Play It Forward 2015

At the beginning of December Spotify released its Year in Music 2014 feature which sums up the top music and trends on Spotify for 2014. The feature also allows users to view this information based on their own Spotify usage. This is the second year I've used this feature and while others find it provides a surprising retrospective of their taste in music, it's something I find compelling about using Spotify. Personally this kind of data is why I love Spotify and have adopted it as my primary music application/service. My 2014 Year in Music doesn't conform to all aspects of what I would've expected for myself but it is an accurate representation of how I've used the service this year. The weeks and months following Riley's birth were full of late night sessions of Rockabye Baby's many lullaby covers of popular artists that was a much needed break from traditional lullaby songs which is why the winter months were dominated by the group. The spring brought about a renaissance of my interest in The City Harmonic when my grandmother surprised us in coming to town to meet Riley. Summer months allow me to open the windows in my car which requires the bass and lyrical thrust of Lecrae's fantastic new album Anomaly. Over the last few months of the year with the Fall came a lot of changes for my family and a newfound inspiration to participate and enjoy life and not live to work but rather to take a step back and realize that I want to work to live. I couldn't think of another artist that sums this up for me other than the polarizing Owl City. I'm embarrassed to say that I've debated sharing my Year in Music for fear of what it opinions may be formed about my own taste in music but over the last few weeks I've come to find that I'm confident in my taste in music and find it to be one of my favorite things to discover and write about.

After going through the stats for 2014, Spotify offers to create a playlist titled Play It Forward in your library that takes what it knows about your taste in music and provides 30 songs to get you going for the new year. I was nervous that having so much lullaby music at the beginning of the year might really skew this playlist but I can't find any traces of children's music in the selections Spotify made for me. To be honest I'm rather surprised at the accuracy of what's been created for me and have found some great new music from this playlist. It's to the point that I want more than 30 songs as I'm already beginning to wear some of these new tracks out. If you're a Spotify user and are looking to find something new that's custom tailored to your listening habits I would highly recommend using the Year in Music feature to create your Play It Forward playlist and to take a listen to mine.