So Many Songs. So Many Steps.

April 10, 2014 4:41 PM

There have been a lot of AskMe posts lately (just a few examples) asking for music recommendations, and I'm once again thinking how much I'd like to listen these songs while I walk. Like on a playlist I could easily download and listen to offline, on my Android phone.

Spotify seems ideal for this - I know not every song will be available there, but it seems like many, if not most, would be. I'm sure there are other apps that would work as well for playback, if only the playlists existed.

I don't know how it would work, or how it could happen, but I really think it would be great if it did. Anyone else? Could we crowdsource a script? Or something?

posted by still_wears_a_hat to MetaFilter-Related at 4:41 PM (17 comments total)

I love the music posts. I really really love them, because of course I have the best taste in music ever, except maybe Empath.

Kidding aside, this would be neat. Although there would be so many songs I'm not sure how it would work. Would it be like the recently-linked Amazon stuff?

Or you know how you can get a user's RSS? Is there a way to get a user's song feed, that just shows all the songs they posted? And then I could subscribe to Empath's song feed, or other users who consistently posted songs I liked.
posted by cashman at 6:00 PM on April 10, 2014

I know that when I asked a music question, I figured the best way to check them all out was via a Spotify playlist, but I had to make it by hand, and search for each song individually. I'm not sure there's a way to automate that, unless everyone who answered a music question posted a Spotify link to each song they were suggesting. That won't work for every song; some of the ones suggested to me were not on Spotify at all.
posted by booksherpa at 7:30 PM on April 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

This isn't a real fit for your inquiry, but as noted by pb, YouTube auto-created a MetaFilter channel, but it pulls a bit of everything from MetaFilter comments and posts.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:36 PM on April 10, 2014

If you have spotify -- I just created a metafilter room on the sounddrop app, which works kinda like turntable.fm, etc...

Go ahead and load sounddrop in spotify and search for metafilter. No songs yet, though.
posted by empath at 7:39 PM on April 10, 2014

Actually, here is a direct invite to the sound drop group.
posted by empath at 7:41 PM on April 10, 2014

Well... couldn't the poster of such a thread create an empty Spotify playlist, and link it in the question? Then make it collaborative and public, and if folks want to, they can drop their recommendations in.

Benefit of this is that it's optional to the poster.

Full disclosure: I <3 collaborative playlists.
posted by greenish at 3:55 AM on April 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

I disagree that greenish is less than 3 collaborative playlists. My calculations suggest that greenish ≥ 19.7 collaborative playlists, and I am quite prepared to collaborate on a paper about this for the Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 4:16 AM on April 11, 2014 [10 favorites]

Good grief. I am going to need to make some serious adjustments to my lifestyle if your theory is accurate.
posted by greenish at 4:34 AM on April 11, 2014

Sounddrop seems fun, though I am going to have to figure out how it works. I joined the MeFi room and then when the track I was listening to on my own ended it switched to the Autechre that was going from the room. I couldn't, however, leave the room/get away from the room playlist without exiting and restarting the Spotify app entirely (there is no leave room, signing out of Sounddrop did nothing). But, still, there was some cool music there and it could be fun.
posted by mountmccabe at 6:38 AM on April 11, 2014

Also I follow/have a few Spotify collaborative playlists and they're the best, especially when there's a theme/focus. Like I could start a 19.7 collaborative playlists but what would people add? It would be confusing and strange.
posted by mountmccabe at 6:49 AM on April 11, 2014

Luckily the falsity of all my theories is well-established, thanks to numerous papers in the Zeitschrift für Analysis und ihre Anwendungen. It's my favourite Zeitschrift, actually. Other Zeitschrifts are not nearly as Zeity. Their Schrift isn't too good either.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 6:58 AM on April 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

I haven't done one in a while, but I've taken to making Spotify playlists for music AskMes I find interesting. You can check 'em out (and the related AskMes) in my profile page here.

(Sorry to self-link…I made these because I love discovering new music and think other people might like the collections too.)
posted by iamkimiam at 7:50 AM on April 11, 2014 [7 favorites]

I've taken to making Spotify playlists for music AskMes I find interesting. You can check 'em out (and the related AskMes) in my profile page here.

Thanks for the link! That's such an awesome idea - I might copy it when I get a chance. I love it when people have useful links in their profile (don't bother checking, I don't - I'm a hypocrite).
posted by randomnity at 9:53 AM on April 11, 2014

That is an entirely appropriate self-link! And very useful. (My understanding is that the self-link prohibition is more about FPP on the Blue and/or off-topic spam).
posted by mountmccabe at 10:25 AM on April 11, 2014

Thanks empath and iamkimiam. I'm trying to figure out sounddrop now.

So if more of us started making public playlists from FPP or AskMe posts, would it be OK to link to them in the post comments, or is that bad self-linking?
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 1:44 PM on April 11, 2014

All the dumb less than 3 jokes recently have made me wonder... 💖
posted by maryr at 6:24 PM on April 11, 2014

Oh goodness, at least on my phone, the emoticon does indeed show up! ✌
posted by maryr at 6:26 PM on April 11, 2014