This week’s features include: GOOD ON THE REEL, Gyoson, なみだ藍 (namida ai),
yama, and 古川本舗 (fullkawa honpo) 

Hello you! And welcome back to a fresh new week of the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft—the Internet’s one and only (to my knowledge) bi-weekly playlist-builder rogue-like series, back again with a new selection of songs to consider adding to our run.

If this isn’t your first time joining us for one of these, you should already know what to do and where to go from here. However, if this is your first time here and you’re not quite sure what this series is exactly, please give the primer down below a quick read:

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 5 of the Playlist Draft and we are in the midst of what’s looking to be just an ungodly run by Spotify this season. Let’s see if this week puts a stop to it.

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3, 2, 1… action!

… Yeah no, Spotify is gonna be keeping this streak alive.

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x あとさき/atosaki by GOOD ON THE REEL

We’re starting off this week’s Draft with GOOD ON THE REEL, which is one of those bands again whose name I feel I’ve seen a lot before but never really got around to actually listening to them and their music to see what they’re about. I get the chance to now with Atosaki here though. If you know anything about by preferences based on what I regularly feature here on the blog, you should have some idea about my predilection towards female vocals. While I’ve definitely gotten better at being more open and receptive towards male vocals over the years (lol), I don’t think I’m ready just yet to be adding more anthem-y tracks to my playlists like this one here. This one’s a pass.

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♥ Downhill by Gyoson

… See, now this is more like it. I mean, this couldn’t have lined up any better given what I was just talking about regarding male vocals in the context of the Draft specifically where the week’s selection is otherwise out of my control. That is to say, Gyoson is definitely more along the lines of what I listen to and what I like, and Downhill is a vibe because of it. Gyoson’s one of appearance back in Week 7 of Season 2 was what first introduced me to him and his work and I’ve actually been a fan since. I mentioned last time that I hoped he was still making music and thankfully we now know that he is based on a late-December release so I was immensely happy about that.

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♥ クリフ、非常口/cliff, hijoguchi by なみだ藍 (namida ai)

Next up is Namida Ai who’s actually on her second attempt at a Draft pick after an unsuccessful debut here in the series back in Week 25 of Season 1 with Diorama. I wasn’t quite sold on her singing when I first heard it then (mostly on the delivery side of things rather than how her voice sounds), wherein you see me specifically note down that these are just things that get better over time. Cliff, Hijouguchi came out some ten months after Diorama and it’s honestly night and day. I love the overall structure of the track; I thought her cadence in particular was pretty and played off really well with the instrumentation. Cool to see actual improvement in that regard, and yeah, welcome to the Draft Namida Ai.

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♥ ランニングアウト/running out by yama

yama is an artist that might eventually find themselves in the Exempt List, just because I don’t see myself disliking that many of their songs. Granted, yama’s not exactly batting a thousand here on the Draft, having already dropped a week in Week 14 of Season 2 (on a Nakimushi track no less). I mean, that’s really the main reason why they’ve yet to graduate from here. Like I said in Week 17 of Season 2 though, their early singles are almost always going to be a hitter, and Running out is pretty much vintage yama. Voice on point. Track on point. What else is there to say.

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♥ グレゴリオ/gregorio feat. ちびた (chibita) by 古川本舗 (fullkawa honpo)

I don’t get a lot of chances to feature Fullhawa Honpo here on the blog, at least as much as I would like, but let it be known that I do have a ton of respect for the guy as you’ve seen me mention in the few times that I had opportunities to talk about him and his handiwork which, of course, include his signature craftsmanship in full display in Gregorio. There’s a distinct sense of tranquility in Fullkawa’s compositions as you’ll hear here, and is largely the reason why I find myself going back to the album Girlfriend from Kyoto every now and again (which is where Gregorio is from), despite it being a decade old at this point.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

x ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

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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.

It can’t keep getting away with this… and yet, here we are—Spotify hitting us with another 4 ♥ week, keeping its historic and unprecedented streak of back-to-back banger weeks alive. If it keeps this pace, it’s on track to smash our Score to Beat of 102 much earlier than in previous seasons. And honestly? I’m more than happy to see it happen.

Lemme know what you guys think down below! Likewise, let me know too if there were any songs from this week’s Draft that stood out to you!

Before I let you go, I wanna extend an invite to this month’s J-Music Advance Party, happening over on my Substack newsletter tomorrow, March 9, 2025! For those who don’t know, the Advance Party is where I highlight upcoming album releases I’m most excited about. If that sounds like your kind of thing, be sure to subscribe so you’ll get notified when it drops. Hope to see you there!

Happy Listening!