This week’s features include: なきごと (nakigoto), cadode, AAAMYYY, vivid undress,
and 笹川真生 (sasagawa mao)

It’s Draft day again! (XD) That is to say, we’re back for yet another week of the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft! This is now Week 11 and we are very quickly closing in on the halfway point for our little series here. If in case you aren’t caught up you can bring yourself up to speed in the dedicated Draft page 😀 If, however, this is your first time here ー

The Draft, inspired by player drafts in traditional sports and draft formats from popular trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh, is a bi-weekly series where we try to answer the question;

How good is Spotify at recommending songs to me ?

In this series I will test Spotify’s ability to recommend to me songs that I would like based on songs that I already do like in the form of my own Recommendation Roundup Playlist on Spotify. Specifically this involves making use of Spotify’s built-in suggestion feature on user-created playlists to gather a total of 5 (five) songs for me to check out and listen to. Songs that I like will get “drafted” and go on a separate Draft playlist, where the goal is to see just how big said playlist will get by the end of the year.

If it makes it past a hundred, Spotify gets the W over me, and if not, we get to declare the Recommendation Roundup playlist as the vastly superior playlist (XD)

Spotify’s picks have been very promising as of late. Let’s see if it keeps the ball rolling.

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What so we got?

Interesting… very interesting…..

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♥ 知らない惑星/shiranai wakusei by なきごと (nakigoto)

While I do remember having featured Nakigoto on the Roundup before, looking back I’m actually surprised I had done so for the duo’s debut single of all things (yet another recurring theme here for the Draft it seems). In that sense, I’m genuinely surprised at how far the two have since come based off of how they sound here for Shiranai Wakusei. In particular I really love how fun and catchy the chorus here is.

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♥ 誰かが夜を描いたとして/dareka ga yoru wo egaita toshite by cadode

cadode’s albums are one of the ones that Spotify almost always tries to recommend to me, and I remember this because the album artwork for them are very much distinctive (which, is funny, considering how minimalistic they otherwise are). That being said, I never really got the chance to try them out so I was kinda surprised at how Dare ka ga Yoru wo Egaita toshite sounded. … Not bad.

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♥ HOME by AAAMYYY

AAAMYYY is also a regular on my Spotify dashboard, and similarly, I also don’t really have a good grasp of their music just yet if at all prior to this Draft. In as adventurous as I might come across in my pursuit of finding new Japanese music to listen to, you can see I still let a lot of things pass me by. At the very least, HOME is a good little reminder for myself to trust in Spotify every now and again. Very nice.

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♥ 夢見る２人/yumemiru futari by vivid undress

I have a soft spot for vivid undress, being one of the first bands that I discovered for myself when I first got into the hobby. That’s largely the reason why I do feel a little bit sad seeing their stuff float in my feed every so often now that they have since disbanded knowing they never really got to break through. I mean, is Yumemiru Futari not a good listen? Yeah, I rest my case.  

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x エイプリル/april by 笹川真生 (sasagawa mao)

I knew something sounded peculiar when I listened to Sasagawa Mao’s April here for the first time and I couldn’t figure what it was, at least up until I decided to look them up. It wasn’t until then that I found out that Sasagawa Mao was male which came as a bit as a surprise. Unfortunately my standards for androgynous vocal work has since been raised tremendously by Wolpis Carter.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ x

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The Draft playlist has now been updated with this week’s picks 🙂

Spotify is still on its steady streak of solid recs and, as much as I make a show of Spotify doing well as being a negative to me (lol), I’m still walking away with new songs and artists to start listening to so really, who’s the real winne-

Lemme know your guys’ thoughts on this week’s Draft picks down in the comments below!

Happy Listening!