Playlists 101: Third Party Playlists

Third party playlists are created by a variety of users, which can range from an individual fan or influencer, an artist, label, or press outlet. The playlist owner manually creates and updates the playlist, controlling what songs are on the playlist and their order. In this respect, third party playlists are similar to editorial playlists if the songs and their placement remain fixed, available to all listeners of that playlist. On the other hand, if the playlists are updated, keeping some songs and adding/removing others, they appear more like personalized playlists (although these are updated manually rather than through an algorithm). In other words, the playlist owner can choose at any time to add or drop any song from that playlist.