Vibe, and purpose. I have a gym playlist full of metal, 90’s rap, and some bebop. I also have a playlist for rock, another for metal, a classical playlist, a medievalish playlist (think Danheim, Heilung, The HU, etc), and another for just jazz. I also have playlists for the decades spanning from the 50’s to the 90’s. Ended up doing playlists for whenever I’m feeling really good, and for whenever I’m down in the dumps, just in case.

The decades playlists really help with being handed the aux. Most people don’t do well going from Toto or Green Day to Messhuggah and Opeth, so, dividing a genre by decade is good. I know my grandma will not vibe with Polyphia, so I play her some latin music, classical, or jazz, and she’s fine with it.

This leads to many, many playlists, and there’s a lot of overlap, but I don’t really mind as long as I can make sure I have a playlist for any mood I might find myself in.

Outside of sorting them by artist, album and maybe something else depending on what it is, I kind of don’t. If there is a song that I like, I’ll download it and add it to the folder where I keep all of my music. Yes, this does cause a playlist that is massive and kind of sporadic but I already listen to artists like A-one and Sound Holic which already have at least some level of variety to the style of music they make.

On spotify you can create folders and i put my playlist in folders named after genres

I’ve just got a general playlist, sad stuff, gym, and ERM. 95% of stuff gets dumped straight into the general one

I have a few playlists that are accompaniments to particular stories/pieces of media. Basically playlists with a narrative they follow. Those are somewhat easy to make, because then I just add any song that makes me think of the story and then I sort the songs into chronological order of which part of the narrative I feel they apply to. Then I have a playlist for political music, so I guess that’d be a playlist by topic.

Normally when I listen to music on Spotify I just shuffle my liked songs though.

Genre --> Author --> Album --> Song.

Only 3…

• Albums -> Full albums
• Recopilations -> Compilation albums
• Random -> Songs

Somewhat haphazardly. I typically listen to multiple genres in one session as well. What I usually do is if I hear a song I like that’s not already in a playlist (or if I like it enough that I want it in multiple playlists), I’ll chuck it in at the end of one. Then when I have downtime I play around with the song order so that I like how each song transitions to the next. I enjoy doing that as a way to unwind. This method isn’t great if you’re the type that needs everything organized all the time though since my playlists are usually in some level of a work in progress state! The names are very boring - P01, P02, etc. I also have some playlists that are more themed, for instance a road trip playlist with more upbeat songs. I’ll usually play around with that one based on who is road tripping with me and what type of music I think they’ll enjoy.

I download my music and order it by Artists>Album>Song, basically without exception. Occasionally annoying when a song has multiple authors, because people don’t always write the metadata the same way and it fucks with my music player, but that’s besides the point.

When I make playlist, I just take a whole album, filter out a few songs if need be and shove it into a given playlist, sometimes I can do that with an entire artist, but it’s not always that easy.

Another issue with my approach is the odd single song from a random artist that’s really good, but everything else they ever made makes me fall asleep, that’s a really annoying one… Might start making my own fake albums.

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

I just katamari all of my music into one big obnoxiously large playlist. If I want to hear music of a specific type, that’s what albums are for.

I never felt the need of creating playlists. I just have one playlist with all my songs. My local music player allows to switch between platlists and albums so if i want to listen to a whole album, i don’t have the remember the last position in my big playlist

I have different folders for different genres, then subdivided in folders for year of release.

I spent way too much time organizing this way back so I stick with it. Problems with this are that genes can overlap (could be fixed with symlinks?) and the year is something you often have to look up (id3 often shows year of the album which is not always the year it came out).

Now that I think about it, using a website that could gain access to your playlist and move around the different songs to new playlists (based on genre/mood/etc) would be a godsend…

I make playlists by what songs i was feeling each year. This way I can go back and reminisce and reflect on what I was going through.

Some lists repeat the same songs but are generally uniquely. For example, Radiohead’s Creep is on many of my lists.