This week’s features include: CYNHN, MINT mate box, sympathy,
cadode, and ナツノコエ (natsu no koe)

Hello, hello! How’s it goin’? Hope you’re all having a fine and lovely day as I welcome you back once again to the one and only Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft—where you get to see yours truly go head-to-head with the so-called algorithm over the course of five tracks to see who really knows their stuff when it comes to recommending.

If you’ve been here before and that’s nothing new to you, you already know what to do from here. But if this is your first time on the blog and you’re not quite sure what this series is all about, take a moment to check out the primer below!

The Draft, inspired by player drafts in traditional sports and the draft formats of popular trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh, is a bi-weekly series where I tackle a simple question—

How good is Spotify at recommending songs to me ?

In this series, I put Spotify to the test by seeing how well it can recommend songs I’d enjoy based on the ones I already do. I do this by leveraging Spotify’s built-in suggestion feature for user-created playlists, using my ongoing Recommendation Roundup Playlist as the starting point, coupled with the final Draft playlists from the previous seasons.

This curated pool of over 800+ songs will serve as the basis for Spotify’s recommendations, fine-tuning its algorithm to better predict the songs it thinks I’ll enjoy.

I’ll let Spotify generate 5 (five) recommendations for me to check out every two weeks. Songs that make it onto a Draft playlist and will count as successful picks. Tracks that didn’t make the cut last season get a second chance if Spotify suggests them again. The ultimate goal? To see just how big this playlist can grow by the end of the year.

In Season 2, I added two mechanics to spice things up. The first was the Score to Beat, which sets the season’s target. Last season’s score was 101, so this year, Spotify needs to hit at least 102 successful picks to “win”.

The second change we implemented was the Wait List, a smaller, separate playlist (with a cap of three songs) which allows me to save tracks for later reevaluation.

Now, for this season, I’m shaking things up again by introducing a new mechanic: the Exempt List.

Think of this as a “hall of fame” of sorts: any bands or artists placed on the Exempt List will have their songs automatically ruled out for drafting this season (and possibly in future seasons as well). The idea for this came up while prepping for this year’s Draft. I noticed a pattern—Spotify kept recommending a lot of songs from the same handful of artists. While they’re all great, I felt like the series might start to feel repetitive if the same five or six names kept popping up every other week. The Exempt List, then, is my way of (ideally) ensuring we keep Spotify’s recommendations fresh and different each week.

Check out the Week 1 post for Season 3 to know the rationale behind the following artists being exempted from the Draft: Yorushika, ZUTOMAYO, YOASOBI, みゆな (miyuna), Hakubi, POP ART TOWN, whaledontsleep

Bands and artists can be removed from the Exempt List over time, though naturally, more names can—and likely will—be added as the season progresses, depending on how things shape up. Something to keep in mind.

This is Week 4 of the Draft, which Spotify being on just an absolute tear with its recommended songs. Let’s see if this week is any different.

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Alright, give it to me.

sympathy has really been showing out these past couple of weeks alone…

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♥ 夜間飛行/yokan hikou by CYNHN

Though they don’t show up on the blog as often as I’d like, whether in the Roundup or here on the Draft, I really do enjoy CYNHN’s music, so it’s always a treat when they make an appearance. Yokan Hikou was doubly so, especially once I realized it was written (to my surprise) by none other than Aoyama Sachiko, formerly of Negoto! That connection alone made this track an exciting find, as you might expect from the merging of these two worlds. On top of that, I really appreciated how the song’s slower, balladic nature served as a perfect showcase for the members’ vocal talents, allowing their voices to take center stage in a way that we don’t often get to hear.

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♥ メイキュート/mei-cute by MINT mate box

MINT mate box makes their first appearance in this season of the Draft after a strong debut back in Season 2 with Recycle. Funny enough, if you’d asked me what I thought their most popular song was, I would’ve said Recycle without hesitation. But looking at the Spotify numbers, Mei-cute actually has it beat by a pretty wide margin, and for good reason. It’s every bit as catchy, if not even more so, than the former. And with the benefit of hindsight, it even feels a bit ahead of its time, especially considering how much it resembles the sound of rising bands today like Sabasister. Glad I’m belatedly getting to hear and enjoy more of their existing work in that regard.

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♥ 深海/shinkai by sympathy

Speaking of retroactively appreciating bands, sympathy is back yet again, marking their third appearance this season, with Shinkai, arguably the best song I’ve heard from them so far. That’s saying a lot, considering how much I’ve enjoyed their previous outings. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I love everything about this track: the post-rock instrumentation, the vocal layering; but my favorite part has to be that slick switch-up they hit two-thirds in. This band needs to make more music, plain and simple. On that note, Shinkai now marks the fourth song from Uminari to Zekkei (2017) to make it into the Draft, out of only seven tracks total. At this point, there’s no getting around it: sympathy is on track to “graduate” from the Draft by the end of the year. It’s impressive, really.

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♥ 暁、星に/akatsuki hoshi ni by cadode

I’m honestly amused at how much of a fixture cadode has become in the Draft. They’ve been a mainstay since Week 11 of Season 1, and with this week’s pick, they’ve now made their sixth overall appearance. Akatsuki, hoshi ni is actually a re-entry, originally debuting back in Week 1 of Season 2, where I called it “generically pop-y.” And to be fair, I still stand by that. That said, I’ve been on a bit of a kick with this kind of generically pop-y pop rock—especially with male vocals—as of late (as some of you might recall). As a direct result, I’ve found myself appreciating this track a lot more than I did before. So, though it didn’t make the cut the first time around, it does now. Good stuff.

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♥ 東京ラブストーリー/tokyo love story by ナツノコエ (natsu no koe)

What I like about Tokyo Love Story by Natsunokoe making it onto the Draft is that I distinctly remember this song being in contention for the Roundup back when it first dropped. It didn’t quite make the cut there unfortunately, but make no mistake, I really enjoyed it then, and hearing it again now, I evidently still do. The chorus, in particular, is such a standout in my opinion, the kind that burrows into your head after just a couple of listens. I especially love the little vocal runs that Natsunokoe does here which end up being such a nice added touch if at least for me personally.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

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The Draft playlist on Spotify has been updated with this week’s Playlist Draft picks 😊
No new changes or additions have been made to the Wait List.

Looks like last week was just a minor hiccup because Spotify is back at it again with another 5 ♥ week, in what has since been a fantastic start to the new season. Honestly, if things keep trending this way, we might not even need to make it to the end of the year to reach our score-to-beat. But hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The real test is whether Spotify can keep this streak going.

Personally, I still think the Exempt List has been a game-changer in upping the quality of the entries we’re getting, but what do you guys think? While you’re at it, drop a comment below and let me know which song(s) from this week’s Draft stood out to you the most!

Happy Listening!