This week’s features include: 藤川千愛 (fujikawa chiai), Hakubi,
山崎あおい (yamazaki aoi), MAISONdes, おおお (ooo), whaledontsleep,
and Organic Call

Hello! Welcome back to the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft! 😀 We are now in Week 3 of Drafts so if you’re only now tuning in, there’s not a whole lot on the backlog just yet for this season as we pretty much just started, but if you missed any of the previous weeks it shouldn’t take you long to get caught up 😉

If this is the first time you’re seeing a season of the Draft underway though, here’s a quick little primer to tell you what this series is all about:

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 ongoing Recommendation Roundup Playlist on Spotify.

Making use of Spotify’s built-in suggestion feature on user-created playlists, we will have it gather a total of 5 (five) songs for me to check out and listen to. In addition to my own playlist however, for this season we will ALSO be including the 100 Draft picks from the previous season into the mix, thus (in theory) refining Spotify’s recommendations even further while also ensuring that we don’t get any repeats (songs that weren’t picked from last season though will get another shot if they get recommended to me again). Songs that I like will get drafted on a *new* Draft playlist, where the goal is to see just how big it gets by the end of the year.

What else new in Season 2 of Draft, you might ask? Well, we will actually be introducing a couple more things that weren’t present in the previous season. The first, is what we will be calling the Score To Beat. Last time Spotify only needed to reach a 100 songs for it to get the W at the end of the year. We will treat that 100 as the *current* score to beat for the series, so for this season Spotify now needs to get 101 or higher before the end of the year in order for it to win.

To keep things fair however, seeing as Spotify juuuust barely reached its goal last year, we’ll be incorporating the Wait List; a separate playlist of songs (max 3) that I think I might reconsider drafting should it come down to it.

Spotify had a bit of a rough time last week in terms of picks. Let’s see if it’s able to bounce back from an early setback.

ーー

Let’s see what’s in store for us:

… Seriously, what is up with Spotify wanting me to like Hakubi so much, lol

ーー

♥ 片っぽのピアス/katappo no piasu by 藤川千愛 (fujikawa chiai)

Fujikawa Chiai makes it to the Draft for the first time, after being somewhat of a regular presence on the Roundup, as a singer I’ve become very much fond of over the years for her clever song writing and nifty singing style that makes use of repetition and emphases. While her recent J-Pop outings has since seen her embrace a more Ballad approach to her music, Katappo no Piasu is her coming back to her roots a bit, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss these kinds of songs from her.

ーー

♥ 辿る/tadoru by Hakubi

In contrast, this is now Hakubi’s fourth overall appearance here as a Draft entrant. More over, Tadoru is also now the fourth song from their album era that we’ve since gone through so yeah I dunno, Spotify *really* wants me to listen to this album I guess (XD) That being said, this might be the song that I’ve liked the most from them so far. Reminds me a lot of a band that I used to listen to a ton back in the day in SECONDWALL, particularly in the kind of energy they’re singing with.

ーー

♥ 渋谷に集うな！/shibuya ni tsudou na! by 山崎あおい (yamazaki aoi)

Interesting choice for Spotify to send Yamazaki Aoi my way. Granted, I did pick up her ROOTS album not too long ago so that could be a reason as to why. Though her career spans well over a decade, her discography is one that I only just started to sink my teeth into and so far she’s yet to really disappoint, with Shibuya ni Tsudou na! being just one example of how easy of a listen she is.

ーー

♥ 本当は夜の端まで/hontou wa yoru no hashi made
by MAISONdes feat. おおお, whaledontsleep

whaledontsleep is back in relatively quick turnaround after a successful showing on the Drafts in the previous Draft week. Unlike last time though he’s acting as a producer here for Hontou wa yoru no hashi made with the mysterious “Ooo” (like, I don’t even know if that’s how you’d romanize their name as there’s literally nothing I can find about the guy) in charge of the vocals. Bit of a shame ’cause I actually really liked their singing here and would’ve wanted to hear more of their work.

ーー

x 海が見える街/umi ga mieru machi by Organic Call

So here we have the first returning song to the Drafts, as Organic Call’s Umi ga Mieru Machi gets another crack at getting picked, after being turned down by me close to exactly a year ago now. Unfortunately… I’m still not sold on how Hirata Naoya is singing these verses. For what it’s worth though, I’m starting to come around to it. Not enough for me to put it on the Wait List but… we’ll see. Maybe if I get it again *next* year things will be different. But for now though, it’s still a no for me.

ーー

This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ x

ーー

The Draft playlist on Spotify has since been updated with this week’s picks, with no new addition to the Wait List 🙂

Spotify regroups and picks up four ♥’s here after a somewhat lackluster week back in January. Not too surprised, as I do know from experience now that not all weeks are gonna be bangers, so it is what it is 😛

We also got to see our first “returning” song this week in Organic Call’s Umi ga Mieru Machi which I thought was neat. Pretty sure we’ll run into a couple more as we go. I’m curious though, do you think I’m being too harsh on this song specifically? Lemme know in the comments before you go 😀

See you guys in the next one!