Oddly Specific Playlists: An Update!

If you are reading this, you are required BY LAW to follow @oddlyspecificplaylists_ on Instagram.

Thank you ❤

Now that’s out of the way, welcome back!

If you happened to read my Pitch, you know vaguely what this project is all about. If not, please, allow me to introduce you:

‘Oddly Specific Playlists’ is exactly what it says on the label.

I started by making a Google Form and sharing it on Twitter. Using the form, users are encouraged to submit anonymous confessions or themed requests, which I then use as inspiration to create Spotify playlists. These playlists are extremely curated to match the sender’s request. To ensure this curation, I limit myself to 10 tracks per playlist. This means that each song needs to be perfect for the playlist. It also might help to keep users interested (because we all have short attention spans), and the playlists end up being around 30 mins long.

I created an Instagram account (the one you followed earlier, right?), to promote the playlists and connect with users.

The lovely @itsbusyissy created the beautiful Logo for me after I posted on Twitter requesting help with it.

Ideating to eventually arrive at the decision to do this project was a windy road. I posted a blog post documenting my early ideas, which can be seen here. I originally wanted to create short animations based off of songs by lesser-known artists. I gave it a go for about two weeks but came to a realisation.

ANIMATION IS REALLY HARD! and more importantly, I, a beginner, was not going to be able to complete this project in a fast, inexpensive, simple and tiny manner.

So, I started again, posting my other ideas to Twitter

And, although no one really asked for it, I trusted myself, took a risk and chose this project because ultimately, even if the user base was going to be smaller (based off of feedback from classmates preferring my other ideas), I knew I’d like this project more personally, and therefore remain motivated and enjoy the process over the course of the semester. Also, it was the most #FIST out of the bunch.

As I’d mentioned in my Pitch, I knew the idea had some level of audience interest, because I’d seen people publicise these artsy kinds of playlists on Tik Tok, as well as Instagram.

I also liked the idea of using anonymous confessions or requests as inspiration, as I’ve seen numerous “anonymous confession accounts” which always pique my interest. I’ve always found raw vulnerability and emotional honesty to be inspiring, interesting and humanising in a society which often discourages people from expressing “negative” emotion openly. In, particular, there is an Instagram project which I have followed for a number of years called The Unsent Project.

Thankfully, my BCM peers and friends were willing and eager to participate, as I received an overwhelming amount of entries on the day I first posted the form. While they’ve slowed down now, I have more than enough inspiration to go on creating playlists. The support and positive feedback I’ve received on this project has proven to me that there is a user base to interact with this project.

I did some brainstorming (as seen below), and I ran into a problem when I realised that I was lacking constructive feedback from my audience and that I had very little understanding of my users. I needed to find ways to connect and observe users, so I developed a list of questions I can post to my story to get a better understanding of what my users like to listen to and how they like to listen. I also asked users via Twitter to follow the Spotify account after realising I can observe their listening habits by looking at their accounts.

Over the last week or so, I have been using my story to ask questions in order to get an idea of my user’s preferences.

The Instagram and Spotify accounts are going well, I believe, maintaining a solid following and putting up content regularly enough. Although, I’d like to aim to be putting out more content than I am. To achieve this, my workflow needs to be smoother. Over the last week, I have identified a few ways in which I can organise my work and have resources (such as cover images for playlists and backgrounds for ig stories) prepared to use.

I’ve connected online with other music-based DA accounts on Instagram, one of which pointed me in the direction of good old adobe photoshop as a medium to create my Images for Instagram posts.

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Also! I’ve been tagging the artists that feature on the playlists, and one of them liked the post! (BIG highlight of my week!)

Stay tuned!