Listening to music sometime has a nostalgic effect on me. Similar to familiar sights and smells, when I listen to songs that I used to listen to, I’m transported back to a different period in my life.

The problem is I can’t recall precisely when or the details of my life during that time. Maybe that contributes to the sadness associated with nostalgia: the inability to remember details from the past.

Recently, I’ve started to create playlists for songs I enjoy (and don’t mind listening to on repeat). I’m going to describe what I do first, and then talk about the why.

Tracking Musical Preferences

I have a subscription to YouTube Music, but this approach will work with most music services.

I start by listening to one or two songs that I’ve listened to before and am currently craving. After that, I’ll let the recommendation algorithms take over.

As I notice songs I particularly enjoy, I’ll create a playlist with this name:

<Month> <Year> pt <Number>

So right now, I’m on Jan 2023 pt 3. What does this tell me?

  • Jan 2023 is just the current month and year.
  • pt3 is the third playlist of this month.

pt 1 would mark the first playlist of the month. I’ll keep adding to the playlist as I find different favorites. At some point, I realize I’d much rather listen to a recent song discovery than most of the ones I added earlier in the month. At that point I create a new playlist.

pt 2 contains any songs from the first playlist that I want to continue listening to. I don’t care how much overlap is needed. This is my playlist after all.

Evolution of Musical Preference

As I do this process, I’ll end up with dozens of playlists. But the cool part is that I can go in chronological order of playlists and see what new songs I added and phased out.

Within the course of a few months, the current playlist might look completely different. In the two months that I’ve been doing this, I already don’t have a single song in common from the first playlist to the last.

Side note: I like making sure the songs in the playlist share a similar mood or genre. This means I’ll remove a song if it stands out too much and doesn’t go with the flow.

If you’re curious what I’m listening to recently, here’s a link to Jan 2023 pt 3 and the songs:

Cracker Island (feat. Thundercat) - Gorillaz
New Gold (feat. Tame Impala & Bootie Brown) - Gorillaz
Borderline - Tame Impala
Désolé (feat. Fatoumata Diawara) - Gorillaz
Waterfalls Coming Out Your Mouth - Glass Animals