This week’s features include: 帰りの会 (kaeri no kai), Hakubi, For Tracy Hyde,
miida, and Sarasa Kadowaki

Just gonna roll the intro here real quick for those of you jumping into this series for the first time and are not sure what this is exactly 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 in the home stretch now with only a couple of weeks left before we tally up so these picks might as well be the deciding ones. Who will prevail?! We shall see soon enough.

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Here’s what fate has in store for me:

A bit of a fascinating mix of the old guard and the new bloods.

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♥ 冗談/jodan by 帰りの会 (kaeri no kai)

If you’ve been keeping keeping track of bands and artists who I’ve told to keep an eye out for on the Roundup, you’d recognize Kaeri no Kai as being one of them. I’ve always seen the band as having massive potential after first coming across them with songs like Jodan here and I still believe to this day that they’re capable of making some incredible music. I can’t not take this one.

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♥ 在る日々/aru hibi by Hakubi

Hakubi continues to be one of the bands that Spotify seems to be pushing for me to go listen to and, you know what, I think I’m gonna bite this time around. It could just be because I’m playing Aru Hibi right after Kaeri no Kai’s Jodan so the songs hitting kinda nice as they go super well together, so I dunno, maybe I should be giving Hakubi’s songs a proper listen after all.

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♥ 繋ぐ日の青/tsunagu hi no ao by For Tracy Hyde

For Tracy Hyde’s discography is something that I’ve been meaning to dive into for some time now if I’m being honest, so I do appreciate Spotify’s subtle reminder here by giving me Tsunagu Hi no Ao. The section from 1:35 to 1:45 is now forever stuck in my brain and while I did have an idea of how they sound based on what little I’ve heard from them thus far, color me intrigued even more now.

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♥ Blue by miida

Aoyama Sachiko made an appearance here on the Draft back in Week 15 so I guess it was only a matter of time before miida ended up doing so as well. Negoto is a band that is very dear to my heart so it’s nice seeing it’s former members do well as they now venture out and do their own thing. You can actually kinda hear a little bit of Negoto in miida’s Blue here which I thought was cool.

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♥ えのぐ by Sarasa Kadowaki

Kadowaki Sarasa is yet another prospect that I’ve given the spotlight to on the Roundup so I’m glad me and Spotify are on the same page here (granted, the picks are based on＊my＊preferences anyway, lol). Enogu is a nice showcase of what I consider to be Kadowaki’s bread and butter so to speak and that is of course her singer-songwriter acoustic guitar style which is just such a treat to the ears.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

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The Draft playlist has been updated with this weeks picks!

It was looking like dire straits for Spotify the past two weeks in the row but it rallies back this week in a major way with a 5 ♥-er spread bringing the playlist total to 82! We still have five weeks (25 songs) left of Drafts before the year ends, and with such a huge margin for error that that time frame provides, 18 ♥’s is definitely doable. Of course, if we keep having weeks like this, then it’s just a wrap regardless (XD)

Let me know if this week’s picks were as good for you as they were for me down in the comments!

Happy Listening!