This week’s features include: manaco, 大槻美奈 (otsuki mina),
大橋ちっぽけ (ohashi chippoke), 羊文学 (hitsujibungaku), 湯木慧 (yuki akira)

Yeah, no, this schedule is waaay more comfortable, lol, why did I even think making these on Friday nights was a good idea (of course, the obvious answer here is that I’d meant to prepare these much further out in advance but well that didn’t happen so-) Anyway, welcome back to another week of Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft! (XD)

If this is your first time here for this segment of the blog 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)

The schedule change is in reference to the fact that when I first started this series, I set it up so it came out on Friday nights but after half a year I was made to realize it’s just an awkward day for me to do blogging stuff in general. So yeah, Saturdays now 😉

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With that out of the way, let’s see what we got here:

… One of these names probably shouldn’t be here, lol

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x 向日葵/himawari by manaco

2019 was an interesting year for Japanese music, as it saw both to the continued rise of one of Japan’s viral hits of the modern era in Yorushika, as well as the beginning of this period of homogeneity where composers inadvertently or otherwise started to pattern their work to said viral hits. The guitar-phrasing here in Himawari is one example, though I don’t really hold it against manaco or anything.

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x ハヤブサ/hayabusa by 大槻美奈 (otsuki mina)

The immediate thing that stood out to me for Otsuki Mina’s Hayabusa here is… in how much it sounds like a live recording. Specifically the cymbal crashes and the high-hat strikes feel very raw which I thought was actually kinda neat. Otsuki’s singing on the other hand hand though was just a little too rote (almost measured in like a composer type of way, which makes sense because she is one) for my liking.

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♥ 鏡写し/kagami utsushi by 大橋ちっぽけ (ohashi chippoke)

Ohashi Chippoke is a fascinating character in that, in as much they’re well-equipped to just go and make a J-Pop song that seems like it would fit in the mainstream, they can also dish out high concept songs like Kagami Utsushi here. The PV for it was how I first found out about them and it remains to this day a music video that I think of fondly from time to time. It’s also a decent bop too of course.

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♥ ラッキー/lucky by 羊文学 (hitsujibungaku)

Here’s one of those times again where a band may be a bit over-qualified and very clearly shouldn’t even be here (XD) Hitsujibungaku has a long-standing history here on the blog as one of the Monthly Recommendation Roundup’s first staple recurring artists and is a band that I was already listening to even before all that. Suffice for it to say, Lucky is an easy pick up for me here.

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♥ 金魚/kingyo by 湯木慧 (yuki akira)

Yuki Akira gets another crack at a Draft pick after an unsuccessful one back in Week 8, this time time around with the track Kingyo from the same album as the last song we heard from her here. I do actually vibe to this a bit more. I mean, I’m always gonna be a fan of AcoGui, but I do like the Folk-y sound of it here. Kinda reminds me of a Kuroki Nagisa song too if I’m being honest. I’ll take this.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

x x ♥ ♥ ♥

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

Bit of a rocky start but it picked up midway through and we walk away with the three out of five so all in all not a bad week for Spotify. Rather, I do notice there’s been fewer blow outs the past couple weeks too so there’s definitely some refinement going on in terms of what Spotify chooses to recommend to me the more we do these. Of course, I could just be becoming more lenient which is also a possibility 😛

Lemme know what you guys think down in the comments. Likewise, let me know if you liked any of the songs we picked out this week, as well as how you’ve been liking the Draft thus far. I’d be happy to hear your guys’ thoughts 😀

Happy Listening!