Playlist

When you collect a group of MIDIs into an album, you can play them much like a CD, with repeat mode, random mode, and a programmed playlist.

Strangers constructed playlists that pulled from artists and albums you’d never heard of, but without the performative high/low-ness that afflicts so much online music talk.

I hadn't spoken to her in a year, but she could still see my listens on the music platform we both used. I still went to those playlists for solace. A sense of collective understanding. We had stockpiled our youth.

No past, just traces / Nowhere to play, just playlists

When users would select the most immediately visible “dinner playlist” or ”workout mix,” they might have unknowingly clicked through to a list owned and operated by a major label.

She achieved success when her first single was playlisted on national radio.

Suddenly they got a single playlisted at Radio 1 and the album went gold.

And it's the story of how those problems then played out over the span of many years, as music became personalized, playlisted, autoplayed, and algorithmic.