I think it’s a good idea for recording artists to regularly craft new playlists with their music interspersed among like-minded artists, and I think Serenades is a good example. I’ll explain why after the playlist and links.
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It’s a one thing to declare my genres as “ambient” or “electronic”, but the question “Who do you sound like?” is something an artist has to be able to answer. And I don’t think there’s a better way to answer it than crafting a public playlist.
And not just crafting one public playlist, but the artist needs to craft multiple playlists over the years, especially if they release a lot of music or work in numerous genres. A few every year is perfectly fine.
Eight tracks in Serenades are mine, but some are under pseudonyms.
Do I sound exactly like Chihei Hatakeyama or alva noto or Loscil? No, but we’re all operating in the same general area.
Does Daniel Diaz just do ambient? No, he works in other genres. Go take a deep dive!
25 tracks is about the maximum number I’d want for a playlist like this. Even if somebody stumbles upon the playlist, getting someone to listen beyond 5 or 10 minutes, even skipping around, is a miracle.
The average track time is around four minutes. Only three tracks are around seven minutes. And while it’s better to front-load shorter tracks, but my lengthy “Thread Sleep” single is new, so it’s near the front.
The data analysis jury is still out on whether grouping “similar artists” in public playlists works for discovery purposes on the various the streaming services. I think it works at an “algorithmic” level on some. As a recording artist, crafting public playlists with other artists helps me figure out my place in the artistic landscape, and that seems to provide a certain kind of value. It can’t hurt.
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