More new music, please!

16 January 2017

I have this habit of listening to singles, albums, and playlists over and over (and over) again. Last year, unemployed and looking for work, I indulged the tendency without a second thought. Only a very few songs–and the “Hamilton” cast album–managed to break into my sonic security blanket fort.

In my music library, I keep a playlist for each year filled with newly-discovered singles. While 2010 has the largest count at 105, 2016 is the smallest at an anemic 16. (And! Beyoncé, Rihanna, and JoJo account for 10 spots.)

So for 2017: no more sonic security blankets. I’ll definitely listen to favorites (you’ll take my Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong-seeded Pandora station from my cold dead hands), but it’s time to start exploring again.

But how to accomplish “listen to more new music” without turning it into a chore that I’ll definitely abandon?

I found the answer a couple of days into January when I opened Spotify and counted all the playlists in the sidebar. 45. Oy. So, I did the only rational thing: I deleted most of the playlists I created and unfollowed every playlist I hadn’t.

Now, when I fire up Spotify I head first to their curated playlists or the “mood” collections and go from there. A couple of weeks in, 2017 is on track to outstrip 2016 by an order of magnitude in additions to my “All the new (to me) that’s fit to listen” playlist.