'm a perfectionist as well so i can get you. i split all of my music up and i have around 40+ playlists. excessive? yeah kinda but the main one that i use is my "month" playlist which is just named after the current month at the time and has all of my favorite songs on there. but here's the kicker: everything is alphabetically organized. the playlists all the way down to the music. i used to organize them by artist then moved to do it by song to give some variety. i honestly really like it that way although it is kind of a pain in the **bleep** to move all of them around.

[Sebasty]

Oh my local music library is more organized than what I have on Spotify.. :')

I have one large playlist for music I really love.

Another even larger playlist is for music I like enough not wanting to lose them (originally Saved Music), so what happens is when I have lots of music saved in Songs and I don't really feel like dropping them in my "You Sound Good", but I still like them for some reason, that's where they go.

One playlist holds music sampled by favourite artists as well as some classical melodies.

One is purely for awesome beats. "Lace me with those beats".

Another pretty new one is for smooth bassy atmospheres.

Other playlists I have are more specific in terms of:

discography for certain labels like Methlab (which gets followers from somewhere...), Renraku and some others;

a playlist containing songs Amon Tobin has used in his sets;

a playlist of music I used to listen to when I was... an early teen;

one very specific mood playlist, etc.

I don't really care about if any of it is sorted by year or alphabetically. I only care about how the song makes me feel... : )

My local library is sorted in folders in this way:

Spoiler

Artist
>Albums
->Album 1
->Album 2
->Album 3 etc
>EP's
->EP 1
->EP 2 etc
>Other Releases (for non-studio albums)
>Other Content (for all kinds of stuff)
->Mixes
->Interviews
->whatever else

But obviously that's not feasible on Spotify, for fundamental reasons. 🙂

[AlicjaDubstep]

[AlicjaDubstep]

[KamKaz]

What is ur profile

---

@Elise93 wrote:

I've been struggling with this for a very long time and had different ways of organizing over the years. The most suitable way for me was to just sort my favorites by time periods. This I found to be ideal when I discovered a bunch of my nostalgia-inducing old music.

So I'd create a folder, "By Time" adding all my favorites in each time period:

2015-2020 

2010-2015

2005-2010

2000-2005

1990-2000

1970-1990

1960-1970 (I often split them during major music revolutions)

1950-1960

1920-1950

If you listen to the same type of music today as you did 10 years ago however this probably won't be useful.

I also keep another folder where I sort by major genres instead ("By Genre"): (loosley following https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_popular_music_genres )

Electronic

- Tropical House

- New Beat

- Hands Up

- Europop

- Disco

- Trance

- Electro

- Hardcore

- Club

- Chillout

- ...

Pop

- Contemporary

- Acoustic

- Hip Pop

- Hip Hop

- Electropop

- Pop Rock

- Oldies

- Latin

- ...

Rock

- Punk Rock

- Alternative

- Acoustic

- Hard Rock

- Heavy Metal

- ...

Blues / Jazz / Country

- Bebop

- Swing

- ...

World

- Celtic

- Guangdong

- Oriental

- Danceband

- ... (whatever odd regional genres you may have)

---

What is ur profile

[picjoe]

Folders and Subfolders.

Genre - Time - Mood - Test

Genre: House RnB etc. -> House: Deep House, Baselines, Melodic, Tropical etc.

Time: 2018 - 2019, 2015 - 2018, 2010 - 2015 etc.

Mood: Diner, Romantic, Happiness etc.

Test: all new songs or playlists or Albums

[miko_gallego]

This is a super late reply, but I figured someone might find it useful. The way I organize my playlists is by what kind of mood they put me in (or if they don't put me in any particular mood then I do it by genre), and then organize those playlists into folders distinguished by music genre. For example:

electronic

---deep house

---tropical house

---edm

indie

---happy indie

---sad indie

---indie rock

[anti997]

I like to make a lot of playlists with cinematic themes like they’re being played in sequence of a film. Or just how different styles flow well from song to song. I’m very weird but it makes sense to me and yet I always find myself re-resorting similar ones together late at night so I can find them quicker like an OCD vampire but everybody has their own way of doing it!