This week’s features include: 果歩 (caho), 日向文 (hinat(a)ya),
ポップしなないで (pop shinanaide), vivid undress, and Ran

Happy June! And welcome once again to the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft! It’s the start of the new month, and so we’re back with a fresh set of recommended picks to sift through courtesy of everyone’s favorite music streaming service 😉 If this is your first time here however, as a quick rundown 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)

We’re getting close to the halfway point!

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Let’s see what’s in store for us this time around:

Love seeing artists that I’ve been meaning to get on the Roundup on here.

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♥ 楽園/rakuen by 果歩 (caho)

Spotify might be on to something with regard to me and my tastes with its lead off pick Rakuen here by an artist who I have honestly never heard of until now which, I do find a bit unfortunate on my part as I absolutely adore this song. I love Caho’s blend of like this spoken word style coupled with just a pure AcoGui sound. I will be acquainting myself with her discography shortly.

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♥ 波よ、君の頬を/nami yo, kimi no hoho wo by 日向文 (hinat(a)ya)

Back to back AcoGui recs from Spotify for this round of Drafts which I do find very amusing considering these are meant to be more of a grab bag of sorts, but hey, I’m not even mad (XD) This time around though, unlike the above Caho, I was actually made aware of Hinat(a)ya earlier this year (also thanks to Spotify) so it was great to see her here on the Drafts. Auto pick for me.

x SG by ポップしなないで (pop shinanaide)

This is a bit of an odd one. While I don’t really listen to them that much if at all, Pop Shinanaide isn’t necessarily a new name to me, and for what it’s worth I do think that at the very least based on what I know of them I would probably like their songs generally. That being said, SG is just little too… whimsical sounding for my tastes. Might be cured by a couple more listens but it’s a pass for now.

♥ Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! by vivid undress

I allude to as much in the previous Week but I forgot how much I liked vivid undress. I attribute this mainly to me not having a whole lot of access to their music (and to just Japanese music in general) back when I was first getting into the hobby. I do have to go and trace back their discography in my own time at some point, but it’s been nice hearing their newer stuff here for sure.

♥ おれんじ/orenji feat. Kei Iwasaki by Ran

We got to feature Ran in a couple of Roundups last year and in them we’ve seen her sort of transition from being a Pop/Rock artist with a penchant for Slow Jam to someone who’s starting to dabble more into Electro/Synth. Of note however, Orenji is actually Ran’s top track in terms of listens, and it’s not hard to imagine why this song was the one to put her in a lot of people’s radars.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ ♥ x ♥ ♥

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The Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft… playlist (I should think of a better name for that, lol) has now been updated with this week’s Draft picks 😀

Ngl, I actually really liked this week. I think, quite possibly my favorite week of the Draft thus far. Granted it’s not a week where we walked away with all five recommendations from Spotify, but what I will be walking away with here instead are a good handful of artists that I will now be following and subsequently start listening to in earnest. That’s the real victory to be had here, so hats of to Spotify’s recs.

How about you guys? Find anything you liked? Lemme know down in the comments!

Happy Listening!