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.

[SweRaider]

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.