Playlists 101: Personalized Playlists

Personalized playlists are the most numerous retailer-generated playlists combining both editorial and algorithmic aspects. Overall, playlists are moving more and more toward the personalized type. Basically, personalized playlists will include a number of both “fixed” songs and personalized songs. What this means is that if an artist’s song is added to one of these playlists, it may be part of the “fixed” set or part of the personalized set. Unfortunately, there is no clear way to determine which set the song falls under, nor its exact placement, which can make things a bit more complicated, especially if you want to announce to fans that a song has been added to one of these playlists. As a result, listeners may or may not see that song on their playlist, especially if it is part of the personalized set, which tends to get frequently updated with other songs. In this context, a playlist add or drop is not very helpful or meaningful because the songs on the playlist will tend to keep changing, often resulting in numerous repeat adds and/or drops.