Organizing Your Music Into Monthly Playlists

So the music is where all this “planning by the moon” started. I was working a pretty basic job out of college that gave me a lot of free time, and also out on my own for the first time, at least without roommates. (**Cough** this was quite awhile ago.) This was also the era where Spotify had launched, and music purchasing and storage was shifting. It wasn’t yet completely clear whether Spotify would survive, and artists were initially displeased, if I remember correctly – but for the first time, there was an alternative to iTunes that wasn’t illegal downloads or purchasing actual albums. Also if I remember correctly (can you tell that I don’t entirely trust my own memory?), Pandora was taking off at the same time, which I listened to, headphones on, completely in my own world, a lot while working, and I remember being fascinated by how it analyzed my “likes” for things like orchestral preferences– it told me at one point it recommended something because I liked “dramatic undertones”, or something like that, and I was pretty amused. It wasn’t always right, but it was a cool idea, and I invested some time curating playlists and discovering new artists this way.

 

Enter the need to organize my music. Now, I could have been totally boring, and created playlists for different occasions, like “party” and “evening chill” or things like that (ahem – actually, I have some of these, too). But I’m someone who likes to mark the passing of time, occasionally likes to reinvent herself, and gets really excited about nostalgia. I decided to organize my playlists by month, so that I could refresh what I was listening to regularly, but in a largely automated way. I became so passionate while doing this, that it basically sparked a new way of approaching life that really worked for me as I came into my own. It was a little quirky, maybe (my coworkers, after finding out I did this, used this to “explain” my particular brand of quirkiness to newcomers: “Grace has a different playlist for each month.” (Always said with love, I think. Maybe a bit of an eyeroll, but love, too.)

 

Why organize your music by month

As much as you might love any artist or song or even genre of music, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t also like to mix things up. 30ish days, or one month, or “Moon” is in my opinion about the right amount of time to support a fairly good sized playlist before you’ll want to say, “…aaaaand, next?” Plus, monthly breakdown helps capture the different seasons and traditions in your life that change with the time of year, whether it be holidays, rituals like the school year or vacation, or just the flavor of some of your favorite pastimes, or an echo of some of your favorite memories.

 

What’s more is that this is a bit of a life hack, because you don’t have to create a new playlist all the time to suit your new mood – you can start with the one coming to you that corresponds to the new month. And maybe not always at first, but after awhile doing this, I’m pretty confident that the collection will suit your mood, because you designed it to– once, and then sat back and let it repeat for efficiency. Each year that goes by, this organization is more “let me add this one song I stumbled onto, where it belongs” and less “ugh, what am I going to listen to next?” and that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

 

How to get started

Just like with the meal planning, the initial investment can be a bit much for many, and I totally get that. We’re all different, and you might not be as weird dedicated as I am. If the idea of sitting down and putting all of your songs into their respective spots on the calendar makes you nauseous, not to worry– you can use my lists (I’m Andromedasaur on Spotify) to start out, and build from there, or search for similar playlists that other users have (while I often have the only playlist for some months that seems to be all about the month, ie, March, for others like December or October where there is a clearer “mood”, this type of organization is quite common – and I haven’t searched around recently, so it’s possible that there are more “March” playlists every day!) If you can’t find any good playlists by month and absolutely hate my taste in music (I won’t apologize for having a bit of Enya in each one), you can also take this process slowly and go it alone.

 

  1. Get set up in Spotify, if you haven’t already. I am not aware of any other service that makes this type of organization so easy.
  2. Create new playlists and title each of them with the name of a month. You can get clever with this if you like – for example, I called my December list “Decemberembers”, because it reminds me of being around a fire, as in chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Cool, I know. I also do recommend that you have a couple of other lists that organize a little differently, depending on your lifestyle– for example, I have a playlist for daily walking that sort of ends up being the collection of songs I’m most into at any given moment, as I update it often. I also have a “sleepy”, “running”, etc. At the very least, though, you’ll want a playlist that can serve as a drop for songs of the moment– maybe you hear a new song and you love it and want to listen to it frequently now, but if you’re being honest with yourself, it totally has summer vibes even though now it’s February. In my case, it’d stay on my walking playlist until I was ready to move it to June, etc.
  3. If you already have music in Spotify, go through this first. Some songs will be obvious, or easily elude a feeling that suggests a time of year —and what it suggests to you might be totally different than what it’d suggest to me, and that’s okay! There is no right and wrong here, nor does anything need to be final. Be patient – this may take some time. If, as I did when I went through this process, you say, “hmmm not sure about this one…” try listening to the song again before sorting, and then if still in doubt, go ahead and dump it into whatever month is suffering the most dearly for content.
  4. Once you’ve done that, OR if you didn’t have music in Spotify to begin with, go out and find other music that isn’t represented in your playlists that you know you’ll likely want to listen to repeatedly throughout the remainder of your years. (Am I the only one that feels myself aging as we speak?) I found this easiest to do by artist: I started with my favorites, Ray LaMontagne, Florence & the Machine – and sorted their libraries of music into the best times of year for each song, according to Me.
  5. Word to the wise: don’t overload December with holiday music, or February with love songs. You might go mad. It’s okay to lean into those themes– that’s what this is about, afterall– but any good seasonal playlist has some flexibility built in. A month is 30ish days long, and just my take and all, but you don’t want the same vibe throughout the ENTIRE period, even if it’s predominantly a certain mood.
  6. Relax and let this process play out – it will get better and better over time. You don’t have to get it all sorted now; in fact, this can be quite fun to do as you go over the course of a year or more. Will you inevitably forget about one of your favorite artists when you start, and four months later hurriedly add all of their work to the appropriate lists? Yes, yes that will happen – and that’s okay. When it happens, you can be happy that you’re getting a little closer. And of course, as life plays out, we’re (hopefully) continually exposed to new music. Don’t forget to add new songs to your lists!
  7. Make it a family playlist. This won’t be for everyone, but my kids and my husband love the organization by month. To be honest, I was surprised that my husband took to it the way he did– it seemed like one of my dorky things he was going to roll his eyes at (and actually, come to think of it, he might have when I first explained)— but actually, he loves the moment when it’s a new month and we get to switch to a different list, and he’s always telling Alexa to play the month playlist on Spotify, something that makes me perhaps unreasonably happy. It’s not always easy to collaborate on playlists in Spotify, I’ve found, though in theory, you can– but I make it known that he can let me know if he has a song to add, and my kids totally ask to add their songs of the moment, too.
  8. Enjoy!