This week’s features include: 植田真梨恵 (ueda marie), 黒子首 (“Hockrockb”),
黒木渚 (kuroki nagisa), にゃんぞぬデシ (nyanzonudeshi), and まじ娘 (“majiko”) 

Hello, hello! And welcome back once again to—yep, you guessed it—the one and only Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft! We’re here for another week of fresh song recommendations, all in the hopes of adding some gems to this season’s haul. If you’ve been following along and already know the drill, feel free to jump straight to this week’s drafting pool.

BUT, if this is your first time here and you have no idea what this is all about, no worries—just give the following primer a quick read to get up to speed!

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.

We’re now in Week 6 of the Draft, and honestly? This season has been nothing short of a curbstomp courtesy of Spotify’s picks since the year kicked off. Just an absolute pasting. It’s been wild to watch unfold, but hey, credit where credit’s due, Spotify’s really been bringing the heat with its recommendations so far.

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Time for a heat check maybe?

… No, it’s not time for a heat check. Gosh darn i-

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♥ 心と体/kokoro to karada by 植田真梨恵 (ueda marie)

If you’ve been keeping up with the Draft since Season 2 (huge thanks, by the way), then you’ll know that one of the ongoing storylines in the series is Spotify’s relentless mission to get me to listen to more of Ueda Marie’s songs. As I mentioned when she first popped up back in Week 25 of Season 1, I wasn’t quite the Japanese music fan that I am now when I first stumbled across her, so there’s always this lingering feeling that I might’ve missed out on being a fan of hers sooner. That said, every time one of her songs shows up here, I end up loving it, Kokoro to Karada being no exception. Big, bold pop-rock energy that you just don’t hear much of these days. Absolutely love it.

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♥ swimming cat by 黒子首 (“Hockrockb”)

Longtime Roundup readers would remember just how much of a fan I was of Hockrockb around 2021 leading into 2022. Of course, I’m still a fan now, but watching their journey toward their first full album debut was one of my favorite things to follow, having seen them start from such humble beginnings. That’s also what made Kokkaque such a special album for me, as it felt like the culmination of everything they had built up to that point, and it absolutely delivered as a rock-solid release. swimming cat was one of the album’s original tracks, and honestly, it’s one of my personal favorites. It really shines a light on vocalist Hori Ageha’s acoustic guitar work, paired with her effortlessly cool, raspy singing style.

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♥ あたしの心臓あげる/atashi no shinzo ageru by 黒木渚 (kuroki nagisa)

While prepping for this week’s Draft, I found myself double, no, triple checking whether I had already featured Atashi no shinzo ageru in any of my past Roundups. Kuroki Nagisa was, after all, one of the first artists I ever wrote about here on the blog. Surprisingly enough, though, I hadn’t, meaning it’s fair game as a Draft pick. And really, what was I supposed to do? Pretend I don’t already love this song? This is vintage Kuroki Nagisa. I have to take it here. That being said, picking this up now opens the door for more of her tracks appearing on the Draft moving forward, making her a strong contender for the Exempt List, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

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♥ 勘違い心拍数/kanchigai shinpakusu by にゃんぞぬデシ (nyanzonudeshi)

Now, full transparency, I totally thought this was going to be a pass the moment I saw the album art. It just looked like a gimmicky track, the kind meant more for novelty than anything else. But hey, lesson learned, never judge a book by its cover. Nyanzonu Deshi’s Kanchigai Shinpakusu turned out to be way more solid than I ever expected, with a surprisingly nuanced instrumentation that completely caught me off guard. I’d like to think I’m usually mindful of that saying, but my preconceptions got the better of me this time. My bad. Hopefully, giving it a well-earned Draft spot makes up for that. Not that I wouldn’t have picked it up anyway.

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♥ ジャンプ/jump by まじ娘 (“majiko”)

Speaking of surprises, Jump by majiko caught me off guard in much the same way, completely flipping my expectations for how it would sound. Unlike with Nyanzonu Deshi, I’m not exactly unfamiliar with majiko’s music, having featured her back in the early years of the Roundup. From that, I’ve come to expect her songs to lean more on the gentler, more atmospheric side. But instead of that, Jump comes through as a fast and energetic number, almost uncharacteristically so. Honestly, that’s precisely what makes it so enjoyable for me. Now I’m curious if majiko has other songs in her existing discography that are like this as this made for an unexpectedly fun listen.

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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.

Not that it has had any use for the Wait List thus far with how its been performing this season, giving us yet another 5 ♥ week for the ages. We’re barely done with this first quarter of the year but we’re already well past a fourth of the way to hitting our Score to Beat. Suffice for it to say, Spotify has been punching way above its weight this season with seemingly no signs of slowing down.

What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments down below if you think the same! While you’re at it, lemme know too which song (or songs) from this week’s selection would you add to your own playlists? I’d love to know!

Happy Listening!