This week’s features include: ヒグチアイ (higuchi ai), amazarashi, Sano Ibuki,
山崎あおい (yamazaki aoi), and Ivy to Fraudulent Game 

Heyo, Leap here, back again with your bi-weekly dose of algorithmic fate in this season of the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft, where every other week, I give Spotify five chances to prove it knows my music taste better than I do. Sometimes it crushes it. Sometimes it… doesn’t. But every time, we press forward, in true rogue-like fashion, toward the ever-elusive goal of building the ultimate Japanese music playlist.

New here? I got you.

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 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 rolling into Week 9 of the Draft as we step into the month of May. New month, new beginnings… maybe? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

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Let’s see what the algorithm cooked up this week 👇

I spy with my little eye a couple of run-backs from last Season. Interesting… 

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♥ わたしのしあわせ/watashi no shiawase by ヒグチアイ (higuchi ai)

Whenever I get the chance to listen to a song by Higuchi Ai, there’s really just one word that always comes to mind: virtuoso. And honestly, that’s no exaggeration. She’s a true craftswoman when it comes to making music, and Watashi no Shiawase is, of course, no exception. One of the things I love about her songs is how you can instantly tell she’s classically trained, not just in how she plays the piano, but even in the way she structures her songs and delivers her vocals. There’s this graceful, measured quality that just fills the air. An absolutely lovely track from her, no doubt.

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♥ アノミー/anomie by amazarashi

amazarashi is one of those bands, and this is actually an idea I might revisit down the line as its own standalone post, where I feel like I might’ve gotten into them a little too early, at least relative to having a solid enough grasp of Japanese music to fully appreciate what they were doing. For context, my introduction to the band was through Kisetsu wa Tsugitsugi Shindeiku back when I was just starting to get into J-music. It’s actually pretty fascinating looking back now and hearing how much of those same musical cues and emotional peaks from their early work were already alive in Anomie here which came out well before me being introduced to them. Definitely feels like a sign for me to circle back and properly revisit the band, which, honestly, I’d be more than down for.

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x Jewelry by Sano Ibuki

We’ve got the first of two run-backs on this week’s Draft with Sano Ibuki’s Jewelry. Some of you might remember this one from back in Season 2, Week 11. Just for fun, I decided to give the song another listen before checking what I’d said about it last time. You know, to see if my opinion had shifted at all. Amusingly enough, I ended up feeling pretty much the same way I did back then in that, there’s just no particular moment in the track that really sticks with me or feels memorable. Which is a bit of a bummer, honestly, because from a production standpoint, it’s a pretty solidly crafted song, I’ll definitely give it that.

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x 0214 by 山崎あおい (yamazaki aoi)

The second run-back we’ve got this week is Yamazaki Aoi’s 0214, which first popped up in the Draft back in Season 2, Week 20. I went with the same approach I used for Sano Ibuki’s Jewelry and gave it a fresh listen without pulling up my previous notes to avoid any bias. And, well, if nothing else, I’m at least consistent with how I size up songs because sure enough, I walked away feeling pretty much the same as I did before: it just overstays its welcome. I still stand by the thought that if this track were trimmed down by about a minute, I’d probably enjoy it a whole lot more.

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♥ blue blue blue by Ivy to Fraudulent Game

In something of a contrast to amazarashi from earlier, Ivy to Fraudulent Game is a band whose name I remember seeing floating around back when I first started diving into Japanese music, but funny enough, I never really sat down to properly listen to them until blue blue blue here. This kind of feels like a bit of a running theme on the Roundup lately, huh? That said, I actually really liked what I heard this time around. They give me a bit of a cinema staff vibe in some ways, which, for the record, was one of my early faves, so I’m definitely hyped to dig into more of their stuff after this week. Solid W pick from Spotify here.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ ♥ x x ♥

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

It finally happened. Ladies and gentlemen, the streak is officially over. For the first time this season, the Draft has served us up a 3 ♥ week. Wild, right? It took eight straight weeks for Spotify to finally miss on two of its five picks. And get this, the songs we passed on were actually run-backs we’d already passed on before. Meaning that, technically, Spotify’s new picks this season are still undefeated. So yeah, while this might count as its “weakest” showing so far, I wouldn’t say Spotify dropped the ball here at all.

What do you guys think? Hit me up in the comments! And while you’re at it, let me know which songs you’d personally pick out from this week’s Draft!

Before I let you go, just a quick reminder: I host the J-Music Advance Party over on my Substack newsletter, where I chat about the albums and releases I’m most hyped for each month. If that’s your vibe, this month’s issue drops tomorrow, May 4, 2025! Make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet so you get the alert as soon as it’s live. Would love to see you there!

Happy Listening!